Reframing LO1591

BClemson@aol.com
Sat, 10 Jun 1995 00:32:47 -0400

David Markham wrote: (was "Soul")

"In therapy the changing of a term such as passengers to human frieght,
and prison guards to correction officers or nurses is known as a reframe.
The changing of the term invokes a whole different frame of reference and
psychological set which changes behavior and ways of relating. "

and later said:

"When good people do do bad things they
almost always are part of evil organizations."

I once worked for a brilliant, ethically sensitive man (let's call him
George) who was extremely susceptible to manipulation thru reframing. If
you talked with George about his company as a family, you could easily get
him to make one kind of decision. Ten minutes later, if someone else
talked to him about business as a war, he would countermand the previous
decision. This tendency of George to make a decisive decision out of the
context of the moment became so well known, that several of us began to
try to time our meetings with George -- If you met with him too early,
someone else would later get the decision reversed. The trick was to time
your meeting such that you got the decision you wanted just before some
irrevocable action had to be taken, such as getting a formal document
signed, so you had something to fall back on if George tried to change his
mind.

George was particularly susceptible to manipulation thru reframing, but I
think most of us are influenced when someone reframes the situation for
us. What George seemed to lack was some sort of second order reflection
that asks whether a particular frame (ie., context) is the one that you
want to use for a given situation. Learning to ask the question of whether
or not the given frame is one that we should be operating out of seems to
me to be a critical skill for a learning organization. And perhaps the
best antidote for good people doing evil things when they find them selves
as part of an evil organization.

--
Barry Clemson
Center for Organizational Systems Engineering
Old Dominion University
bclemson@aol.com