Attached is a Power Point I put together for a guest lecture I participated in at Walsh College.

2. Clifford Geertz
“Man is an
animal trapped
in webs of
significance he
himself has spun“
(thinkexist.com,
October 2010).

3. Psychic Webs
 Favored Ways of Thinking
 Organizations and the Unconscious
 Organization and Patriarchal Family
 Organization, Death, & Immortality

4. Psychic Webs (Continued)
 Organization and Anxiety
 Organization and Teddy Bear
 Organization, Shadow, and Archetype

5. Favored Ways of Thinking
 Getting caught up in past excellence
 Blockbuster
 USPS
 Yahoo
 Pathological Organizations
 Enron
 WorldCom
 KMart
 Bernie Madoff

6. Groupthink
 Irving Janis coined the
term groupthink
 Group illusions and
perceptions that are self
sealing
 Charisma
 Invulnerability
 Conformity
 Rationalizing
Ingredients necessary
for groupthink

7. Organizations & the Unconscious
 Everyday life has preoccupations & concerns that lie
beneath conscious awareness
 Tangible actions seen are caused by human psyche
 People are meeting hidden dimensions of themselves
 Psyche and unconscious hold us as psychological
prisoners
 Self Understanding is necessary to overcome this

8. Sigmund Freud
Repressed
Sexuality
Patriarchal
Family
Fear of Death
Anxieties
linked to
Infancy
Collective
Unconscious

9. Frederick Taylor & Scientific
Management
 Control was the preoccupation
 Mastering every aspect of life and business
 Meticulous
 Controlling self through controlling the world
 Productive Neurosis
 Clash of management styles
 Scientific Manager vs. Laissez faire

10. Control of the Body
 Connection between the rise of organizations and
sexual control
 Michel Foucault feels control of the body is needed to
control social, political life
 Correlation? Breakdown of organization to increase in
sexual crimes.

11. Organization and the Patriarchal
Family
 Conceptual prison
 Produces and reproduces organizational structures
with male values
 Intuition, nurture, empathy-downplayed
 Fortitude, courage, heroism valued
 Frustration/Prison lies in having your philosophy
undervalued

12. Organization, Death, & Immortality
Humans push thoughts of
their demise into their
unconscious
Symbolic acts are flights
from our own mortality
Accomplishments,
positions held, legacy are
larger accomplishments
larger than ourselves

13. Quest for Immortality
 Behavior in organizations are better understood by
realizing what we do is our own personal quest for
immortality
 Organizations are:
 Larger than life surviving for generations
 We find meaning in being involved with organizations
 Our roles become our reality

14. Illusions of Control
 Work smarter not harder
 Pretend you are your own CEO no matter your role
 Lets learn to do things better every day
 Be different, don’t do things the same way
 Arrogant, underestimation, over valuing our roles

15. Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms
 Dependency-What do we do? How do we finish this?
If only the country had a leader like Ronald Reagan!
 Pairing-Barack Obama-The candidate
 Fight-flight-Toyota, AT&T, provisioning (internal
departments)
 Scapegoat, persecution stance-Rich Rodriguez

16. Organizations and Teddy Bears
 What objects do we cherish in our organization?
 First roles, jobs
 A decade in time
 Ways to communicate
 Organizations before technology
 Never working on holidays-Past rules, regulations
 Allow people to be in control when making changes

17. Archetypes
 Recurring themes of thoughts and experience that
seem to have universal significance
 Mythology, literature (apocalyptic, demonic, romantic,
tragic)
These themes give people a sense of place in their lives
Gives sense of who you are, where they are

18. Lee Meadows January 2010
“Work, well work can get you
involved in a mess!”

19. Meaning of quote
 Getting caught up in a psychic prison can sap your
energy
 Psychic Prisons can alter daily routines for the worse
 Can create negative group dynamics
 Relevance of self and group can be doubted

20. Adjusting to the Unconscious
 Psychic prison metaphor allows:
 Sensitivity to hidden meanings of every day actions
 Us to learn how to transform unconscious energy into
constructive actions
 Affects group dynamics, leadership, innovation and
change
 Improvement in understanding about how we construct
and interpret our realities

21. Strengths of the psychic prison
metaphor
 Encourages us to challenge basic assumptions about
how we see and experience the world
 Gain insights into the challenges of organizational
innovation and change
 Irrational is put in a new perspective
 Allows integration and to manage competing tensions
 Allows us to become more ethical

22. Limitations to the psychic prison
metaphor
 Lose sight of other factors that play a role in leading
and organizing
 Ignores vested interest and reality of power
 Unconscious can be exploited