A wise man once said (paraphrasing), you can do anything you want to in life… but you can’t do EVERYTHING you want to in life. The same concept applies to your company or organization.

In the fourth article of the series, A Corporation is a Person, Too, we further discuss the corporate and personal boundary, and how the boundary not only provides an identity for an organization or individual, but can also act as a “shield” to stress.

Recall the previous example used in part three of the series, where McDonald’s could conceivably consider entering the fine-dining market-and how such a pursuit would likely be outside its boundary, and likely result in failure. We asserted McDonald’s “identity crisis” would be symptomatic of a boundary problem. But the boundary also serves as a kind of “shield” against outside stresses (or even internal ones). In a sense, the fact McDonald’s “knows thyself” actually assists in fulfilling its mission. It avoids pursuing activities outside its boundary and focuses on what it knows-and what it can control. This is an important feature necessary to control internal stresses-particularly for individuals within the organization.

Ever felt as if you had too much going on and too much to do? This is likely a boundary problem-demonstrated by an inability to prioritize organizational or personal goals. Sometimes this may be a function of the individual. But often times, it can be a systemic organizational problem.

Ask yourself the following. What is the fastest way to complete a task? This is not a trick question, but has a really simple answer. What is it?

Don’t do it!

On the surface, that answer may seem simplistic. And the natural follow-up question to ask is, “Well, what if it’s important?” Well then do it! Make it a priority, and make a conscious decision to complete it and move forward. But if it’s unimportant (and it probably is unimportant), then make a conscious decision to NOT do it and move forward. Determining whether it’s important or not depends on your organizational or personal identity, i.e. your boundary.

To test if a task or an issue “demanding” your attention is important, consider whether the task or consideration of the issue contributes in a meaningful way to furthering your organizational or personal mission (which as we already know, helps make up our boundary). If it doesn’t contribute to your organizational or personal mission in a meaningful way, then it’s probably not important. And making a decision to NOT do it or to NOT consider the issue further allows you to move forward and eliminate the stress. The key is to STOP wasting time, energy and resources on unimportant matters. You’ll quickly find that the stress seems to “magically” dissolve. And as an additional benefit, with consistent practice of this strategy, you’ll begin to find how unimportant many of the daily tasks we perform in a company (or in our own personal lives) really are. Freeing yourself from performing unimportant tasks will strengthen your boundary, and provide additional resources in terms of time and energy to pursue the truly important tasks. In a sense, you are learning to say NO to yourself. And learning to SAY and HEAR the word “no” (even when we’re just saying “no” to ourselves) will further strengthen your company and personal boundary.

In the McDonald’s example, not wasting time pursuing fine-dining options helps preserve resources (both financial and “psychological”) to be put to use towards the organizational “mission” that partially defines its boundary. Conversely, an organization that does not have a well defined boundary may waste time and resources constantly chasing the next “great opportunity” that likely resides outside its boundary (if it took the time to consider it). That’s wasted time and effort that will likely cause stress far beyond any return it will gain. If it focused solely on the relevant stresses it would likely achieve a level of “organizational mastery” far beyond what it thought was possible.

Of course many outside stresses are beyond your control. Fortunately, if you’ve taken the time to build your organizational and personal boundary, even those don’t have to cause a “loss” in “resources”. But if you’re “suffering” organizationally or personally over things outside your immediate control, it is a sign of having “holes” in the boundary. Conversely (or in addition to), it may be a sign of organizational lack in the three defined areas that make up the FULFILLMENT part of DURABLE FULFILLMENT. Fortunately, MindOS provides a road map to diagnose and ultimately cure those problems, too. For more on how to “patch up” your organizational or personal boundary holes, and evaluate your organizational needs that may be preventing you or your organization from reaching DURABLE FULFILLMENT, click on the link below and visit our website.

Even with a strong boundary, it’s still possible stress may “penetrate” the boundary. In the next article in the series, we will discuss one of the three internal resources every organization and individual must master to achieve the SUCCESS component in the equation that leads to DURABLE FULFILLMENT.

Jeffrey Suchocki is founder of Corporate Psyche, LLC. To find out more about how to “psychoanalyze” your corporation go to http://www.corporatepsyche.com/. Whether you are an executive looking to “diagnose” what ails your company, or an employee trying to identify the kind of company you want to work for, Corporate Psyche can help.

