The Organizational Skill: COMPATHY (Part 6)

The Organizational Skill:

COMPATHY (Part 6)

Contributed by Vardar Cobanoglu on December 22, 2014 in Management & Leadership , Organization, Change, & HR

Note from the Editor: This is the final piece in a series of 6 articles written by the author,

Vardar Çobanoğlu. The full series is a compelling piece on Organizational Behavior,

Human Resources, and Corporate Management. You can read the other parts and find the

author’s other articles here .

* * * *

A New Model for Achieving the Overall Performance and Labor Peace

The “raison d’être” of a Business Enterprise is the Entrepreneur’s CONCEPT or Goals it 1

would like to realize through this entity. Modest Concepts can be achieved via the smallest

Single Proprietorship where the Entrepreneur may even assume the roles and functions of

the Managers and Employees. As Concepts get more ambitious and consequently more

complex in terms of Operations, Organization, Planning, Coordinating, and Control, the

one-man show is not feasible anymore and the Business Enterprise requires additional

People as Partners, Managers, and Employees, each with its own COMPETENCES along

with its Needs/Wants, Resources, Skills/Systems and Behavior.

A new model for achieving the Entrepreneurial Concepts with appropriate Corporate

Competences while ensuring the Overall Performance and maintaining the Labor Peace with

the concerned parties’ respective satisfaction, is the OCTAHEDRAL MANAGEMENT

APPROACH (OMA) 2 where the 4 cardinal points (i.e. Resources=R, Skills/Systems=SS,

Needs/Wants=NW and Behavior=B) are reciprocally shared by the Entrepreneurial (the

Employer), Administrative (the Management) and Performing (the Employees)

Constituents of the Business Enterprise as illustrated by the following prismatic

configuration:

For this approach to function well and maintain its delicate balance, COMPATHY, as the

Reciprocal Recognition of respective Competences through Responsive

Constructive Communication, should be definitely adopted and sincerely practiced by

all parties in the Business Enterprise:

1. If the Employer does not properly recognize its Corporate Needs/Wants, it will not

be able to determine the Concept - related Goals and consequently the Overall

Performance will remain at a standstill in the short-run, but subsequently decline

as outperformed by the Competition. Loyal Managers and Employees might continue

to contribute their best for some time, but then, they might leave in frustration and

desperation. The sub-performers’ greasings or the interest-seekers’ fantasies might

get credit instead of competent Managers’ critical thinking or professional advisors’

recipes, the decline accelerating and potential losses exponentially increasing along

with wishful thinking, incapacity or dishonesty.

2. If the Employer does not recognize the insufficiency or strength of its own Resources

and Skills/Systems,it can not provide for or fully mobilize them, hence it may not

optimize its Goals, and might go through the previous situations, sooner or later.

3. If the Employer does not recognize the excesses or lacks of its own or its Managers’

and Employees’ Behavior, the Labor Peace will deteriorate with gradually

increasing reactions and counter-actions such as Lock-out vs Strike, Suppression and

Aggression of all kinds, or good Managers and Employees will leave, at worst to the

Competition.

4. If the Employer does not recognize or properly communicate its opinion on its

Managers’ and Employees’ Resources and Skills/Systems, it cannot make full use of

their potential and consequently may:

enroll them to unnecessary trainings causing further frustrations, or

force them to resign or simply dismiss them, blaming them for under-

or misperformance, or

reluctantly keep them until finding supposedly better, but more

expensive replacements, or else

overstaff and provoke dangerous intracompany competitions,

all such practices resulting in the deterioration of the Labor Peace as

well as the Overall Performance .

5. If the Employer does not recognize or properly communicate its good intentions

about its Managers’ and/or Employees’ Needs/Wants, willingly or unconsciously, it

might lead them, to the following individual or collective processes:

Disappointment => Reactive Resignation with/out Legal Action,

Affiliated Rationalization => Frustration after Persistence of Non-recognition

=> Demotivation => Inefficiency => Reluctant Resignation or Dismissal,

Over-achievement for Improvements => Desperation after Persistence of

Non-recognition => Disinterest => Unexpected Resignation with/out Legal

Action,

Passive Opposition => Lobbying => Dismissal with/out Legal Action,

Exasperation => Revenge => Abuse => Dismissal with Legal Action,

Distrust => Hostility => Confrontation => Revolt => Strike or Lock-out,

all affecting the Labor Peace as well as the Overall Performance . Hence, two

situations along with the famous Turkish sayings should be avoided: “The Well-fed does not

realize the Hungry’s State!” as well as “Stealing comes from Scarcity, as Impudence from

Plenty!”

6. If the Managers do not recognize the Behavior expected from them in line with their

recognized Resources and Skills/Systems as their intermediate status of

Performance Administration as well as Communication Channel between the

Employer and the Employees, then they might:

get discredited and immediately replaced by a powerful Employer,

be exploited by the Employees up until bypassing them and directly

communicating with an easy-going Employer who might even lose the total

control beyond restitution,

form their oligarchic junta with a strong grip on the Employees against a weak

Employer by Nature (i.e. the Entrepreneur’s Inheritors lacking Vigilance) or

Structure (i.e. Micronized Partnerships).

