Marc Maltz, M.B.A., M.A.
Triad Consulting Group, LLC
Edward Martin Walker, Ph.D.
PsychAssociates Group

Well, I never went back, I no longer suffer
from not going back, the sand willed it
and as part wave and part passage,
syllable of salt, water louse.
I, sovereign, slave of the coast
surrendered, chained to my rock.
There is not freedom anymore for us
who are fragments of the mystery,
there is no way out of returning
to oneself, to the stone of oneself,
there are no longer greater stars than the sea.

--(Pablo Neruda [1])

Synopsis

The unforeseeable outcomes of applying Social Dreaming to organizational systems is one characteristic of this open ended process which stirs passions both for and against. This paper invites associations and discussion from listeners by describing a consultation (the re-organization and downsizing) to a major manufacturer of entertainment media, once a family business and now a subsidiary of a large U.S.-based entertainment conglomerate, through the Social Dreaming Matrix which accompanied it.

Overview

This paper introduces a series of births or timelines from which the parallel work of a Social Dreaming Matrix and an Organizational Consultation evolved. It is a guide to the events that became this work and a way of presenting data to the reader/audience so that she/he may join the writers in the process of learning about the application of Social Dreaming to organizational processes. This data is offered here for discussion and learning at the Symposium in order that readers and listeners can participate in what the writers believe is an open-ended process in which the meaning of this body of work will evolve [2].

The evolutions presented here are:

I. The Birth of a Matrix

II. The Evolution of Social Dreaming Technology

III. The History of the Consultation

IV. Significant Events of this Applied Social Dreaming Matrix

V. Learning, Conclusions and Hypotheses

I. Birth of a Matrix

The Social Dreaming Project presented herein was born from work at the William Alanson White Institute’s (WAWI) Program for Organizational Development and Consultation from 1993 through 1995. In March, 1993, the WAWI Program hired and worked with Gordon Lawrence to apply Social Dreaming (Lawrence, 1991 and 1997) technology that he was working with to the Program. The writers met in the second class of this Program in 1991, from which Marc graduated in 1993. This was to be the first of three Matrices that Gordon was contracted for; the others being February, 1994 and 1995. The event, in March, 1993, was Marc’s first experience of a social dreaming matrix. Martin joined this experience the following year (Martin left the Program in 1993 on a Fulbright and graduated from it in 1995).

The writers found the learning derived from Social Dreaming to be immediately useful in their independent work of finding and un-tapping the unconscious of groups. We were also struck by the manner in which dreams yield learning about the organization that enables certain data contained in an individual’s conscious and/or unconscious to be spoken and worked within the organization without the powerful and often negative effects (projective, transferential and countertransferential) experienced in both their group relations and workplace experiences [3].

In September, 1994, we began a conversation about dynamic consultation and Social Dreaming in an e-mail exchange. During this series, Martin offered a dream to which Marc associated. Then, in October, 1994, a study group was formed by the WAWI Program, in which Students, Alumni and Faculty entered into a dialogue about what was learned from the Matrices as a continuing action research project. At Marc’s suggestion, the study group entered into a dreaming matrix in which dreams were shared and associated to in the task of discussion and learning.

A sub-group of this Study Group (the authors and three women) began sharing dreams on-line [4] in November, 1994. During this time, discussions were held between the authors on the challenges inherent in forming Social Dreaming matrices on-line [5]. This led to the observation that dreams and associations are both simultaneous (in their discovery by the individuals in the matrix) and sequential (in the order by which they are made available). A further discussion of these issues can be found in Section V., Learning, Conclusions and Hypotheses. The subgroup formed with the bounded task of learning what could be learned [6] about on-line matrices with a defined membership.

The writer’s participation in the third Matrix in Gordon’s contract with the Program, February, 1995, added to their experience of taking Social Dreaming technology to the workplace as a tool for organizational (dynamic) consultation. The WAWI Study Group continued their work in person and on-line until May, 1995, at which point the group planned to continue to meet on-line. In May, the group recorded a two-session dialogue centered on Gordon’s note to the Program following the February, 1994 Matrix, entitled "Social Dreaming Memoirs of the Future - February, 1994" [7].

During the Summer months, dreams were offered and associated to by the sub-group mentioned above in an on-going e-mail matrix. At this time, Marc was in the second year of a consultation to an organizational system (the entertainment media manufacturer, based in northeast Pennsylvania) in which action research and dynamic understanding of organizational processes were aggressively pursued. A particular member of this organization, a protégé of Marc’s, showed increasing interest in dreaming and associating to dreams. In June, she and Marc informally began sharing dreams and associations to inform their specific work experiences within her system [8]. Increasingly, dreams shared in the Study Group Matrix by Marc were "cc:’d" [9] to this individual. Members of the Study Group had difficulty with this "inclusion" and a discussion ensued as to where the boundary of an on-line matrix began and ended. The specific question raised (which remains) is does an on-line matrix get formed by those it is addressed "To" (as in the "To" of an e-mail) and the subsequent associations and dreams that follow as posted or is it formed by whomever receives the dream?

In September, 1995 (after the Program discontinued the Social Dreaming Study Group for lack of funds), Martin shared a dream on e-mail which Marc experienced as, among other things, a dream about the consultation he was involved with in Pennsylvania and as a consultation to it. Marc asked Martin permission to share the dream with his client. In November, 1995, Marc’s client responded with a powerful association to the dream concerning events transpiring in the consultation. Martin’s dream became a bridge from the earlier Matrices formed in and at the WAWI Program to the Matrix that is discussed in this note. The Matrix was born on-line by the two writers and the client member (CM).

A boundary and role negotiation ensued in which the differentiation of role and task were as follows: the client assumed the role of member of the Matrix and was to share (post) dreams and associations from herself and others in the organization (identifying the source) [10]; Marc took-up the role of member of the Matrix and worked from the place of linking the dreams and associations (including his own) to the consultation; and, Martin managed the boundaries of the Matrix, consulted to it and shared his dreams and associations. The task of the on-line Matrix was to learn about this particular system from dreaming and associating to the dreams that were produced by the members and to consciously inform the parallel consultation.

II. The Evolution of Social Dreaming Technology

Gordon Lawrence has noted that "social dreaming has a long past but a short history" (1997, p. 5). This history dates from both the first matrix carried out at the Tavistock Centre (Lawrence and Daniel, 1982) and from a theoretical shift in which social dreaming differentiated itself from existing psychoanalytic and socio-technical methods. This shift was to reject the need for an analyst, consultant or group "taker" in an interpretive role or a priori theoretical framework in order to make sense of what was to occur in a group experience. From our point of view, this recapitulates the spirit of Wilfred Bion’s Experiences in Groups (1961) from which we draw so many insights of group and organizational dynamics. Although social dreaming has roots in Freudian, Kleinian and Jungian psychoanalysis, much of Lawrence’s inspiration came from the phenomena in Tavistock group relations conferences in which dreams often inform a group as to what is happening on an unconscious level in a manner consistent with similar phenomena described at length by Jacques, Menzies and many others (Lawrence, 1997).

