Too often in family therapy the therapist works with a person who is easy to change, which of course means that the family is going to be able to change him back just as easily. If you change someone who is symptomatic, someone who is flipping out, someone who is already responding massively to the family, that person is going to be really easy for the family to change back. The person who has the symptoms will be the last one that you want to work with. The very fact that the family system can produce schizophrenia or anorexia or whatever means that the symptomatic person is easy to influence. If you can influence him into being normal, then the family is going to be able to change him right back. So you've got to get at him from another angle. The family member you want to go after is the one who is really tenacious. If you make a change in a really tenacious individual, everybody else will bounce around for a while, but eventually they will adjust to the way that person has changed.
Man: Can you recontextualize reframing a family system in terms of the problems that occur in business organizations?
Sure. In many ways, a business is just like an extended family, and much of what we have discussed can be applied directly. However, you have to change some of your verbal and nonverbal behaviors to be acceptable to the business world. For instance, you don't talk about the «unconscious mind," you talk about «habits," and you may need to wear a suit instead of a sport shirt. You also have to change some of your basic presuppositions.
For instance, in NLP we presuppose that choice is always better than non–choice. That is usually not true in business. There are a few business contexts where you want a lot of variability and creativity, but often a lot of effort goes into standardizing and routinizing human beings to make them dependable. You don't want assembly–line workers always trying out new ways of doing their jobs, or doing it blindfolded for variety.
Another thing you have to be aware of in the business context is that there is a certain amount of secrecy and paranoia whenever you deal with anything that business people think gives them a competitive advantage. In the therapeutic context there is no such thing as a «trade secret.» As soon as someone has a new idea, he tries to tell everyone about it so he can get some recognition. Businesses often spend a lot of money developing new techniques, and when these are successful, they try to hold on to them as long as they can.
There is also a lot of conservatism in business people, which is based on two things: (1) they don't have a good understanding of how a business organization works, and (2) they have found out the hard way that often when they try something new, it fouls up the system.
You often see this happen whenever a major position in the managerial or executive area of a corporation is vacated by promotion, dismissal, or retirement. The organization will almost always decide to search externally for a replacement. That's a behavioral statement that says business people have no idea what the qualities are that characterize a good manager or executive. Since they don't know, they have no basis for training or selection except a person's «track record.» Typically they don't want to take an employee from another position within their organization. If they had explicit criteria for what an executive position requires, it would be much more cost–effective to train people within the organization.
Even after a successful external search, when the new executive steps into the organization, typically everything in that organization deteriorates for a period of time. If the new executive really is effective, she will ultimately reorganize her departments, and usually she will fire or transfer several personnel in the process.
At least part of what goes on is that each manager tends to have a style of information handling which is unique. Since there isn't any explicit model of information handling, people fly by the seat of their pants at least as much in business as they do in therapy. One aspect of a managerial style is the amount of specificity or detail that a manager requires in reporting relationships.
Over a number of years a manager's staff learns what level of detail she is going to insist on, and they adjust their own reporting procedures to take that into account. Soon their reporting is running at just about the level of detail that is required by the manager they are reporting to. After that relationship has been established for any length of time, the staff person reporting will be upset if the manager asks for more or less detail.
To ask for more detail will be perceived by the staff person— particularly at the unconscious level—as being a challenge to his competency. «Why is she asking for more detail than I had to provide before? Does this mean she doesn't trust my judgement in reporting in this area?» The resulting negative interpersonal relationships can be very troublesome.
To ask for less detail can also cause problems. The reporting person offers a certain level of detailed information, but the new manager waves that off and asks for a more global judgement. All she wants is a «go/no–go» decision. Then the reporting person feels incomplete, and as if he and his work are not valued. He feels that the information he has worked so hard to develop is not being utilized. He also becomes concerned that now he has the responsibility for making decisions, instead of just the responsibility for gathering and presenting information. He may become quite nervous about keeping information which he traditionally had passed on to the manager and therefore no longer had any responsibility for.
One of the most powerful and immediate interventions is to instruct an incoming manager/executive in the notion of control of the quality of information. This allows you to do for verbal information the same thing that blow–up technology does for aerial photography. It allows you to control the detail of the information. You can have the most detailed, highest quality information possible, or you can reduce it to a simple decision: a «go/no–go» signal.
Once a manager is taught this, then she gains a sense of being able to exercise quality control down that information network that leads from her desk to the point of production or service. If she has no confidence that what she decides and plans can be transmitted— maintaining a high quality representation through the entire network that's going to have to respond to the change—then she doesn't make waves. She leaves things running adequately, and that's why you get the mediocrity and conservatism that is traditional in business. Any change runs a risk of a misrepresentation or misinterpretation somewhere along that chain. Therefore, it makes sense to be quite conservative.
With this understanding, a manager can exercise full control over the quality of the information flow within her network. She can make changes with the assurance that her representations will be communicated with high quality and detail. Then she can set standards of excellence as opposed to standards of mediocrity.
Once a manager has an appreciation of the notion of exercising control over the quality of information, she will be quite sensitive to that when she takes a new position. She will realize that the people who are reporting to her, and her peers, and the people she reports to, all have certain typical quality requirements for the information they process. In many instances we have taught a manager who is stepping into a new position to establish a positive frame by saying to her staff: «My understanding is that this is a well–oiled team that I'm joining, etc.» Next she explicitly brings up the notion of quality of information, and that certain adjustments will need to be made.