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Balanceveryard projects > demanding change > balance |
| balance | intervention | examples | material |
| In general, balance involves identifying a set of elements,
and establishing a set of relationships between these elements.
Thus balance is a normative mode of stability, in which the desirable (desired) elements of a system support one another in a "healthy" way. |
An enterprise may be balanced or unbalanced. (This
may apply to an organization, a project, a professional practice, or a
social institution.)
An unbalanced enterprise may be dysfunctional. (An obsessively balanced enterprise may also be dysfunctional.) An intervention may attempt to restore a healthy balance, or may attempt to disrupt an unhealthy balance. |
Chinese Elements
Personality Balance (e.g. Belbin, Myers-Briggs) |
Healthy / Ideal Balance |
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Balance - Healthy or Idealveryard projects > demanding change > balance > healthy / ideal |
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Subjects of Balanceveryard projects > demanding change > balance > subjects |
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Organization | A persistent social institution. |
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Practice | Such as a professional practice or consultancy method. This may sometimes
be represented by an organization, but the practice may be much more widespread.
For example, there is a discursive practice associated with the Tavistock
Institute.
Descriptions of such practices are typically one-sided (unbalanced). They focus on a task structure, or a set of notations, or a set of design principles, or the use of particular knowledge, skills or technology. A balanced practice may require a good combination of stuff. |
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Intervention | The interaction between an organization and an external practice. This intervention itself may or may not possess balance. An unbalanced intervention may have a useful effect, but it may perish before it succeeds. At the extreme is a kamikaze intervention, which is designed to destroy itself. |
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Acts of Balanceveryard projects > demanding change > balance > acts |
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Assessment | Practical approach for assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of each element. Identifying the immediate implications/ consequences/ symptoms. |
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Intervention | Straightforward interventions (for example, supplying or supplementing the missing element) often fail. Instead, we sometimes have to look for strategic or paradoxical interventions, such as reversal. |
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Quotes of Balanceveryard projects > demanding change > balance > quotes |
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“Ponderous and uncertain is that relation between pressure
and resistance which constitutes the balance of power. The arch of peace
is mortised by no iron tenons: the monoliths of which it is composed are
joined by no cement. Impressive in their apparent solidity, these granite
masses lean against each other, thrust resisting hidden thrust. Yet a swarm
of summer bees upon the architrave, a runnel of April water through some
hidden crevice, will cause a millimetre of displacement, will set these
monoliths stirring against each other, unheard, unseen. One night a handful
of dust will patter from the vaulting: the bats will squeak and wheel in
sudden panic: nor can the fragile fingers of man then stay the rush and
rumble of destruction.”
[Harold Nicholson, Public Faces (first published
1932, Penguin edition 1944) pp 111-2]
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Reversalveryard projects > demanding change > balance > reversalveryard projects > patterns of change > reversal |
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Paradoxical
Intervention |
Sometimes the most effective intervention into an unbalanced or overbalanced situation is to push the subject the wrong way. The subject will then mobilize its own strengths to resist this push, resulting in a move in the desired direction. |
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Prescribing
the Symptom |
One of the techniques used exquisitely by the hypnotherapist
Milton
Erikson was ‘prescribing the symptom’. So instead of preventing the
patient doing or thinking X, the therapist may help the patient do or think
X more effectively. For example, if a patient is anorexic or overweight,
the therapist may demand that the anorexic lose even more weight, or the
obese gain even more.
How does this help? Often there are hidden feedback loops that maintain X, and restore X after any intervention designed to reduce X. This is as true of organizations as it is of individual personalities. Prescribing the symptom can have the paradoxical effect of destroying the feedback loop, thus allowing the individual or organization to escape a vicious circle or spiral. The technique also demonstrates that the subject has control over X. |
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Prescribing
the Problem |
A popular creative thinking technique uses reversal, in which the problem is hypothetically inverted for brainstorming purposes. (How could we make this situation worse?) |
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Exaggerating
the Symptom |
During the Second World War, Gregory Bateson established a radio station in the Far East, designed to ‘neutralize’ Japanese propaganda. The station’s policy was simple: listen to the Japanese propaganda, and rebroadcast an exaggerated version, pretending to be a Japanese station. This followed the principle of exaggerating the symptom. They assumed that the genuine Japanese radio stations were probably already going to the limits of plausibility; the fake station would therefore push beyond these limits, thus countering the credibility not only of its own stories but also of those broadcast by the genuine Japanese stations. |
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Polarity
Response |
Some people do the opposite of whatever is suggested to them. This response may be intended to protect them against being influenced by other people, but actually makes it very easy for them to be manipulated. |
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Tips & Pitfallsveryard projects > demanding change > balance > tips & pitfalls |
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