In his review of social dreaming’s long past, Lawrence describes how the social significance of dreams have been noted in all the ancient texts of major civilizations, usually in a religious context . Jacob’s dream of the ladder is a classic example. Anthropologically, accounts range from the Australian Aboriginal view of dreaming as the source of all creation in the here and now, to dreams as prophecy or organizers of human events as in Native American, Malayan Senoi and Kalahari Bushmen cultures.

In nineteenth century Europe, mainstream views of dreaming shared the belief that dreams represented an overall shift in psychic functions. The effects of this shift were characterized by the English neurologist John Jackson as permitting the operation of greater numbers of impulses, while the Frenchman, Pierre Janet, referred to the diminishing of "all higher operations". It was not until the development of Psychoanalysis that two principal precursors of social dreaming came into use: Sigmund Freud’s observation that dreams utilized "residues" of the previous day in order to express intrapsychic conflicts; and, Carl Jung’s reported dreams of Europe being covered with ice around the advent of World War I (implicating wider social and political systems in the dream life of individuals).

At the end of his review, Lawrence suggests that the first significant document addressing social dreaming phenomenon was Charlotte Beradt’s "The Third Reich of Dreams" (1968). The reasons for this go beyond its being a remarkable compilation of dreams collected by primary medical doctors during the Nazi catastrophe in Germany [11]. Beradt made the crucial discovery that dreams themselves can provide the links between dream elements and reality, unmediated by any interpretative functions -- independent of an analyst or any other person in an authority role. It was this observation that allowed Lawrence (1997) to comment that he was "looking for a whole that [he] had no idea would be like" (p. 8) when he brought social dreaming into being. This to say that social dreaming can only be fully expressed by social dreaming matrices themselves and that these are sufficient for understanding social dreaming.

Finally, Gordon Lawrence convened the first social dreaming matrix the same year that Martin chartered an organization at New York University called Inner Media whose mission statement declared that individual’s could use a combination of group (Cohn, 1969) and meditative methodologies to develop their own unique ways of "seeing things as they actually are in the here and now". The choice of the word media was derived from its tripartite definition as the middle, a nurturing field of organismic development or that through which information is carried to our senses.

Following the 1982 matrix, Lawrence further refined social dreaming technology and saw to the development of matrices all over the world (1991, etc.). Further, Tom Michael (1993) discusses how "the politics of revelation" (Lawrence, 1991) can interact with the formation of organization cultures in institutions and suggests that dreams act as parables which challenge existing organizational cultures by creating the possibility of a totally new one. Finally, the second of the WAWI matrices was focused on applying social dreaming as a consultation to the Program. For Martin, this experience evoked a powerful feeling of finding a "home" methodology in the myriad of organizational development techniques and validation for harnessing the unconscious directly in organizational interventions. For Marc, it signalled the beginning of folding his existing work with analog versus digital technologies into socio-technical frameworks, as predicted by Mcluhan in The Medium is the Massage (1967).

III. The History of the Consultation

The Client Context and Organization Background

The organization in which this consultation and Matrix took place, began as a family business in 1950 that specialized in the manufacturing of 7" 45 RPM records. The founder was the son of a man who worked for and then managed the original subcontractor to Thomas Edison’s record manufacturing business. The founder’s son (third generation) bought the business from his father in 1960. The company experienced significant expansion with the growth and popularity of long playing (LP) records and cassettes.

In 1977, Elvis Presley’s death caused a major shortfall in worldwide LP and cassette manufacturing capacity. This Company had difficulty finding investment to fund its expansion to meet demand. In addition, record labels became frantic about their inability to serve the surge in the market. The Music Division (Parent) of an entertainment media company purchased this Company in 1978 but left it un-integrated; the Company’s name was not changed to reflect the Parent until 1996 and the Parent rarely intervened in the management of the Firm. With the capital resources available to them from the Parent and the onset of the next generation of media boom experienced in Compact Discs, this Company grew to become one of the largest providers of entertainment media [12] in the world.

The Evolution of a Consultation

As the birth of this Matrix is firmly planted in the work done at the WAWI Program, so is this consultation rooted in events emanating from there. Marc and a colleague met [13] on the dais of a presentation to the Organizational Development Network of Greater New York on approaches to thinking about and developing "self-managed" teams. The two decided to collaborate on the theme of how individuals resist change in organizations. From this collaboration emerged a series of public and private (internal to specific organizations) workshops on "Managing Resistance to Change" (Basler and Maltz, 1997) (MRC) which uses open systems, psychoanalytic and group relations theory to expand personal competencies in managing oneself in role. The first of these two-day workshops was public, held in October, 1993. Attending this workshop were four senior managers from the client organization, three men and a woman, whose roles were continuous improvement (one male and the female), training and digital process engineering. Their experience in the workshop was dramatic.

The client subsequently sent four members to each of the next two public workshops (November and December, 1993) -- an indication to the consultants that some dilemma existed on a relatively broad basis within the client system. The consultants worked with the two continuous improvement and the training managers to bring the MRC workshop in-house. From March through December, 1994, ten workshops were held within the system and conducted by the consulting team of Marc and two other consultants. CM participated in the May 20, 1994, workshop.

In June, 1994, a management consulting firm (MC) with expertise in the redesign of manufacturing processes, was hired by the Parent Company to analyze the Music Division’s "supply chain" -- the Company’s work processes through which product was made, distributed and sold. During the late summer and fall workshops, the anxiety and tension in the MRC workshops became extremely heightened and the system experienced an increasing amount of violence [14]. The workshops were experienced by the Executives of the firm as increasingly risky and "doing" something to the Company.

In October, 1994, a large team of MC consultants arrived at the organization’s two plants to begin the work of studying and then re-engineering the workplace. The presenting problem of this consultation was cost. The Company was producing product at about 20¢ more than the competition and experienced numerous delays and disruptions in its delivery to its three main customers, the largest of which was the Parent’s distribution company.

MC uncovered waste in the Company’s manufacturing processes and recommended a significant change in the way the shop floor was organized and staffed, inventory was managed, and so on. The production process was to be re-engineered from one of "batch-line" manufacturing, in which work was segmented into separate tasks on separate machines in different parts (physical and departmental) of the organization, to one of "cellular" manufacturing, in which work processes and tasks are integrated into a unit (a "cell") in a single place in the plant with a specific, role-assigned team of workers. The effort was to produce a streamlined process, lower cost, improved customer response time and service, and preserve jobs [15].

