Order

TABLE OF CONTENTS

§ What Is Organizational Anxiety?
     Defenses Against Anxiety
     The Role of Mental Models and Systems Thinking
§ Anxiety and Mental Models: The CCI Project
     Computer Chips International: Setting the Scene
     The Seaport Facility
§ Spotlight On: The Progressive Logic Department
     A Project Theme Emerges
     Anxiety Amplified: Three "R" Loops
     Loops That Backfire
§ The Search for a Healthy Solution
     In Search of Balancing Loops
     Understanding Our Own Role: Internal Factors at the PLD
§ A Systemic Makeover
     Strengthening "Good" Loops
     Weakening "Bad" Loops
     Adding and Deleting Links
§ Looking Ahead

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Janet Gould served as director of the Organizations as Learning Systems project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Organizational Learning. She also co-founded Gould-Kreutzer Associates, Inc. (GKA, Inc.), a consulting company specializing in systems thinking. She has helped multinational organizations to develop a systems perspective for improved communications and decision-making. Her research has included topics such as system dynamics, learning transfer, and organizational learning.

John Voyer is associate professor of business administration and co-director of the MBA program at the School of Business, University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine. He is also a member of the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, the System Dynamics Society, and the Society for Organizational Learning. His research interests are focused on the interfaces among strategic management, system dynamics, and organizational psychodynamics (particularly anxiety).

David Ford is an associate professor in the system dynamics program at the University of Bergen in Norway and a visiting professor in the School of Management of Technology and Economics at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. He consults to major industrial firms across Scandinavia on the application of system dynamics. His research has focused on the dynamics of organizations, with a special interest in the management of product development.

EXCERPTS

Defense Against Anxiety

Literature abounds on how work groups and organizations try to cope with the destructive feelings of anxiety. According to one theory, some companies resort to a unique form of what is known as the "manic defense." This form of defense combines three psychological tactics—called splitting, projection, and introjection— that individuals often use to fend off anxiety. Splitting happens when we separate the "good" aspects of our lives from the "bad." We then project "bad" qualities onto others and introject "good" qualities into ourselves. This tactic helps us to feel more in control of our panic, because we turn our attention to judging and trying to control others.

An anxious manager, for example, might split good and bad by considering himself all-powerful (he introjects good into himself) while at the same time dismissing subordinates as unworthy (he projects bad onto others). Even worse, a manager in this frame of mind might be compelled to act on these projected feelings, by punishing workers with extra work, impossible schedules, unreachable goals, and so forth. Groups or organizations that are leaderless can also suffer more anxiety than most. In these cases, the people involved often defend themselves against fearful emotions in three ways:

• Dependency. The group stops trying to solve its problems and instead waits for a "messiah" to save them.
• Pairing. Two individuals related to the group (for example, two group members, or one member and an outside consultant) combine to try to oust someone they consider a "bad" member.
• Flight/Fight. Group members blame all the group's problems on an outside cause, or they pretend that no problem exists.

As we will see, these forms of defense turned out to play a key part in the CCI story.

The Role of Mental Models and Systems Thinking

Strategies for coping with anxiety often focus on the behavior of individuals. But in some organizations, anxiety can actually lodge itself in the company's collective mental models of how things work. When this happens, the organization's hierarchical structure becomes a defense mechanism against anxiety.

To understand how this happened at CCI, let's first refamiliarize ourselves with two key disciplines of organizational learning: mental models and systems thinking. Mental models, also known as cognitive maps, are assumptions that we make about how the world works. These assumptions influence what information we choose to notice and remember, and what actions we choose to take.

Mental models are notorious for leading to self-fulfilling prophecies: We see only what we expect to see, and then we act on that information in ways that bring about results that confirm our assumptions. Here's an example of how this works: Jim, an employee of a large company, feels that he is not a very likeable person. According to his mental model, he is unworthy of other people's friendship. Because he believes this about himself, he acts withdrawn and aloof around his coworkers in order to protect himself. His colleagues notice his unapproachable behavior and conclude that Jim is not interested in making friends with them. As a result, they keep their distance. In Jim's view, their behavior confirms his worst suspicion: that he is unlikeable.

Just as individuals have mental models that strongly shape their experiences, so do organizations. As researchers explain it, work groups can develop collective mental models when individuals' mental models combine into organizational ones.

How do mental models relate to systems thinking, the other organizational learning discipline so important to our story about CCI? The discipline of systems thinking helps us to see how the many elements of an organization are connected and interrelated. As Peter Senge explained in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Doubleday, 1990), mental models can actually be components of a system, and can be depicted with causal loop diagrams (see "If You're New to Causal Loop Diagrams"). Later in our story, we will learn about the role that CCI's anxiety played in the organization's collective mental model. We will also see how that mental model influenced the company's structure.

Anxiety and Mental Models: The CCI Project

All these thoughts about mental models and systems thinking lead to our central question in exploring the CCI story: "Did anxiety play a role in the organization's mental model?" As you read about CCI, you might also hold some other, secondary questions in the back of your mind: "Where was CCI's organizational anxiety coming from?" and "How did the anxiety-fueling system created by CCI employees influence their actions?" And last, "In what ways might the CCI team reshape the structures driving their anxiety?"

As the story will reveal, CCI's employees actually created a conceptual system whereby their anxiety drove them to adopt behaviors intended to ease the anxiety. But their decisions backfired: Instead of reducing the anxiety, their behavior only worsened it. Through using causal loop diagrams, the CCI team gained a deeper understanding not only of the dynamics fueling their anxiety problem but also of the many opportunities available to them for addressing the problem systemically.