It’s not uncommon to arrive at the moment within a consultation when the client feels confronted by an unavoidable career crisis: leave because s/he can’t see any future staying; or stay because s/he sees no alternative to accepting the limitations being imposed by the larger system. This paper examines three cases, one up close, in which the client had come up against a wall: one providing on-line gambling, one procuring military capabilities, and one providing intensive social care. In each case there existed possible courses of action that could have provided better outcomes and made greater commercial sense, but which were nevertheless judged as beyond the pale by the existing powers. The challenge for the client is to use the crisis while not taking it personally. The paper explores the psychoanalytic basis of the walling off as a systemic defense against innovation and the challenge to leadership in overcoming it.

1. Working beyond the pale:
when doesn’t it become an insurgency?
Philip Boxer BSc MBA PhD
July 10th 2021
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A palisade – a fence of wooden stakes fixed in the ground, forming an enclosure or defense.
To impale – to pierce or transfix with a sharp instrument, such as a wooden stake.
To be ‘beyond the pale’ – to be outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour.

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• Part I - Case Situations (2 slides)
• Breakout sessions (in 2’s or 3’s)
• Cross-check with your sense of a ‘something missing’
• Part II – What was I missing? (6 slides)
• Breakout sessions (in same 2’s or 3’s)
• Discussion
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10 minutes
5 minutes
5 minutes
25 minutes
10 minutes
15 minutes
75 minutes
5 minutes

3. Part I – Case Situations (2 slides)
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4. The Cases
• The palisades and what got placed ‘beyond the pale’:
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Enterprise Boundary Relation Primary Task Accountability-to
Online Gambling Individual Gamblers On-line games Enterprise Owners
Central Government Defence Contractors Supplied Tactical UAV Capability Board
Local Government Care Providers Residential Care LG Budget Holder
Enterprise Beyond the ‘pale’ Who got to pay (+ taxpayer) Who got to benefit
Online Gambling through-life revenue Gamblers & their families The business and media
Central Government Theatre Interoperability Mission failures in Theatre Contractors and Professionals
Local Government Local care ecosystems Individuals & their families Contractors and Professionals
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• Who got to pay and who got to benefit?
• Directly
• Indirectly

5. What to do?
The problems just seem to be too large, and systemic.
• What changes are possible seem dependent on ‘heroic’ models of
change
• By individuals’ leadership
• Through developing social media pressure
• Dependent on whistleblowers’ sacrifices
• There is a systemic ‘something’ being missed, evidenced by the
continuing presence of (for example)
• systemic racism
• institutional corruption
• gender discrimination
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6. Breakout session (in 2’s or 3’s)
What is your sense of there being a systemic ‘something’
missing?
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7. Part II – What was I missing? (6 slides)
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8. Inertia and counter-resistance
• Baked-in thinking
• ‘Scaffolding structures’ and ‘actor networks’,
for example Bion-the-Tank-Commander versus the Establishment
• Dominant ‘framing’ narratives
• Are two-dimensional: ‘as above, so should below be’…
• They repress counter-narratives
• Scapegoating
• Turning a blind eye
• Dismissing and excluding ‘outsiders’
• They can become maladaptive
• Polarising between in-groups & out-groups
• Monothematic Dogmatism
• Stalemate-inducing (our process, not outcomes for them)
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9. How we ‘use’ our roles
we are ‘doubly subjected’ both to the ‘social’ and to the
constant pressure of the drive
• The pressure of the drive is constant
• The drive must not to be conflated with the variability of instinctual need
• The drive is a being-in-relation to an originating loss that is wholly unique and
singular to a lost pre-Caesura
• We libidinally invest ourselves in the way we take up our roles in the ‘social’
• The pleasure principle, the avoidance of unpleasure/production of pleasure, is
modified by the ego via the reality principle in dealing with the ‘social’
• The libidinal relation to the constant pressure is organised in terms of
source/limit, aim and object
• The aim and object always ‘fall short’ in relation to source/limit – a lack/gap
remains
• We ‘use’ our roles in the ‘social’ to provide aims and objects
• We experience the relation to lack/gap as existential anxiety
• The four kinds of generative discourse by which we take up our double
subjection in relation to the pressure of the drive define four dimensions
• ‘Hysteric’ (H), ‘Master’ (M), ‘University’ (U) & ‘Analyst’ (A)
• Each discourse also has a perverse form that enables the individual to be
‘used’ by the organisation while turning a blind eye to the pressure.
• Science (H), Capitalism (M), Masquerade/Politics (U) & Movement (A)
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10. How we are ‘used’ in our roles by the Faustian pact
The complexity stays with the individual while the enterprise turns a
blind eye
• Change cycles through three stages separated by two crises. The crises
provide reasons for delaying entry indefinitely to the next stage.
1. “We can do this”
• Certainty1 here is like the certainty that the sun will rise in the morning.
The crisis is that the situation we are facing is not what we expected:
inconsistent data (H), incomplete understanding (M), unverifiable solutions (U).
2. “We can work this out if we think about it”
• Certainty2 here is derived from the authority behind the framing, ,whether in
the form of an accepted teaching or or reasoning based on given a priori’s.
The crisis is that we are never going to resolve the problem situation
using this framing: it makes resolution undecidable (A).
3. “This is going to demand something more of us personally.”
• Certainty3 qua ‘faith’ here is in the certainty that the process of innovation
will itself yield new understandings and possibilities.
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process
of
innovation
• The Faustian pact: “Give the enterprise what it wants and you can do what
you like, as long as there are no complaints.”
• has the effect of blocking passage to the 3rd stage with its different kind of certainty.

11. These eight discourses describe a Libidinal
Economy of Discourses (LEoD)
the systemic mutually-reinforcing nature of how we ‘use’ and are ‘used’
by organisations
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• Maladaptation arises when the LEoD is allowed to come first while the
world moves on…
The structures of
the organisation
The economy
of discourses
• Change involves changing the alignment between the structures of the
organisation and the LEoD
• This requires a circulation
of discourses
• which needs leadership
that works with certainty3
qua ‘faith’ in those
working at the edges
of the enterprise.
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The structures of
the organisation
Privileging how
we can ‘use’
organisations
Structures
come first
The economy
of discourses
Privileging who we
take ourselves to be in
relation to lack/gap
Economy
comes first
sustainable
behaviors
… and the
organization dies

12. The need for a circulation of discourses
supported by four-dimensional governance that holds the
balance between all eight discourses
• Workgroup basic
assumptions characterize the
different kinds of
relationship between
perverse and generative
discourses:
dependence, pairing, fight-
flight, One-ness (affiliation),
(non-relational) Me-ness
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• Systemic leadership balances vertical relations to constraints and
horizontal relations between know-how and clients’ situations.
• Four-dimensional governance makes this possible
• through preventing relationships between the discourses being silenced
• through structures that support the realisation of all eight

13. Working beyond the pale:
Q: when doesn’t it become an insurgency?
A: when leadership engenders certainty3 through enabling
there to be a circulation of discourses – having ‘faith’ *
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* A capacity to act in relation to the pressure of the drive as if one knows while
knowing that one does not.

14. Breakout session (in same 2’s or 3’s)
What do you think it takes not to lose faith in those working at
the edges of the enterprise?
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15. END
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