On November 30, 1994, the Consulting Team was asked to meet with the Firm’s "Quality Council" (a sub-group of the Executive Team [16] to discuss MRC and what was being learned. This was at the same time that some of the violent events in the system were uncovered in the data and work of the workshop. This meeting led to the Executive Team’s attendance at a special session of MRC (December, 1994). During another MRC session later that month, the VP of Human Resources decided to stop the MRC work and end the consultation. A combination of the connection formed between the Consulting Team and the CEO during the special MRC session and the outcry from the work-force for the MRC workshops to continue, led to the Consulting Team’s being rehired in February, 1995. It was clear from these events that authority was neither delegated, clearly understood or aligned in any productive manner.

A Consultation Emerges

Being fired and then rehired offered an opportunity to expand the work of the consultation and put to use the systemic learning of the MRC workshops and the consultants’ experiences. Marc renegotiated the contract and began consulting to the system in addition to the MRC work [17]. The other two consultants on the team primarily worked on MRC, which became an internally facilitated workshop. As part of the training and processing practiced in the "new" MRC, the facilitators (internal and external) began sharing and associating to their dreams on a daily basis. This dream work helped to unearth and process anxieties and dilemmas held by the facilitators and vastly improved their ability to work as containers for the workshop.

In March, 1995, Marc and the lead consultant from MC met and found the consultations to be compatible and helpful to one another. Between May and June, 1995, the MC consultant and Marc met periodically and Marc began consulting to organizational issues being raised by MC’s restructuring intervention. In July, 1995, the CEO asked to meet with both Marc and the MC consultant. He was extremely frustrated by his inability to get his executive team to join in the task of changing the system or work with MC in a constructive way; he sought help on how to work with the intense resistance he experienced. From this conversation, a change-management team was formed that included the CEO, Marc, the MC consultant, the General Counsel/Vice President of the Parent and an additional Vice President from the Parent who was responsible for ensuring that product orders from the Music Division were properly placed and fulfilled (essentially, the key "client contact").

This "Leadership Team" worked to define specific expectations of the organization’s change, a methodology for that change and a design for change leadership. A "Transition Plan" for the organization, which detailed the technical, organizational and managerial issues and key recommendations for how the system could complete its change-over to cellular manufacturing, was agreed to in September and published to the Leadership Team in early October.

Concurrent with this process, CM and Marc began another consulting intervention to help clarify the nature of role among "cell" team members, management and support functions [18].

Creating a Transition Space

In October, 1995, the work outlined in the Transition Plan began. The three key issues of this plan (all having to do with the enormity of the task of restructuring this work-system) were that the:

1. Current Executive Team could not manage the transition -- a new team had to be formed. A process was designed by Marc for the assessment and selection of a new Executive Team. Four managers would be selected in this process, one to manage each part of the change effort (see Number 2, next).

2. Organization-as-a-whole could not manage the change to cellular manufacturing while maintaining the current business. Parts of the organization needed to be bounded and focused on their specific set of challenges. One part of the system had to focus on the current batch operations (the "Old"), another on implementing cellular operations (the "New") and a third to help the batch transition to cellular ("Transition") [19]. In addition, finance and administration would still be required as a central resource.

3. CEO could not manage this change effort alone; the Leadership Team became the operating management committee for the system’s change.

On October 21, 1995, an assessment of the organization’s current executives was initiated. This was the first action that symbolized a permanent change to the existing management (though the formation of the Leadership Team sent a powerful prior signal to the organization). At this time, the Executive Vice President was removed and sent on special assignment to the Parent and the Vice President of Human Resources was dismissed. A new Management Team was selected that included: one of the longest-in-position managers from the prior Executive Team (the most knowledgeable about the batch manufacturing process) who was assigned the management of the "Old"; the newest member of the prior Executive Team (the most qualified and knowledgeable about cellular manufacturing) who assumed responsibility for the "New"; the current Vice President of Finance (a relatively new member of the prior Executive Team who had to be coerced into participating in the assessment) remained in his role and assumed all human resource and administrative responsibilities; and, the General Counsel from the Parent assumed the responsibility of the "Transition" Team. [Of the original thirteen members of the Executive Team, only four remained in the system.]

In November, 1995, Marc was joined by another colleague (James Krantz) to specifically work with the Transition Team. Additionally, Martin was hired by Marc to "shadow" him during a day of consultation in the system in order to help Marc work with his conscious and unconscious processes. November was also the month in which the Matrix began, the events of which are described in Section IV., Significant Events of this Applied Social Dreaming Matrix.

Consulting to Change

In December, 1995, the CEO negotiated his retirement with the Parent; he would stay on in various roles for another six months. In January, the CEO’s retirement was announced to the Leadership Team. The CEO’s replacement was the current President and CEO [20] of the Parent’s printing business, who would add manufacturing to his responsibilities. In addition, the retiring CEO’s son, who was managing the development of new technology for the Parent, was brought back into the organization and added to the new Management Team. In February, 1996, the new Management Team assumed full responsibility for the organization and its change to cellular manufacturing. The two Vice Presidents from the Parent and the retiring CEO remained as advisors. Marc began consulting to the new Management Team with the help of Jim.

In February, the Management Team began grappling with the issues in front of them and soon discovered that costs in the system remained significantly above that of the competition. Decreasing the number of employees became an obvious and necessary part of the strategy for change [21].

On March 14, 1996, the first ever voluntary retirement program was announced by the Management Team. The goal was to "retire" approximately 100 employees who had extensive length of service (some back to 1960). The program was a success.

The manufacturing consultation was handed over to the organization in April, 1996, by MC, completing their assignment. Less than one-third of the organization had transitioned to cellular manufacturing at this time but the "experiment" of cellular operations seemed to prove sound and plans were finalized to aggressively move the rest of the organization by January, 1997. A softening in the music industry, changes in the Parent’s Parent and capital expense/investment issues were part of this decision.

In June, 1996, a number of significant events occurred, including: the former CEO officially retired; the organization’s name was changed to that of the Parent; a new internal operating structure which focused on cellular manufacturing plants each responsible for a different customer segment was developed; and the decision was made to reduce the number of employees by about 20%. In addition, TRIAD CONSULTING GROUP LLC was formed by Marc and Jim.

From June 26 through July 2, 1996, the system reduced the work-force by approximately 400 people. This downsizing was consulted to by TRIAD [22].

