Why Companies Fail - A View From The Bottom
I once asked my therapist (yes, I had one of those; more people should.) what personality traits I should watch for to signal personality disorder. He said, "lack of self awareness and the inability to change". In other words, everyone is at a different stage of emotional growth, but those two things signal that a person can become healthier, even if they are not currently. For example, narcissism is essentially some part of the psyche getting stuck in early childhood developmental stages, often because of trauma between the ages of two and four. But, this isn't a post about personality disorders; it is about organizations and why they fail. Organizations, like any complex organism, have a personality. Oftentimes this follows the personality of someone in leadership or a combination of people. They can be overly cautious or reactive or arrogant or a hundred other things. This tends to manifest as patterns that repeat themselves within the organization...