In the current state of the economy, the first tact often taken by corporations as they move into survival mode is to start slashing payroll. While lauded by Wall Street, “downsizing” carries with it significant challenges to the corporation and to the individuals “left behind.”

The backlash a company faces can be felt on numerous fronts-from public relations problems to bitterness and morale problems felt by surviving employees. And it’s not as if the work performed by those now unemployed simply “goes away”. Surviving employees are often expected to continue to perform their own roles while picking up the roles of the eliminated positions-generally without a corresponding increase in compensation or “status” within the organization. This can create an incredible amount of additional stress for surviving employees and create a morale problem that can last for many months or even years down the road.

In the third article of our series discussing why A Corporation is a Person, Too, we will examine what an organization and the individuals within the organization can do to combat all types of stresses-both internal and external. We take no position on the relative costs and benefits of downsizing, but rather seek to illuminate how we as individuals within an organization-and even the organizational entity itself-can seek to combat such stress.

In the MindOS system, by Dr. Paul Dobransky, there are four primary components to DURABLE FULFILLMENT - the ultimate goal of any individual or organization. The component most often ignored and least understood, but perhaps most important, is the concept of the boundary. Why is the boundary so important? Because it is the part that creates the “durable” component of DURABLE FULFILLMENT. And as we will learn, it is the boundary that provides the first defense against outside stress-whether to our organization or to us personally-and also helps preserve our personal and organizational resources.

Have you ever experienced a level of fulfillment in your personal life or in your business that you know or believe is only temporary? Ever noticed how it sometimes can actually cause stress in itself as you may even “worry” about how long the good times will last? Have you ever asked yourself why even “good things” that happen to us seem to cause more stress? How about external stress resulting from bad economic times or increased competition? All of these stresses can be mastered by understanding the concept of the personal or corporate boundary.

What is the corporate or personal boundary?

In simple terms, the corporate or personal boundary is the “tank” that houses the resources we possess that allow us to reach and maintain FULFILLMENT. Additionally, it is what gives an individual or company its identity. It is the company mission statement, the products it sells, the internal rules and procedures, the corporate culture, and much more. In simple terms, it is the “territory” that a company or individual controls. Why does the corporate boundary define a company’s identity? Well if McDonald’s announced tomorrow that it was opening up a chain of upper-end “fine-dining” restaurants (i.e., it is trying to increase its “territory”) what would you think the likely reaction would be? An instant success? Or a likely failure?

Synonymous to the concept of the corporate boundary is the personal boundary. If I tell you I like pizza, dislike fish, love rock and roll, dislike country, love football, and dislike baseball-this tells you something about me. And in all these cases, I’m stating preferences. In other words, I’m building and defining my boundary by stating my preferences.

McDonald’s, like so many durably successful companies, has a well defined Corporate Boundary that provides an identity. If McDonald’s tried to go “outside” its boundary, it would in many ways feel like a “violation” to the consumer. The consumer may even stop going to the “old” McDonald’s. Consultants in marketing may call this type of failed strategy “brand confusion”. But in more simple terms, it’s just a blurring of the corporate boundary. McDonald’s competing in the fine-dining space would likely be contrary to its mission statement, would alter its product mix, and likely cause a significant change to its corporate culture-all with potentially disastrous consequences. (This is not to say that an individual or organization should never seek to expand its boundary. But it must do so with a realization of the internal resources it possesses and the “deals” the environment is making with it. For more on the personal and corporate boundary and how to expand it, visit us by clicking the link below.)

But the boundary does far more than just provide an identity. In the next article in the series, we will learn how the corporate and personal boundary can serve as a type of “shield” to internal and external stress.

Jeffrey Suchocki is founder of Corporate Psyche, LLC. To find out more about how to “psychoanalyze” your corporation go to http://www.corporatepsyche.com/. Whether you are an executive looking to “diagnose” what ails your company, or an employee trying to identify the kind of company you want to work for, Corporate Psyche can help.