In early July, a member of the Management Team accused Marc of breaking confidentiality about what was discussed in the Management Team with members of the organization and specifically with CM [23]. TRIAD decided to discontinue its participation in the Matrix as part of the process of "securing" the boundary around the work being done with the Management Team. On July 14, 1996, the Matrix was ended.

TRIAD’s contract with and, thus, consultancy to this system ended in January, 1997.

IV. Significant Events of this Applied Social Dreaming Matrix

The Matrix

As mentioned above, the dream Matrix began in November, 1995. Until its end in July, 1996, it accumulated 122 dreams and associations from the client system, the external consultant (Marc) and the dream consultant (Martin). The 48 contributions made by CM included dreams by five other members of the client system (four female and one male), suggesting that the matrix was "pulling" dreams from different parts of the client system. Marc and Martin made 36 and 38 contributions, respectively. Chart 1, Dream and Association Submissions, shows the frequency of contributions by month over the length of the total consultation to this system (again, the consultation began in October, 1993 and ended in January, 1997). As can be seen, the life cycle of the matrix can be divided into a beginning, middle and end, each lasting three months (see Chart 2, Frequency of Dreams). In order to most efficiently report on the content of the matrix, we will describe each of these distinct phases and provide examples of dreams which contain key issues that correspond to each phase. We invite the reader to refer to the consulting events from The History of the Consultation that correspond to the time period of this Matrix.

Chart 1: Number of Participant Dream and Association Submissions by Month Over the History of the Consultation

Chart 2: Frequency of Dreams

The Beginning

As was noted earlier, this on-line Matrix grew out of a dream and an association to that dream. The dream occurred to Martin in September, 1995, and was shared on-line with CM by Marc. The dream was about a scientific presentation in New York by a psychoanalytic organizational consultant, which had been proclaimed as the "be all to end all" paper for laying out a unified field theory for socio-analysis by introducing a "third force" between sentience and task. Subsequent to the presentation, which was attended by the entire socio-analytic community, Martin and Marc accompanied the presenter to his apartment to get ready for a reception to recognize this great achievement. At the apartment, the presenter was accosted by his enormous wife who furiously lambasted him on being a useless, ineffectual person, especially around the house. Listening to her made Martin, Marc and the presenter late for the reception. The dream ends with the three of them taking a subway to the wrong subway station, very far away.

CM’s desire to share her associations to this dream grew out of the parallels between it and her recent experiences at work around Marc’s consultation. She noted that this dream paralleled her fantasy of accompanying a co-worker to New York to meet a new organizational consultant to the client system, about whom she had a "preconceived respect", to learn about Action Research. The dream’s presenter being "put down" by his wife reminded her of a conversation with Marc in the Company cafeteria in which she mentioned her desire to go and subsequently feeling that Marc expressed: "I doubt you’ll have anything to contribute." The wife’s telling the presenter how "ineffectual" he was, symbolizes how much Marc’s statement hurt her. She equated it to the "punitive maleness" present in her work system. The dream’s end, with the three coming out of the wrong subway station far away, was to her like having "my ass parked in …PA, while MA (male head of Continuous Improvement who was the original champion of MRC, appointed as one of the first cellular Plant Managers) is in N.Y.C. meeting and learning from" this new organizational consultant. This sample of associations, which arose from the dream, illustrates the experience so often noted in the Matrix -- dreams that validate, label and freely express feelings which are otherwise unavailable when consulting to a system or, more so, when working as part of a system. It was the strength of this client’s experience, as expressed through the lucidity of her associations, that brought the Matrix into being.

Following these exchanges, the previously mentioned negotiations were carried out between the different parties of the Matrix. The Matrix came into being in November, 1995, with the following dream contributed by CM:

"I was presenting some work I did for a project at a local newspaper where my father works. I don’t know what the project was about but I had brought it to the newspaper in three curved pieces and laid it out for all to see. The pieces fit together as if it were a puzzle. I was explaining that I was not finished with it, as there was a piece still missing. The audience (of which my father was a member) was very pleased with what I had done so far. They told me they would be excited to see the finished product. I gathered my things together as I had to go to another meeting in some other building. As I got in my car, I realized that my key was melting. I hurried to get it into the ignition before it was completely limp. As I turned it, the car started and at the same time an acid like substance began spraying out of my dashboard, through the vents. It was burning my skin so I got out of the car…[which] began rolling backwards. I opened the door and stuck my foot in…[to] put the brake on. I could not take my foot off the brake…[for fear that] the car would hit the red truck behind me. I knew the truck belonged to [a male colleague] and I knew he was just in the same meeting I came from so I just waited there for him. Some of the other men that were at the meeting began to walk by, including my father. They looked and saw what was happening but none stopped to help me. My father just yelled to me that I didn’t need to keep my foot on the brake because the car wasn’t running. But, I knew it was. I was very angry that no one was helping me as I stood there, half in and half out of the car…this is when I woke up."

The parallels in the first part of the dream are to the business (media), the father (CEO) and to the three part model for organizational transition which had just been created by the consultancy. Less obvious is the mention of a missing piece in the three part design, which refers to the then lack of a new management team subsequently formed in the month following this dream.

In addition to the parallels to the structural elements of the system seen above, the dream’s melting key, spraying acid and impending car accident provide images of failure and injury. At the outset of the Matrix, it was unclear as to whether these predict subsequent events in the consultation around the downsizing of the company or simply reflect the visceral experience of being a member of this system. In any case, the juxtaposition of recognition for achievements and impending disaster, which appear in the beginning phase of the Matrix, continue in the second dream and throughout the Matrix. This dream was offered by WA (young female cellular Process Coach):

"…I was alone sleeping in my new house and there was a black snake in each of the two bedrooms. I knew one snake was poisonous and one was not...[and] I tried to be careful when I walked through the doorway. Then I was at an Army training school and MB (young ambitious male with a background in finance, appointed as the second cellular Plant Manager) was the area manager and he wore a red shirt. We were in a classroom sitting at desks…there was a girl behind [me] who was just like me. MB said hello to me but…went to the other girl to ask her opinion on something and I could tell he had a lot [more] respect for her. [Later, walking next to a pond]…I passed WB (middle-aged female Pre-press operator) talking to a man with a beard…standing by an old red truck talking about work…I [then] came upon a deer that was hit by a car,…lying on it’s side,...I could tell it was in a lot of pain and was waiting for someone to help. It started to sit up, it slid out onto the road and another car came along and ran over it’s leg. Then it slid some more and I was afraid it would slide into the pond and drown. I ran over and held it’s head in my arms and there was a lot of blood. I yelled to the man with the beard to help me because drowning like that would be a horrible death. He and WB came over and the man said: ‘You know its going to die, right?’ I said ‘yes but couldn’t we slit it’s throat so it would just go to sleep instead of drowning?’ The man with the beard said he would like to keep the deer’s skin [so] he couldn’t slit its throat because it would ruin it. I said ‘OK’, and to then cut it’s femoral artery. …[After cutting the skin, they] slowly lifted the hip bone out of the skin but the deer didn’t bleed. [So, they]…kept cutting it trying to make it bleed. …the deer…looked at me and seemed a little stronger. Then I saw the missing leg [and where] the empty skin was hanging down with blood on the edges and I got such a sick feeling in my stomach. [I thought] we did this to it’s leg but WHAT IF? What if the deer could be saved?"

