Transactional Analysis Journal

ISSN: 0362-1537 (Print) 2329-5244 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtaj20

How to “Cure” Organizations

Julian S. Frank Jr.

To cite this article: Julian S. Frank Jr. (1975) How to “Cure” Organizations, Transactional Analysis
Journal, 5:4, 354-358, DOI: 10.1177/036215377500500405
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1177/036215377500500405

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 HOW TO "CURE" ORGANIZATIONS
Julian S. Frank, Jr., Ph.D.
When a TA practitioner moves his
activities from the consulting room to an
organization's conference room, he or she
has the chance to multiply his or her
influence many times over. Depending on
the contracts made with top management,
he or she can significantly change the lives
of ten, 100, 1000 or more employees and
their families - sometimes within hours.
Curing a whole organization instead of
a small group of clients usually requires
some additional techniques, however.
The consultant will often find it useful
to matrix the organization's script so that
he can understand some of what
happened in the past and make more
accurate predictions about what might
happen tomorrow. The founder's organi-
zation script is the protocol and the
palimpsest rewritings have been done by
successive effective, responsible and
psychological leaders as described by
Berne.' The important injunctions and
commandments will usually be found
preserved in the mythology told about the
"old man," the rituals everybody ob-
serves, the pictures and certificates hung
on the walls, and the solemn pronounce-
ments printed in the front of the policy
manual and employee handbook.
Also, it helps to determine which
developmental phase the organization
currently is in. New organizations are in
the pioneering and creative stages and will
pass through several phases on their way
to old-line conservative if they survive
various crises which mark each phase.
This is clearly defined in Greiner. 2
354
The most current information comes
from asking key executives to specify
bilateral contracts between themselves
and the consultant. Most useful are
positive, operational contracts such as
increasing the number of on-time deliv-
eries by a certain amount and date,
responding to all customer complaints
within 24 hours, or identifying the most
promotable managers in three depart-
ments by July 1st. If contracts are ill-
defined or unilateral, they have no more
chance of success with an organization
than with an individual client.
Finally, the TA consultant, by his own
behavior and mien, can begin to establish
an action-oriented, Get-On-With-lt cli-
mate as a counter to the passive-aggres-
sive and passive-dependent attitudes he
finds in various grandious t and discount-
ing 4 maneuvers. Blatant buck-passing,
blame-placing, banality, mediocrity,
timidity and game-playing can tempt the
consultant into attacking them instead of
the underlying script reasons. Some
executives who have been stroked for
playing Victim in "Poor Little Me,"
"Kick Me," "Look How Hard I Try,"
"Stupid," etc., may try to trap the
consultant into playing Persecutor in
front of others. Such behavior quickly
ends the assignment as well as violates
Berne's advice about doing no harrn/'
Generally speaking, organizations need
"curing" when they no longer respond to
the need for change quickly, appropriate-
ly and effectively. This is noted in various
accounting indices such as profit and loss,
Trans. An. J.• 5:4, October 1975

turnover and absenteeism rates, spoilage
and rejects, percentage of market pene-
tration, etc. A consultant usually is called
in after the organization has gotten into
deep trouble in one or more of these areas
and so needs to arrive on the scene armed
with three trusty tools:
A quick, accurate diagnostic technique.
If the consultant tells them what's wrong
at the beginning, he is a Critical Parent
looking for a potentially Rebellious
Child. If he says that he is not sure and
scratches his head, he comes on Child. He
can hook their collective Adult, however,
by asking executives to write down the
answers to three questions (1) What are
the biggest problems around here? (2)
What will it take to solve these problems?
(3) What do you need to get your Job done
better? Putting the responses on a chalk-
board or newsprint for all to see usually
triggers a collaborative effort to agree on
short, medium and long-range goals.
For instance, the top five executives of
one company gave 18 different and only
four similar answers to question 1, did not
agree at all on question 2, and two wrote,
"What's the use?" in response to
question 3.
A group-action theory. The basic TA
toolkit of ego states, transactions, life
positions, stroking patterns, time struc-
turing, rackets, games, scripts, etc., are
individual-oriented. For group change, 1
turn to some principles of information
theory.
Learning proceeds by means of an
information loop which provides feed-
back or knowledge of results (KOR). A
prime function of the Adult is to monitor
reality and evaluate "how am 1 doing?"
Learning cannot occur without accurate,
understandable feedback about the effec-
tiveness of one's efforts (learning to bowl,
ride a bike, drive a car, ask a favor, make
a sale, confront a discount, etc.).
Behavior can be improved if results of
previous efforts are inserted into the
system to guide future efforts. When
Trans. An. J., 5:4, October 1975
HOW TO "CURE" ORGANIZATIONS
satisfactory, behavior becomes automatic
unless feedback reports that more cor-
rection is needed. Effective behavior, i.e.,
accurate cause-and-effect, creates mean-
ing and order. E.L. Thorndike, a pioneer
in feedback-learning, stated in 1931: "As
a man lives and learns, his reaction or
response to the same situation or state of
affairs changes. Whereas the question
'What is the cube-root of sixty-four?'
evoked a response of silent indifference or
'I don't know' or 'What does it mean?', it
later evokes a prompt response of 'Four.'
We may say that a connexion has been
formed between 'cube-root or sixty-four
and four. '" 6 The Adult feedback loop is
diagrammed in figure 1.
Cbtain results
Evaluate results
Continue or
reconsider action
Select action
Exit
detect
problem
Figure 1. Adult computational
feedback loop.
KOR alone is not an effective motivator
of behavior change since it occurs only in
the Adult. Also needed is the Parent loop
with its judgments and commandments
which set goals, and the Child loop which
provides energy through feelings,
emotions and reactions. (See figures 2 and
3.)
Successful management thus may be
defined as a behavior-causing chain as
shown in figure 4.
355
JULIAN S. FRANK, JR., Ph.D.

