A Marriage Made In Hell

I was writing a proposal, sitting in a hotel room with two of my best friends and their young kids waiting for them to get ready to go out, and an analogy struck me about the human side of an organisation versus the mechanistic side. It seemed to work at the time, and when I was sober the next morning, it still looked OK, so here it is.

Imagine that the logistical side of the organisation is the husband in a marriage. The human aspect of an organisation is the wife in the marriage. They’re having problems and can’t seem to work it out. The kids are developing all sorts of issues and are going to run away from home if things don’t change. (Actually, in the case of my friends, they have a great marriage - but go with it...)

The couple has two choices for trying to improve: either they can each go to a separate therapist, or they can go to a marriage guidance counsellor together.

Well, traditionally, the husband in this analogy goes to a special man-therapist (called a business process reengineering consultant), bitches about his wife, and then goes home and does whatever the therapist recommended would be best for his happiness, expecting the wife to adapt and obey without question. He sends his wife a memo declaring what his new rules are, and assumes instant compliance.

Sometimes, the wife goes to her own therapist – called an organisational psychologist – and bitches about her husband to a very sympathetic pair of ears, and then goes home determined not to take any more crap from the husband. Meanwhile, the husband has redesigned the kitchen because he and his therapist concluded that that was the whole problem, and is offended when the wife throws a hissy fit.

He concludes that his clever, cowboy-booted man-therapist was right: the damn woman is just a nightmare, full stop. She, meanwhile, concludes that her sensitive, touchy-feely therapist was right: the guy is an emotionally-retarded hooligan. They label each other as being The Problem in the marriage.

Meanwhile, they barely even have time to argue about it because they’re so busy running around after their increasingly hyperactive and delinquent kids, who by now are developing more problems than Sigmund Freud's bookshelf.

How many consultancies can honestly say that they unite the human and mechanistic sides of an organisation, addressing them equally, giving them equal respect? I haven't found any yet.

Bunch of hooligans.