All in all, there were eight offerings during the first three months of the Matrix, five of which were dreams and the rest associations. The final dream of this phase was from WC (young jewish female, newest member of the Continuous Improvement staff). It described the dilemma of talking to a friend of hers about going for a Ph.D. in "I/O Psychology". The friend pleaded for her not to because the head of the "I/O program" was a consulting client and she was afraid of losing confidentiality. This particular dream was only associated to by CM and difficult to place in the context of the Matrix until the planning of the presentation for this paper. At that point, we faced a similar conflict because we wanted to invite CM onto the presentation panel, both recognizing her authority in role and better authorizing the task of getting this data out. As of this writing, we have yet to secure the client’s permission to disclose their identity and are unable to invite CM to present with us or participate in any way that might reveal the system’s identity.

The Middle

The middle phase takes place during February, March and April, 1996. This phase is punctuated by an enormous burst of activity (see Charts 1 and 2), consisting of 17 offerings which took place in the two weeks prior to the company’s announcement, March 14th, of its voluntary retirement program; a prelude to substantial layoffs to come. These 17 offerings seemed to contain many of the themes appearing throughout the Matrix. The first of these dreams came to MD (young male, a member of the original cellular design team, now a member of a cell).

"I came out of my house and at the bottom of my porch were ME (Vice President of the ‘Old’, residual batch operations) and MF (young male manager of batch operations, reporting to ME). They were looking at the cells and asking me how the other Area was doing. I went around to the back of my house which is where the other Area was supposed to be. However, when I got there I looked down at the cells and realized they were only little sprouts…[that] had not been growing. I looked closer at them to see if I could see any numbers on them but I could not. I ran into my house and pulled out some binders to see if I could find the production figures [but took]…a long time and began to panic, thinking that if I can’t give them these figures…I was going to lose my job. By the time I had come back out to the front of the house…, I saw that they were gone. Later that night (still in the dream) I saw the two of them at a bar and they barely said hi to me. I thought I was going to be fired."

Embedded in the technical issues of re-engineering of the manufacturing process presented by this dream are powerful psychological themes which get repeated throughout the Matrix. In this dream, the entire re-engineering process is cast as a drama enacted between the sprouts as a symbol of failed regeneration (the need to "get numbers" to satisfy the bosses) and the fear of being fired. Hence, the images of destruction and persecution heavily outweigh the images of regeneration and growth. CM describes it as a battle between the batch and cell managers at a time when the batch managers were regrouping within the company and "resurfacing" to recoup some of their lost influence. In fact, the batch Vice President (ME) whose future career had been in question during this transformation, later became the Vice President of the catalog and mail order divisions created out of the transition itself.

In the dream which followed, Marc was in an office which had a front door and no walls, as if on a cloud where only the floor was solid. He was verbally sparring with a "brash young type...dressed in a blue double breasted suit with a white shirt with stripes". This individual was also accompanied by another man who was intimidated by him. Here, the contrast of the New and the Old continues via images of the "dressed down" process consultant in an open space office sparring with the traditionally dressed businessman who is experienced as persecutory by his presumably subordinated associate. As is often the case in Social Dreaming, CM’s associations grew out of the seemingly insignificant fact of the suit’s being blue and the shirt being white. She wrote:

"…this can apply to…the dilemmas of the blue/white collar workers at our plant. Being a ‘blue collar’ worker now has become the safest of positions in the ever changing and increasingly flattening organization. The over-layers of management [are] now facing the realization that they must now take on roles that may have appeared beneath them… The lack of walls…seems to reflect the organization that we are painstakingly trying to create…with boundaries that are…spoken to and clarified. [However,] the cloud-like feeling [reflects] the state that the company is in at present [where]…no one is sure of the ground they stand on."

Simultaneous to Marc’s dream of the blue suited businessman, Martin had a dream in which he arrived at a friend’s house in Chicago that turned out to be empty. A pushcart went by, laden with delicious cakes being peddled by a tall white man with dark hair. Later, two women arrived whispering to each other and one of them had marks on her face that were clearly the result of a beating. She said her boyfriend hit her in the face and went on whispering with her friend about how to pay the peddler, who actually was a gangster hit man, to exact revenge for the beatings that had endured for too long. After they arranged the hit, Martin told them that murder was out of proportion to the beatings and that they would be caught and sent to jail for life. They panicked and ran off to try and reverse the hit but was too late. Meanwhile a male inhabitant of the house arrived and insisted that the hit was perfectly normal.

This dream is followed by an association from Marc that he was the hit man. After this, he offered the following dream:

"I was with friends, two men and a woman. We were going to or by the woman’s home. A vengeful killer is after us (or her). We are frantic, running for places to hide. One of the male friends is killed or shot and wounded seriously. I hide outside underneath stairs which are in the front of the house and then in back. The killer runs by and I go into the house looking for the others. I think the woman is with me or near me…[but] the electricity is off. I find one male friend and we begin our search for others not knowing where the killer is."

CM then associates this dream to the fact that she was told by a colleague that she should stay away from MA because they believed that he was "out to get her".

The following night, Marc reports a dream which he felt should be entitled: "Build the Better Battery" or "The Pizza Method of Battery Making".

"I was building or inventing batteries with mixed components, a little of this and a little of that. At one point I took a little Lithium and a little of something else to develop a battery. Making the batteries included some baking (like pizza). At one point I tested the battery which was in the shape of a long toy train that ran wonderfully around the floor of a mall-like place."

