An example comes to mind, when the Clinton administration imposed sanctions and an embargo to the regime of Raoul Cedras in Haiti, he did so at the expense of many businesses in neighboring Dominican Republic, which were, as a result not allowed to trade with their impoverished, yet lucrative neighbor.
Those merchants, who solely depended on the Haitian trade for their survival, were soon faced with the prospect of extinction in the evolutionary sense. Many were washed away and had disappeared when the embargo was lifted.
Businesses, economies and peoples are ruled by the principles that seem to have a universal acceptance in the multidisciplinary spectrum that governs our cosmos. Our financial environments and we exist obeying the same rules that account for the equilibrium of the entire universe.
Our macro-cosmos and our micro-cosmos behave in the same manner; they act, and interact, like one and the same. We must, therefore, understand and possess an intuitive and educated insight of the rules that affect and influence each other"s behaviors.
For any manager (in any business) to be able to influence the direction of the persons working under his/her leadership, he/she must be conversant (if not well versed) in a variety of disciplines, among which, stands on top, the understanding of the dynamics of individual and group, human behavior.
The structure of the corporate office, of the family business, of the college classroom, of the staging room of an army in combat, does not differ in any significant way from the structure of the daily interaction among people whose sole unarticulated purpose is to use each other to compete and survive.
The sum of the psychodynamic structures of any given industry, or workplace, obeys the same laws that are applicable to individuals behaving alone (when alone) and to individuals behaving as group (when viewed collectively). This understanding of humans and their behaviors can also be extrapolated with how humans will behave when confronted with the same dilemmas in any situation in life. It possesses universality with great practical applicability. The leader must learn to navigate the choppy waters of human conflicts and their proper resolution.
Recognizing this to be a certain truism, many industries today, in order to confront the problem, resort to the assistance of agencies that advertise their in situ reorganization of their present structures, purport to analyze the presumed existing flaws and implement a plan that will (if it really works) reorganize the business and (presto!) result in the expected equilibrium.
Having worked with business wherein this process took place we encounter that in most cases the intervention failed owing to a variety of problems that are seldom, if ever, addressed by the consulting "experts."
The problems that are seldom addressed by the experts, to which I allude, are those very same problems, which belong to the realm of the behavior of humans acting in groups and acting alone.
The experts avoid those problems, because they are too cumbersome and because they would tend to prolong the consulting exercise far longer than it would seem profitable or convenient.
For that reason it is best, if the restructuring of a business or agency is conducted as a psychotherapeutic process that seeks to obviate the many resistance"s which are always present and to be found within any process of change.
To apply these newly developed concepts to the basic mechanisms of any business or Corporation, one must first delve into the effects of the forces of entropy from the time of its inception, evolution and development.
When any company was beginning, when the variables of the numbers of persons in management was small, when the number of clients was modest, when the existing accounts were few, when the suppliers were more accessible, when the competition was minimal, the degree of existing entropy was held to a minimum by the very nature of the number of the variables.
But when growth and diversification entered, the variables increased, and with it the greater the possibility for disorder as specified by the Second Law.
To attempt the restructuring of an agency or business merely by drawing the attention of management to the factors involving organization, communications and structure, is akin as to taking a startled look at the obvious. And this is precisely, what most consultant firms are wont to do.
From that point on the consultants make critical recommendations for sweeping organizational changes coupled with the exhortation for the representatives of the various managerial strata to open new venues of interchange and to have more in-depth in-service training, as if the qualities of leadership and communication skills can be imparted in a classroom atmosphere.
In the majority of cases, once the consultants have departed, the recommendations they leave behind, in their wake, are soon forgotten for lack of follow up, and for the absence of anyone who can make them stick.
Instead, we propose that it is not the act of cataloging and attempting the enforcement of the various existing "organigrams" what is needed, but instead, a formal appraisal of the principal players and elements that constitute the industry (any industry). Once this step is effectively taken, the consultant is in a better position to implement recommendations based in a dynamic understanding of the interplay of human forces and the likelihood that resistance and entropy can be reduced or minimized.
The principles highlighted in the previous paragraph are essentially applicable, not only to the re-structuring of a firm, or of a classroom, but also to the launching of any new product, or to the opening of any new division. All activity being based in a peripatetic dialogue, just as it is done in a think tank or as it is done at the Santa Fe Institute.
Presentation at The Santa Fe Institute
Santa Fe NM
Autor:
Félix E. F. Larocca MD
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