Judgeresults
Obtain results
Parent
specifies
tasks
.. Adult
provides
KOR
...
Adult Child
measures f-- responds f-
effects to outcomes
Defend or Recall rule
changejudgment
Enter Exit

Searchfor ruIe Parent

re-specifies
tasks
Figure 2. Parent judgmental
feedback loop.
Figure 4. Behavior causing chain.

"I shoulda stayed in bed," or (standing at

Express or repress feeling
Experience resolts
discharge or
changefeeling
Realize feeling
Figure 3. Child emotional feedback loop.
Adult effectiveness in solving problems
and dealing with reality can be contamin-
ated by CP and AC as shown in table 1.
CP contaminations sound like this:
"It'll never work," "But we're not that
kind of company," "We tried it in 1948
and it flopped," "The boss will never go
for it," "It looks too cheap," or "It
looks too expensive."
Common AC contaminations are these:
"Why doesn't anybody ever listen to
me?" "Boy, we're in real trouble now,"
356
the urinal) "This is the first time today I
know what I'm doing."
A dramatic intervention procedure.
Respond
internally Traditional consultant recommendations
often are impotent. Current favorites are
to provide more training, hold perform-
ance and salary reviews, hire extra help,
reorganize the department, change the
whole management system. A powerful
Recognizefeeling Adult idea is to sit down with the
managers and workers involved in the
problem area and jointly produce a score-
card of OK behavior. Each worker keeps
his own score, and management provides
positive reinforcement of praise, recogni-
tion, and rewards for work up to
standard. Results are quickly visible,
improvement is often dramatic, and
personal involvement is high.
Scorecards can be devised for tasks like
returning all customer calls in so-many
minutes, checking alternate shipping
schedules and selecting the cheapest and
fastest, circulating and returning all
memos to sender within 48 hours. In one
large. manufacturing company, the com-
puter was programmed to keep track of
inventories of more than 1,450 items in
stock. Phone clerks would promise
Trans. An. J., 5:4, October 1975
 HOW TO "CURE" ORGANIZATIONS

Adult Contaminations Contaminations

Problem- from from
Solving Critical Adapted
Steps Parent Child

I. Detect Refuse to consider problem Become upset or de-

Problem or discount it. fensive.

2. Select Insist on traditional React impulsively.

Action response.

3. Take Follow established Act inconsistently,

Action procedures. get discouraged.

4. Obtain Refuse to receive or Skim data, jump to

Feedback believe data. conclusions.

5. Evaluate Misread, draw erroneous Take results personally.

Results conclusions.

6. Continue Proceed with previous Give up, switch positions,

or Recon- policies. feel bad.
sider
Action
Table I. Adult problem-solving and contaminations from CP and AC

deliveries to customers based on weekly to live through many corporate crises

print-outs of stocks on hand. But clerks
often neglected to notify the computer
department of sales made although they
claimed they rarely failed to do so. Of
course, reschedules and dissatisfaction
were high. A checklist was made for
showing whether an inventory debit was
attached to each order. Supervisors
posted individual performance records
with free bowling and free meals in the
company cafeteria as prizes. Reschedules
dropped 88 percent in the first week and
have remained low ever since.
"Curing" an organization or a client is
easier to do when the therapist has lived
through many of the crises brought to his
attention. In the consulting room, the TA
therapist need only refer to his own
memories to know how the client feels
and thinks. He may not have the chance
until some decades down the road,
however.
For this reason, I am slowly setting up
realistic simulations of typical organiza-
tion problems for trainees to solve and
hope to report on the results within the
year.
Julian S. Frank, Jr., Ph.D., is a Special
Fields Provisional Teaching Member of
the ITAA working in Greenfield, Illinois.
REFERENCES
I. Berne, E. The Structure and Dynamics of
Organizations and Groups. Grove Press, New
York, 1966, pp. 105-107.
2. Greiner, Larry E. "Evolution and Revolution
as Organizations Grow," Harvard Business
Review, July-August 1972, pp. 37-46.
3. Schiff, A., and Schiff, J. "Passivity," Trans.

Trans. An. J., 5:4, October 1975 357

JULIAN S. FRANK, JR., Ph.D.

An. J., 1:1, January, 1971. Grove Press, New York, 1966, p. 62.
4. Ibid. 6. In Annett, J. Feedback and Human Behavior.
5. Berne, E. Principles of Group Treatment. Penguin Books, 1969, p. 31.

358 Trans. An. J., 5:4, October 1975