He reported feeling overjoyed at the conclusion of the dream. His first association was to the idea of bomb making and the recent bombing in Israel which took place at a mall. When CM associated to this dream she saw it as representing Marc’s attempts to "build future leaders" within the client system and that the train may be her. By linking together in time, this particular subset of a dream and the three associations, the Matrix has offered its first prediction that Marc’s relationship to CM will become toxic for the client-consultancy system, to the point of causing the demise of the Matrix. Predicting dilemmas which were soon to come, Martin offered a set of associations which included the suggestion that the role, task and authority boundaries of the Matrix should be renegotiated because of "the current manifestations of Jim [Krantz] in this Matrix…and the fact that he is all over it but oddly inaccessible." In fact, one week later the Matrix almost unraveled because CM thought that Martin was on-line with Marc without "cc’ing" her. She threatened to boycott the Matrix. In the subsequent confusion, Martin made the "mistake" of "cc’ing" a note to CM acknowledging personal and confidential information given to him by Marc. These events drove home the fragility of this applied Matrix and led us to learn that we must develop a greater ability to take in the consultations that the Matrix itself offers concerning its own management. This set of associations concluded with an account Martin had heard that day about a Jewish "commando" who was on "staff" at Auschwitz. The commando described how the incoming masses, after being stripped and shorn, begged to be told the "truth" of what was to come of them in the showers and how the staff was told it was essential that the prisoners not be told for fear of creating "panic".

As it turned out, a dream, which had been held back by CM during the above mentioned hiatus, was dreamt the same night as the "making a battery" dream mentioned earlier. In her dream, CM was admitted to a hospital to have a baby. The hospital was a campus with two buildings, one for females and one for males. Marc was in the hospital but women were not allowed in the men’s "dorm" so she went outside hoping he might see her and come out but he didn’t. As she was about to have the baby, a nurse came in her room and, upon hearing of the terrible back pain CM was experiencing, stuck a needle in her back and began drawing a tremendous amount of blood, spilling it into a bucket. CM told the nurse that she would not be able to coagulate if she took any more. After the nurse left, MA came in and tried to have sex with her. She told him to leave and that Marc was going to be visiting her. She had a baby boy but did not get to see him. The phone rang and MG ( a young male, creative computer programmer who was being under utilized by the Company) congratulated her and said he was on his way to visit. Instead, her mother and father showed up with the baby which looked eight months old. Since the nursery had asked, she decided to call him "MI", the name of another young male in the client system who was waiting to be utilized in one of the cellular Plants being developed.

The dream immediately following CM’s was the final one of this burst of activity that led up to the announcement in the Company’s voluntary retirement program and occurred one month before the Company’s first downsizing. This dream was offered by Martin which described his being asked to consult by a female CEO of a client firm he had previously visited with Marc.

"I hesitated to take on this job because I knew Marc was still somewhere in the system but the woman said she needed some work from me right away. After agreeing to do it, I arrived on site to consult to a meeting the CEO was having with a group of middle managers in which she laid out the latest plan for a reorganization which involved getting rid of one or more of the members of the team. The task of the meeting was for the group to decide…who should go. The anxiety in the group skyrocketed…they took a break during which the CEO asked me what she should do next. I lamely suggested a go-around, having no idea what to do, but she said ‘we’ve already tried that’. I then suggested an ‘Agazarian analysis’ of the subgroups, inviting them to self form and each present a separate opinion as to how to proceed [which]…went very well. The CEO was satisfied that the problem had been solved, so I began wondering where Marc was in the system…when I found him, Marc was angry and hurt that I had entered the system without talking to him. After this, I found myself in a taxi going to meet with the CEO but I could not remember her name. The cab driver, who turned out to be one of the middle managers, told me [her name]. When I found Marc again…I told him I had discovered red sinewy globs of matter enclosed in rounded wire cages in different parts of the organization but he was still really upset. His pain and anger put him beyond listening. I massaged his back and discovered that these blobs were also miniaturized bundles of chronic tension all over his body, so I kept working at working them out. At the meeting with the CEO, I suddenly found that her organization had changed to the Department of Juvenile Justice which was in charge of incarcerating adolescents awaiting trial and that she had decided to contract with a community-based hospital, where I…worked, for medical services. Later, when I asked for a description of the medical services…[being] contract[ed] out to my hospital, she said it was to carry out the recently enacted death penalty for the State of New York."

The End

The final phase of the matrix was from May through July, 1996, and consisted of 54 dreams and associations. As noted in The History of the Consultation, the Matrix came to an end because of anxiety in the Management Team that their confidentiality was being compromised. CM had the Matrix’s final dream on July 30, after Marc informed us that he was withdrawing from the Matrix.

"I was making plans to meet MJ (the son of the retired CEO and Vice President of DVD and CD-ROM production), MA, MB, WC and some others for a get together after work. I had to go home first and then found it was my mother’s house. She was in a bedroom cleaning or folding laundry. She turned to me and told me she wants me out of the house and that I couldn’t come back. I slumped down in a chair and began crying hysterically, asking ‘Why can’t you love me?’ She didn’t answer and I got up, still crying, and began to help her clean, thinking this would make her love me. She said nothing and left the room. I was crushed at her lack of response. I looked down at the floor and realized I was in my babies’ room and the rug was pulled up. There was a thick layer of dust on the wood floor and I began to clean it up. Then, I ran down some steps and went outside. I saw MJ coming up a dirt path…he said to me ‘we really needed you there CM, where the hell were you?’ He was angry with me…I told him [that] I had a fight with my mother and [that] I didn’t know where everyone was meeting [and] that…[was] why I was late."

V. Learning, Conclusions and Hypotheses

1. Social dreaming provides powerful confirmation of the role of the unconscious in organizational consultation.

2. The process that develops in response to social dreams contains a tension between the desire to interpret dreams and to associate to them. The former tends to predominate in psychoanalytic communities, while the later seems more spontaneous among others. Interpretation of dreams tends to focus attention more on the individual, while associating to them enables the links between people to become elaborated. A key development during the WAWI Study Group on-line matrix, was the debate about the difference between "interpretation" and "association". It seemed that the group easily moved to interpreting dreams as if in a therapeutic relationship as opposed to associating to the dreams on the organizational or systemic level. This debate and its impact on us was significant in refining our ability to take the technology to the workplace.

3. Developing appropriate boundaries for a Social Dreaming Matrix creates a unique set of dilemmas. Boundaries in organizations usually function between containing anxiety and stifling creativity and communications and, more appropriately, those that typically result from negotiations between task and sentience. Since it is difficult to separate out task and sentience in the functioning of the matrix itself, it does not seem possible to create dream matrices in the absence of boundary negotiations which relate them to a specific task. On the e-mail systems used by the Matrix members, we were able to identify four functional boundaries, "to", "cc", "reply to" and "reply to all". Issues of group size and composition remain to be explored. These are complicated by, among other things, the fact that the boundary of participation in the matrix is not simply maintained by what an individual chooses to do within it but also by what the matrix itself does with both participants and non-participants in the form of dream representations.

4. The matrix often contains disowned aspects of the organization. In this case, the aspects of "feminine authority", which seem to be completely absent from the organizational system, were fully present in the Matrix. This was present in the negotiation to authorize the Matrix on May 29, 1995, "…r.e. the dreamatrix…every time I [Martin] use that word, which arose after you [Marc] began that Matrix, I associate to ‘dominatrix’". The extent to which women in this particular organization could only be heard in its dreams seems significant.

