Who Connected the Dots That Way?

 

In his best-selling book Games People Play (Ballantine Books, 1964), Eric Berne theorized that we all walk around with scripts running in our heads, collecting all the facts we gather in to a structure that resembles a story line – sort of the stories of our lives. Berne also asserted that we have three personas when it comes to interacting with others: the Child, the Adult, and the Parent. These three are somewhat similar to Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego, but Berne’s analysis turns on how these three personas behave when we communicate with others – hence the “transactional analysis” he presents in his book.

In my not-bestselling (yet) but must-have book, Game Theory in Management, I take Berne’s theory one step further: we don’t have one script running, but three (or one story with a main plot and two subplots). These three scripts mirror the three personas, but with a twist:

·         The Child persona’s script is what we tell ourselves about ourselves. It’s entirely internal, or self-centered.

·         The Adult persona’s script provides the structure for how we ought to interact with others, primarily to in order to fulfill the needs of the Child.

·         The Parent script tells us what we should aspire to, and is often based on our perceptions of those around us and their status.

Because the child persona is the Berne equivalent of Freud’s Id, its narrative tends to be both highly emotionally-charged and irrational in the extreme. If we convince ourselves that we are superlative in some area, and evidence arises that suggests otherwise, or even the exact opposite, we will often reject that evidence, for the simple reason that re-writing any part of our Child’s script is usually excruciatingly painful. A truly humble person has a far easier time of integrating facts-on-the-ground into their narrative(s), and we all know how predominant the truly humble are among executive-level management. One more element – when our narratives are inconsistent with reality in profound ways, we are said to be delusional.

Okay, Michael, you ask, what does all this have to do with June’s theme, of consultants and outsourcing? Well, I’ll tell you. The act of hiring a consultant is a tacit admission that the organization recognizes that at least some elements of its narratives that are in need of revision. However, if the script needing amending is within the purview of the organizational equivalent of the Child’s, then look out. It will not end well.

There’s the story I heard while in graduate school, of a quality consultant brought in to work with an automobile manufacturer. Frustrated in his attempts to call management attention to what he perceived were the basic problems with this firm’s product, he supposedly showed up to a board meeting with an example of this company’s piston, which was cast, along with a competitor’s forged and polished piston, and simply put them down on the table, side-by-side. The difference in quality was so stark that upper management…

…threw him off of the site, and forbade his return. The organization’s internal narrative could not stand the infusion of facts that pointed to a narrative of their being the creator of substantially inferior goods, and they responded in a most child-like fashion in order to maintain their comfortable delusion. The company named in the story eventually went bankrupt.

Of course, many (if not most) consultant relationships do not end poorly, with both the hiring organization and consulting firm benefitting from the eventual outcome. But in cases of extremes in this relationship – where either the organization’s narrative is perfectly sufficient (or even superior to that of the consultant) and no consultation is needed, or else the problem causing the hiring of the consultant is so deep-seeded and prevalent that it challenges the very basis for what the organization believes of itself – then it is very hard to see how any good could come of the relationship.

But then, that’s just one consultant’s (strikethrough) blogger’s advice…