For anyone that has ever worked at a corporation-whether it be a small mom and pop company, or a multi-national conglomerate-it quickly becomes apparent the corporation has a type of “psychology” to it. This is often referred to as the “corporate culture”. Examining corporate culture has become a cottage industry of its own. There are numerous best-selling business books that investigate the reasons for unusual success of certain corporations, and often ascribe the corporate culture as a primary driver of that success. Jim Collins book, “Good to Great”, is but one of many books written about the subject. And while these books will often prescribe various notions of how to develop that type of culture in your own organization, they typically fail to deliver practical and simple explanations of what exactly is going on “behind the scenes”. Sometimes the notions may seem overly simplistic. Other times, not pragmatic. Everyone always thinks “my situation is different”. And the reality is, that may very well be true… or is it?

In the first article in this series, we asserted that A Corporation is a Person, Too. We further claimed that by its very nature of being a “person”, that a corporation has a “psychology”. Intuitively, we know that our psychology impacts just about everything that we do. When our psychology is “good”, we tend to do good, make better decisions, and ultimately feel more “fulfilled”. When our psychology is “bad”, we tend to behave badly, make rash and careless decisions, or perhaps not even make any decisions at all (psychiatrists may identify this as an early symptom of depression). Well if you’ve worked for a corporation before, you’ve likely seen this same pattern of behavior evolve in a corporation. When times are good, revenue is growing, and profits are up, companies are bold and innovative. You may even find them one of the numerous “best companies to work for” lists. The corporate culture is revered by the employees and vigorously defended to “outsiders”. But when times get tough-whether it be from environmental factors (bad economy), or a result of a decision that turned out bad, a company can quickly devolve into a type of “depressive” state. Executives begin deflecting blame, make rash changes, and start radically trying to alter the corporate culture, or even worse, do nothing at all!

Why is doing “nothing” worse than doing something BADLY? Well that’s where we can turn to psychoanalysis to discover why.

In the MindOS system from Dr. Paul Dobransky, we learn that life is defined by “decisions”. In simple terms, life is “irritable”. To measure how “alive” something is, we observe how it responds to its environment. For example, a rock is dead. We know this because a rock-left to its own devices-does NOTHING in response to its environment. A plant (that has not died), on the other hand, will respond to its environment in many innumerable ways. We’ve all seen a plant “bend” towards the light when it may be partially covered in shade. So even a plant “decides” to move “towards the light” in response to its environment (partial shade). So we know that plant is “alive”. In the same way, human beings can measure how “alive” they are by how many decisions they make. In fact, depression is often DEFINED by the total LACK of decisions. A truly depressed person is really “less alive” and has likely reached that point not so much by making BAD decisions (though it may have started that way), but by virtue of making NO decisions at all!

That same principle applies to a corporation. A dying corporation is often times characterized not by management’s poor decisions, but rather management’s inability to make ANY decisions. The corporation is essentially “depressed”. So making BAD decisions, is still BETTER than making NO decisions. Because at least the corporation is still alive and has the potential to recover.

This also explains why changing corporate culture is often a component looked at by executives and managers trying to alter a downward spiral. When a company makes a series of bad decisions (or stops making decisions), a “culture of negativity” can develop. Confidence may sag, employee morale may be destroyed, and a corresponding “talent drain” may begin. Corporate culture is intimately tied to the psychology of individuals within an organization. If an organization develops a culture where employees “expect” failure, it is not hard to envision why everything seems to go bad. A “victim” mentality may even develop. The U.S. Automobile industry in Detroit is but one example. The culture of the industry is so ingrained that when “the wheels came off”, so to speak, the industry was unable to institutionalize needed changes to its structure, because the culture had become so fixed that any change to the way things have been done in the past was nearly impossible. Met with continued resistance to any change (essentially, no decisions are being made), the industry eventually became completely passive-and ultimately so “depressed” that even a massive government bailout may not be able to save it. Ultimately, the industry must make hard DECISIONS. Growth can only occur when decisions are made. Doing nothing is NOT an option!

In the next article, we’ll discuss one of the four PRIMARY parameters borrowed from psychoanalysis and applied to corporations that can assist in definitely assessing a corporation’s “psychological” health. We’ll ultimately see how unusual business and personal success is really “formulaic” in nature.

Jeffrey Suchocki is founder of Corporate Psyche, LLC. To find out more about how to “psychoanalyze” your corporation go to http://www.corporatepsyche.com/. Whether you are an executive looking to “diagnose” what ails your company, or an employee trying to identify the kind of company you want to work for, Corporate Psyche can help.