5. Dream matrices may contain the creativity in an organization by institutionalizing the principle that creativity in post-industrial work organizations is expressed precisely within the individual’s experience of NOT fully understanding what is going on.

6. Digital versus analog technologies -- The significance of the "on-line" nature of this consultation remains an interesting and important element that begs analysis, both from the point of view of developing a Social Dreaming Matrix and from the opportunity for learning that arises in the parallel to the client organization’s own experience. The comparison is housed in the terms "analog" and "digital". The matrix held in the room with members present could be seen as an analog process; dreams and associations are communicated and shared in analog form. The matrix held on-line uses a digital process to communicate and share dreams and associations. The parallel to the client organization is in their transformation from an "old, batch-line manufacturing" or analog process to a newer, more responsive "cellular manufacturing" or digital process. This discussion also relates to the "here-and-now" experience of what might be known as an analog matrix versus the "processing-over-time" that occurs in a digital matrix. Our experience suggests that applied matrices need to be continuous (digital).

Another aspect of this discussion points to the possible benefit or, at least, juxtaposition of dreaming and associating in the digital realm -- dreams and associations can be offered as they happen, instead of waiting for the physical analog boundary of the matrix to take place. Often, those participating in this Matrix woke up and entered their dream into the e-mail system, making their dream available to the Matrix, regardless if anyone was reading the transmission on the other end. This reminds us of the process Gordon notes about how in many societies, (i.e., Native American) dreams and their associations are present in the organization and merely "caught" by the dreamer.

7. The need for the role of a matrix consultant became ever more apparent during the course of this work. Someone managing and consulting to the boundaries of a matrix was critical for the matrix to function. The consultant in this role performs much as one does within an organization, creating a safe place to work -- in the case of a matrix, to dream and associate.

8. Persecution as a defense against revelation -- Responses to the knowledge of the Matrix’s existence by others in the client system suggested that they felt that the existence of the Matrix was doing something "toxic" to them.

9. Dream-task definition on the entry boundary as differentiating a technique for carrying it out.

10. The impact of role, task and authority structures was experienced on the ‘flow’ of dreams. Role and task definitions at the outset of a digital dream matrix seem to follow the same principles as in traditional process groups; it fosters the management of boundaries.

11. The experiences of being "nourished", which was felt by Matrix participants, may be how participants allow for the recovery of their sense of self which feels threatened following the de-differentiation that is often experienced in organizational systems. Why is this?

12. Institutionalizing "emptiness" (Armstrong, 1996) -- Could the ancillary structures within the client system, which grew out of the on-line social dreaming matrix (by virtue that information was processing continuously without a conclusion), create a framework in which people are able to tolerate the unknown and bring it into their institutional life?

13. The recording of dreams and associations in a digital, in this case e-mail, matrix provides a written (sequential) history.

14. The writers experienced the Matrix as often consulting to the Matrix.

15. Dreams that occur and remain un-associated to may contain parts of the system that are being defended against.

And so on…

Bibliography

Armstrong, David (1996), "The Recovery of Meaning", Paper prepared for the annual Symposium of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, ‘Organization 2000: Psychoanalytic Perspectives’, New York, June, 1996.

Basler, Frank and Maltz, Marc (1997), "Managing Resistance to Change", Hiam, A. (Ed.), The Portable Conference on Change Management, Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc.

Beradt, Charlotte (1968), "The Third Reich of Dreams", Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

Bion, Wilfred (1961), Experiences in Groups, London: Tavistock Publications Limited.

Cohn, Ruth C. (1969), "From Couch to Circle to Community", Ruitenbeek, H. (Ed.), Group Therapy Today, New York: Atherton Press.

Lawrence, W. Gordon (1997), "Social Dreaming and Everyday Life", To Surprise the Soul: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Groups, Institutions and Society in the Bion-Tavistock Tradition , London: Process Press (Currently in press).

Lawrence, W. Gordon (1991), "Won from the Void and Formless Infinite: Experiences of Social Dreaming", Free Associations, Volume 2, Part 2, #22, pp. 259-294, London: Process Press.

Lawrence, W. Gordon and Daniel, Patricia (1982), "A Venture in Social Dreaming", London: Unpublished Tavistock Document.

Michael, Thomas A. (1993), "Creating New Cultures: The Contribution of Social Dreaming", an unpublished paper delivered at the "Symposium on International Perspectives on Organizations in Times of Turbulence" at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne.

Neruda, Pablo (1986), "The Winter Garden", translated by William O’Daly, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press.

Mcluhan, Marshall (with Fiore, Quentin) (1967), The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, New York: Bantam Books.

Author Biographies

Marc Maltz, M.B.A., M.A., specializes in strategic and organizational development. A group process and systems consultant, he works with individuals and teams to balance the dynamics experienced in the workplace with understanding and achieving team and business objectives.

Prior to developing a consulting practice, Marc held executive positions at AT&T, Westinghouse Electric Company, NYNEX Corporation and Music Mining Co., Inc. He brings nineteen years of experience in sales, marketing, organizational development, operations, finance, strategic and business planning, and systems development to his work.

Marc belongs to The A. K. Rice Institute’s Center for the Study of Groups and Social Systems and New York Center, the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and the Organizational Development Network. He is a graduate of the Organizational Development and Consultation Program (ODCP) at the William Alanson White Institute (WAWI) of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, New York. Marc has a Masters in Business Administration from Pace University, a Masters of Arts in History from Rutgers University and holds post-graduate certificates from MIT’s Executive Program in Technology and The Wharton School’s Executive Program in Finance. He is currently an Adjunct Faculty member of the WAWI ODCP.

Marc is a Managing Partner and founder of TRIAD CONSULTING GROUP LLC.

Edward Martin Walker, Ph.D., a Clinical Psychologist and organizational consultant, grew up in a diplomatic family in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. After being a volunteer in India, running his own business and receiving a Ph.D. from the City University of New York and a Fulbright (Mexico, 1992), he worked as the consultation liaison psychologist at the Health and Hospital Corporation of the City of New York. Martin is a graduate of the Organizational Development and Consultation Program at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. In 1997, the Institute accepted him as a candidate in psychoanalysis.

Besides doing research on cultural identity and intergroup relations, Martin has a long standing interest in applying body-mind principles, continuous learning and indigenous psychologies of the self to leadership and teams. Currently, his clinical work focuses on the final stages of life and medical rehabilitation while his consulting is primarily to parallel processes in organizational life and the application of Social Dreaming to institutions.

