Managing Leadership^®

Sometimes a theory becomes so powerful that no fact can withstand a collision with it. Indeed, it accumulates such overwhelming attractiveness as a persuasive, explanatory model, that facts wandering into its range are simply either absorbed or obliterated. It happens so quickly and completely as to escape detection. A violent end with no witnesses.

In many ways, psychoanalysis is a good example of this phenomenon. It is not necessary for a lay person to pass judgment on one or another therapeutic approach to fully understand how their practitioners explain them.

And, the inevitable exceptional variations aside, psychotherapists are generally unapologetic about the assertion that their approach is untestable. Moreover, its practice cannot really even be codified. To a psychotherapist, a commonly held view is that there are no sicknesses, just patients. Each of them is so unique as to defy categorization into disorders, or to respond to standardized treatment methods.

So, no jointly-held protocols, combined with a conscious effort to avoid blurring the view of the patient by applying distorting labels, leaves you with nothing to test, and no point in testing it. All that remains in this situation is a pure model that grows in internal coherence, self-reinforcing logic, and even elegance over time.

And those who work with it are free to determine what it says about each individual to whom it is applied, according to their personal insight about the model and their personal assessment of the patient’s needs. What’s more, virtually by definition, their conclusions and solutions cannot be practically challenged, not even by their peers – never mind by practitioners of other approaches, the lay public, or certainly by their patients.

Sound familiar? We’re not talking just about leadership, here, or in the posts throughout this week, but also about organizational design. The solutions proposed in these fields very often speak more to the theories adhered to by their proponents than about you, your organization, or the facts on the ground you have to navigate.

What’s more powerful in your work life – the theories you encounter, or the facts?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of unexpected facts swooping in to save you from theory, please see this terrific Fox News piece about how one of those rescued an otherwise doomed diver.

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