Change Communications

A crisis doesn’t always damage your reputation - responding badly does.

Taken from a tribute to Ed Robertson…

It was over lunch that Ed said something I will never forget. He looked at me and asked what I thought the biggest obstacle to effective communication is. I was stumped. I took a couple of half-witted stabs at his question, then gave up. “I dunno,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders.

“Information,” Ed said. “In one word, the biggest obstacle to effective communication is information.”

I was still stumped.

“How can that be?” I asked. “Isn’t conveying information the purpose of communication in business?”

It is one purpose, he explained, but merely conveying information creates the common misimpression that communication is accomplished. The information may or may not be clear. It may or may not be understood. It may or may not be accepted as real and relevant and complete. Without a conversation, without dialogue, you have no idea whether the information was truly conveyed in a clear, credible, compelling way. Moreover, you have the impression it was, when it may not have been.

It was Ed, if memory serves, who brought to the profession the memorable quote from George Bernard Shaw: “The biggest problem with communication is the illusion it has been accomplished.”

Communication: bringing people together.

In French, I would say “communication, c’est mettre en relation.”

This could be extended to read “bringing people’s understanding and ideas together.”

For me, it is only once people in an organisation can inteact and exchange about their ideas and requirements (ie. communicate) that the organisation can start meeting its strategic objectives.

Source: Gestalt.org

Conventional therapies that direct themselves to the past and to individual history do so under the assumption that if an individual once resolves the issues around a traumatic personal event (usually in infancy or childhood), he will be prepared for all time to deal with the world; for the world is considered a stable order. Today, however, the problem becomes one of discerning where one stands in relationship to a shifting society. Confronted with a pluralistic, multifaceted, changing system, the individual is left to his own devices to find stability. He must do this through an approach that allows him to move dynamically and flexibly with the times while still maintaining some central gyroscope to guide him. He can no longer do this with ideologies, which become obsolete, but must do it with a change theory, whether explicit or implicit. The goal of therapy becomes not so much to develop a good, fixed character but to be able to move with the times while retaining some individual stability.

[...]

The analytic therapist, by contrast, uses devices such as dreams, free associations, transference, and interpretation to achieve insight that, in turn, may lead to change. The behaviorist therapist rewards or punishes behavior in order to modify it. The Gestalt therapist believes in encouraging the patient to enter and become whatever he is experiencing at the moment. He believes with Proust, “To heal a suffering one must experience it to the full.” Change does not take place through a coercive attempt by the individual or by another person to change him, but it does take place if one takes the time and effort to be what he is — to be fully invested in his current positions. By rejecting the role of change agent, we make meaningful and orderly change possible.

[...]

The Gestalt therapist rejects the role of “changer,” for his strategy is to encourage, even insist, that the patient be where and what he is. He believes change does not take place by “trying,” coercion, or persuasion, or by insight, interpretation, or any other such means. Rather, change can occur when the patient abandons, at least for the moment, what he would like to become and attempts to be what he is. The premise is that one must stand in one place in order to have firm footing to move and that it is difficult or impossible to move without that footing.

[...]

I believe that the same change theory outlined here is also applicable to social systems, that orderly change within social systems is in the direction of integration and holism; further, that the social-change agent has as his major function to ‘work with and in an organization so that it can change consistently with the changing dynamic equilibrium both within and outside the organization. This requires that the system become conscious of alienated fragments within and without so it can bring them into the main functional activities by processes similar to identification in the individual. First, there is an awareness within the system that an alienated fragment exists; next that fragment is accepted as a legitimate outgrowth of a functional need that is then explicitly and deliberately mobilized and given power to operate as an explicit force. This, in turn. leads to communication with other subsystems and facilitates an integrated, harmonious development of the whole system.

[...]

The quickest path to growthful change is not via force (our own or someone else’s) but through fully embracing the person we are.

In the Aristotelian [Western] notion of communication the idea of manipulation is central. In the Buddhist model, however, the notions of sharing and mutuality are important. The differences between the two models can be schematically represented as follows:

Aristotelian Model

1. Emphasis on communicator
2. Influence a key notion
3. Focus on control
4. Emphasis on outward process
5. Relationship between communicator and receiver asymmetrical.
6. Stress on intellect

Buddhist Model

1. Emphasis on receiver
2. Understanding a key notion
3. Focus on choice
4. Emphasis on both outward and inward processes
5. Relationship between communication and receiver symmetrical
6. Stress on empathy

Source: Communications Systems for Planning Change - from the Chapter entitled - “A Buddhist Approach to Development - A Sri Lankan Endeavour’ pp 48/49.