Endnotes

1. Adapted by Martin Walker from William O’Daly’s translation of Neruda (1986).

2 The writers believe that the processes described herein are evolving or unfolding both apart and together. They are co-evolving (Armstrong) events that when looked at in total produce wholly new learning.

3. A significant event in this birth was the inclusion of Social Dreaming technology in the "Exploring Global Social Dynamics" conference in Lorne, Australia (August, 1993). The preparation for this conference and for the Program’s participation in it, contributed to the thinking of the authors about ways in which this technology could be used in the workplace.

4. The term "on-line" is used here to denote the utilization of computer generated communications in the form of electronic-mail (e-mail) over the internet through either an internet service provider or an on-line service such as America On-line.

5. At the June, 1994, ISPSO Symposium in Chicago, Marc, Tom Michael and Gordon Lawrence spoke about the progress in applying Social Dreaming to organizational work and to the excitement that lay in the possibilities. During this conversation, Tom shared the existence of an on-line (e-mail) matrix known as Dreamnet. Marc joined Dreamnet during the summer of 1994, though technical difficulties made the process difficult and short-lived (it is unknown to these authors as to the fate of Dreamnet). [Note: Marc’s considerable comfort with "technology" and extensive experience with computer systems and their use led to his early adoption of the technology of communicating over computer networks, such as the Dreamnet experiment.]

6. The existence of this matrix caused some issue within the Social Dreaming Study Group -- it was experienced by some as a splitting, those participating in the e-mail group and those who were not. This was an enactment of the way in which boundaries in an e-mail matrix acted to declare "membership"; an overt and specific process that often remains covert in group process.

7. The text of this discussion is published in a note to the Program on July 13, 1995, entitled "Reflections on Working Note One".

8. Her organizational role, at this time, was as an internal continuous improvement consultant.

9. The process of simultaneously distributing an electronic copy of an e-mail.

10. During the life of the Matrix, five additional members (four female and one male) participated and shared dreams and associations through CM.

11. Beradt’s work mirrors a wider shift from "the couch to the community", to use Ruth Cohen’s phrase describing the imperative of so many of our intellectual ancestors who survived the Nazi Holocaust to take psychoanalysis beyond the dyadic frame to have a direct impact on society.

12. In 1996, the Company produced between 400 and 500 million Compact Discs and today has contributed to the development of what might be the next generation of popular media, the digital video disc or DVD.

13. They actually met earlier when the colleague presented a case on socio-technical interventions to the Program class in which Marc was a member.

14. One female manager reported being attacked and sexually harassed by a subordinate; a male manager was fired for inappropriate, sexually explicit comments during a Company dinner; numerous physical fights erupted on the shop floor; hostile graffiti in the plant increased; talk of forming a union (this was and remains a non-union organization) began; job satisfaction and morale began to dive; and so on. In addition, MC, cellular manufacturing and "sister" organizations within the Parent were all experienced by the organization’s members as disruptive, unnecessary and imposed evils. The organization was very profitable (due to internal subsidies garnered from internal transfer pricing of finished goods) and did not see a compelling reason to change its work processes.

15. By his own admittance, the CEO’s primary task and personal agenda was full employment for the community. He treated the organization as if it were his family. The Company at this point had approximately 3,500 employees and was the largest, non-government employer in their region. In addition, the Company gave between one and two million dollars annually to the community, through financial and service contributions.

16. The Executive Team was made up of eleven Vice Presidents, the Executive Vice President and the President and Chief Executive Officer. This team was experienced as ineffectual by the employees and certain Team members. This Team was consulted to over a period of two years by another team of three consultants (two women and a man) from a well-known organizational consulting firm. Over the year that the MRC Team was in the system, they made numerous attempts to meet with these other consultants but were considered competitive and ignored. The last intervention by the other consulting team was in the Spring, 1995.

17. The recontracting for the MRC workshops included an attempt to bring it in-house and have the consultant team train internal workshop facilitators and the expansion of the workshop to include "large-group/small-group" learning. The redesign achieved a greater throughput of employees (45) and the ability to increase learning by holding three simultaneous workshops with events that brought the whole-group together at specific times. Five workshops of this design were held between May and August, 1995. During this process, the internal trainers were assessed as to their ability to facilitate MRC. Four of the original six "trainees" (three female and one male) were "certified" by the Consultants. CM was one of the internal consultants who was trained and certified in MRC.

In addition to this internal program, the MRC Consultants ran an MRC workshop for 25 members of the MC team.

18. CM and Marc used Responsibility Charting as an intervention to help the system understand the complications of role which led to the realignment of many functions. In addition, some of the unspoken and dynamic projections onto terminology, as well as the difference in how one defined terms were unearthed. For instance, the term "empowerment", which was used extensively by both management and the work-force, did not mean that a cell team was free to decide to change the time boundaries of a shift or even shift breaks (which was attempted). Empowerment was redefined in this system as a set of work-tasks for which one was accountable and responsible. The extent to which one was authorized in these tasks was the sum of her/his role accountability and authority; the cell team’s authority was the result of what was negotiated in these systems-of-tasks with management.

19. This design was drawn from D. Winnicott’s thoughts and writing about the child’s need for a "holding" environment (a containing place that was safe enough) in which she/he could transition from one set of dependency needs to another. This organizational design was meant to produce a "good enough" holding environment for the "Old" and changing parts of the organization as they ‘transitioned’ to the "New".

20. This new CEO was well known to the system and considered by many, in their experience, to be a cause of problems for them both in his apparent lack of support for cellular manufacturing and in his organization’s response as a member of the supply chain. It is unclear as to where these experiences were derived. The new CEO certainly represented much to this organization, in reality, projectively and symbolically, including the "take-over" by the Parent, the end of the "family" business, the end of their "freedom", the first non-region/non-family "boss" (a New Yorker), their ambivalence about the change and the consultation by MC, and so on.

21. There were, essentially, three employees for every one that was required to do the work. This was clearly part of the CEO’s legacy in his attempt to provide employment for the community. The organization’s workforce level at the time of this writing was approximately 2,000 employees (again, there were about 3,500 employees at the beginning of the Consultation).

22. This was experienced as a significant event for Marc in many ways, including his sharing management of the client work, and all that was embedded in it, with his partner.

23. Confidentiality had long been an issue in this system. It seemed that as soon as any decision was made by executives, the organization knew about it. There was a standing joke in the Management Team after significant decisions were made and concern about the effect on the organization was voiced -- "let’s call up J (employed by the original CEO in 1960 and one of the only remaining members of the Firm’s prior Executive Team) and ask him, he probably already knows about it!". It turned out that the accusation was not founded. Information was continually leaked by most of the members of the Management Team to their confidants within the system.