Why
do some organisations drive us totally bonkers?
Most of
us can relate to examples of when customer service organisations have
driven us completely bonkers: being passed off to another department
that does not answer your call and drops you into a black hole;
getting through to an Indian call centre that has not a clue how to
address your problem; orders placed and fulfilled incorrectly……the
list is endless.
With the
so-called customer relationship being such a fundamental component to
the success of any business, why do companies behave in such a
maddening way? The answer may well lie in some
interesting new research from psychology. It describes a model
that helps to diagnose the roots of certain common mental health
problems but can also be extended to help us understand some of the
more general dysfunctions that we see within organisations.
The
New Psychology of Caetextia (or Context Blindness)
Recent
psychological research in the UK has come up with a new model for us
to understand better what is going on with people suffering from a
range of mental health conditions such as Asbergers’ syndrome,
Autism and schizophrenia. In summary, these symptoms are best
expressed by the inability of people to switch easily between several
foci of attention – and to track them against the history and
context that relates to them. This new line of research has
been called ‘caetextia’ by the researchers: coming from the two
Latin words caecus, (meaning ‘blind’) and contextus, (meaning
‘context’). Further details can be found
at www.caetextia.com.
It would
appear that organisations can also demonstrate the symptoms of
caetextia (or context-blindness). Organisational
Caetextia (or OC as we will call it from now on) can help us
understand why some organisations exhibit a sort of madness when
dealing with their customers and employees – yet give us a clue as
to why they remain blind to the significant consequences of acting in
such a crazy way.
In cases
of caetextia in individuals, the new research has uncovered two types
of context blindness – and OC can also be observed in two distinct
types of dysfunctional behaviour. Before we look at these two
types, though, it is worth looking in more detail at the part of the
brain that allows us to process context.
Parallel
Processing in the Human Brain
In order
for us to have context, we need to be able to see events from
different points of view. Recent research into how the brain
works has revealed that all mammals have a part of the brain that can
process masses of information at the same time – similar to the new
ways that we configure parallel processing in computers. This
part of the brain developed millions of years ago to guage the risks
associated by processing multiple streams of information and
unconsciously comparing them to previous experiences. This is
something we take for granted today, but millons of years ago it was
the key to any mammal’s survival and conserve energy by not
reacting to every stimulus that came along.
The
research has concluded that this parallel processing part of the
brain can become impaired – and this is particularly prevalent in
people who demonstrate symptoms on the autistic spectrum. In
such cases the brain cannot do the parallel processing necessary to
keep separate streams of attention, switching effortlessly between
each of them to assess their relevance to what is actually happening
in the here-and-now. This form of parallel processing requires the
brain to dissociate: in other words to be able to to review what it
knows about something that it has come across before, whilst also
paying attention to that something in the present. It is no
wonder that such people often suffer from learning difficulties!
Two
types of Organisational Caetextia (OC)
The
research has also uncovered two types of Caetextia: front-of-brain or
straight-line thinking blindness and back-of-brain random association
blindness. What is interesting is that these types of caetextia can
also be applied to organisations and can help us understand why some
organisations are so disconnected.
The
first type can be called “Process OC”. This is where an
organisation processes work in logical straight lines without taking
into account the wider organisational implications of doing so.
This type of OC is fixated in the front of the brain.
Examples might be a call centre agent who does not know which person
or department to hand-off someone to and simply puts them into a
telephone black hole. Another example might be an agent who
says “I am really sorry that this has happened to you, I will get
someone to ring you back” – and they never do.
Organisational
Caetextia of the process type tends to happen lower-down organisatons
(for instance someone in the back-office saying: “that’s not my
job, I only process this type of transaction”. Front
line workers will often be encouraged to adopt to this type of
thinking with phrases such as “You are not paid to think. Just do
what I say”. This dysfunctionality is exacerbated by
outsourcing arrangements where the supplier organisation fulfills its
minimum service level obligations and is very much driven by the
mantra “if it is not in the contract, then I can do it, but it will
cost you more”.
The
second type “Informational OC” tends to be found higher-up in
organisations. This type of OC is based in the back of the brain.
The symptoms of this type of organisational madness is driven by
managers and “leaders” defining a whole world of information they
need to run the business that is of very litle value other than to
those managers holding their jobs down or playing the politics of the
given day. Often the amount of information needed expands
without any understanding on the cost associated with gathering it.
The information is then dressed up as targets to “motivate” those
lower down the organisation to stretch themselves to meet those
targets and get a bonus. Vast parts of the organisation chase
numbers that have no bearing on the reality of what is actually
happening to customers on a day-to-day basis.
In times
of stress, the information will often be used to create random
associations between the data sets, coming to rapid conclusions to
reinforce otherwise illogical assumptions and then finding it rather
difficult to justify their decisions after the event. The whole
saga of justifying Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq is a good
example of this. Organisations also use such pools of
information to get rid of people lower down in the organisation who
are not “conforming”… even if the data bears no resemblence to
reality and the people are doing valuable work with customers.
Conclusion
Successful
organisations use back-brain (information = innovation) with
front-brain (process = delivery) in a combination that drives
continuous improvement. A well-known example of this is Google
who allow each employee to spend 20% of their time on their own
projects.
In less
successful organisations, these two frameworks of OC might be useful
in alerting organisations, managers and employees or service workers
to the madness that is around them – and perhaps give them a
perspective to stop some of the maddening things they are doing at
the moment!
References
These
main ideas in this article first published in an article for the CRM
evaluation centre. Paper can be downloaded by following the
link to their briefings.
