Dogmatic About Dysfunction: It is very common to see professionals holding tight to what they believe is

the right approach to solving problems, in the article’s example the consulting firm has very specific
methods about solving customer issues and they hold tight to their beliefs. Changing these practices
requires humility and willingness to learn; from Argyris’ words “double loop (or reflective) learning”
would allow this consulting firm to expand and really engage in a continuous improvement cycle.

Pitcairn Island: The isolation of teams is always detrimental to any organization, at the end we all are “in
the same boat” and the organization thrives or loses as a whole. It is very common to see departments
build their own island as the individuals share common backgrounds, the trap here is to limit the
communication to other departments hence operating in a dysfunctional or non-harmonious way within
the organization. I do believe that departments are needed within an organization as people have
different abilities to solve different problems (eg. an accountant would have difficulty sharing an
engineering responsibility and vice versa) but it is important to understand that at the end we are all
working towards one common goal.

Geek Hazing: We all started at the bottom, and in the bottom we see simple tasks that need to be done,
these simple tasks sometimes are tedious and no one wants to make them, these is where the new
employees come in and are assigned these activities. This is not all bad, the risk is to box the new
employees in just these activities and deny them the opportunity to interact with the rest of the senior
employees that can share their knowledge and benefit from the “fresh eye” of a newly employee that
could solve problems in a new and innovative way if given the chance.

Process Clash: In Argyris’ article, we can see how the group of professionals are entangled in their own
temple of wisdom. They blame the customer for not opening up and willing to change, they blame the
amount of meetings and argue they need more of them, they blame the customer’s internal
communication, etc. These points to self-righteousness, they are correct and everything else around
them is wrong, it is someone else who needs to change.

It is easy to understand why this is happening, the group believes they are too good, and who can blame
them after the success they have achieved. If they are too good and something is not working properly it
must be something outside of them. The self-belief of achievement is holding them back to see
themselves for what they are, imperfect, we all are and we must always be conscious about it. We can’t
learn if we believe we have achieved perfection.
In APs at the management or organizational level many individuals feel powerless to change the
dysfunctions themselves. For those people we try to provide band-aids -- coping strategies. We
maintain, however, that grass-roots movements (change agency) is still effective. On the forum explain a
management-level antipattern you have encountered recently and what you think YOU can do
personally to improve the situation. You are also welcome to draw upon environmental antipatterns as
examples. Then read the post of your classmates and offer suggestions to at least two scenarios. Please
change names and identifying details so that we can protect the guilty.

I am currently living a situation of “leader not manager” that provokes a “headless chicken” effect; this
manager oversimplifies almost all tasks and has a big overall view of where we want to go, but when it
comes to planning he is very vague on specifics. This in turns creates the headless chicken effect on all of
their subordinates as we need to jump from activity to activity and look in some cases unprofessional.
The truth is, by oversimplifying and not understanding the full scope of what he wants it is not possible
for him to allocate the necessary resources. I believe we are in this situation due to an “atlas shrug” as
our organization has excelled the growth that was initially planned and too much is happening at the
same time.

My approach into this situation is to have a conversation with him and try to explain in a very polite and
assertive language that this type of behavior is creating havoc among his group, I need to be careful as I
don’t want to upset him as he is my boss after all.