7. If the Managers do not recognize the Employer’s Behavior and Needs/ Wants by

acting insensitively, they get discredited and immediately replaced. If they do the

same to the Employees, then, depending on the latter’s conditions along with the

Labor Contract, Law and Market, they might:

pursue their endeavor up until the Overall Performance is affected , or

realize that the attrition rate can not be compensated because of the bad

corporate image discouraging new job applications, or else

back down by the Employer’s inevitable intervention as the Employees’

opposition starts deteriorating the Labor Peace .

8. If the Managers do not recognize the insufficiency of the Corporate Resources and

Skills/Systems also including the Employees’, they will be:

blamed for eventual Sub-performances or Failures, because they had not

flashed the proper signals on time, but turned their ventures into an

adventure, or

discredited and immediately dismissed along with their intra- or extra-

company rivals’ relevant criticisms and warnings to the Employer.

Moreover, if they do not recognize the strength of the Corporate Resources and

Skills/Systems also including the Employees’, their own Recognition will suffer either at

their very candidacy or their Mismanagement will be very short-lived.

9. If either or both of the Managers and the Employees misuse or abuse the Employer’s

Competences , not only their undertakings, but their future career might be

penalized by Legal Action.

10. Even if unionized, the Employees’ NON-RECOGNITION ACTS towards either or

both of the Employer’s and the Managers’ Competences at work, are rewarded by

dismissal, because their Recognition is the prerequisite of their very employment.

The adoption and implementation of COMPATHY as the fundamental activator of the

Corporate Culture , first by the Employer, nurtures the Managers’ and then the Employees’

TRUST in OMA . Consequently, the integration of the Psychological Harmony and the

Organizational Reconciliation as COMPATIBILITY is attained. Next, CONSENSUS on

the relative and respective priorities and COMMITMENT in executing the related

Strategies, Plans and Policies as well as fairly sharing their outcomes by the Employer,the

Managers and the Employees altogether, result in the Labor Peace and the Overall

Performance . Finally, the concerned parties’ respective satisfaction evidences the Success

of the model and thus ensures the CONTINUITY of the system.

Similar to its microscale Corporate application, the COMPATHY-driven

OCTAHEDRAL MANAGEMENT APPROACH might equally serve higher scales as

macro/ Sectoral, mega/ National , giga/ Regional and tera/ Global all over the World

in overcoming the associated Psychological, Social, Political and Organizational Conflicts ,

provided that the other 5 C ’s of the Global Culture as Concept, Competences,

Compatibility and Commitment are agreed on in Consensus for ensuring the

CONTINUITY of MANKIND …

Epilogue

Human Behavior is at least as complex as its infrastructure, the Human Body. In spite of the

observations, research, findings, and teachings of sciences as recorded in the written history

of some 12,000 years, we are still far from fully understanding and hence predicting it.

However, the 1977 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry Ilya Prigogine suggests in his auto-

biography: “… In addition, the research I conducted with my friend R. Herman on the

theory of car traffic, gave me confirmation of the supposition that even human behaviour,

with all its complexity, would eventually be susceptible of a mathematical formulation… ” I

am also one of the fervent proponents of the Predictibility of Human Behavior, in spite of its

Complexity, especially under and facing emergencies potentially leading to Crises . With all

my due respect to I. Prigogine’s suggestion that such a formulation could be made as a joint

undertaking of mathematicians and anthropologists, my proposal calls for the inclusion in

the task force of additional contributors as strategists, psychologists, psychiatrists and

economists, as well.

The analytical methodology in trying to understand, explain and predict Human Behavior

might be similar to that proposed by Richard Dawkins , the famous author of “The Blind

Watchmaker”, as “ hierarchical reductionism ” of a biologist as he is, while mine would be

the ” interactive deductionism/inductionism ” of a philosopher, as follows:

Complexities (Unknown) + Dissociative Deduction (noting the interactions and

interrelations between the dissociated parts) => Components (Known) +

Associative Induction (in line with the already noted interactions and interrelations)

=> Composites (Complex, but now Known).

It is already, though limitedly, but soon, it will be definitely possible to achieve conscious,

preplanned, well designed and monitored Derivations, Mutations, Corrections,

Modifications, Amplifications, Innovations and Inventions through Creative Induction

and even the Predictibility of a very complex mechanism like Human Behavior will come

true… But would it be the right thing to do?!? …

As for Mr. Harts and Bings ?… They will always be around, but creating much less

problems under Compathy -driven OMA’ s contributions.

1 IT will be used as the neutral pronoun in order to avoid gender offenses to Whoever is concerned.

2 Copyright 2014, I. Vardar Cobanoglu (STRATMAN-OMA). All rights reserved. No part of this article, on the basis of The

Copyrights 1986-2004, I. Vardar Cobanoglu (STRATMAN) related to the concerned lecture notes, can be used in any form

nor by any means for any purposes without the Author’s written permission.

About Vardar Cobanoglu

Vardar Çobanoğlu specialized in the Practice, Consultancy and Lecturing in Strategic Management

(Crisis, Power, Change, Entre-/Intra-preneurship and SME Management, Foreign Expansion,

International Marketing and Trade Management), in Banking (Commercial and Correspondant Banking

including Loan Syndications), in Business Management (including Contract Negotiations), in Career

Orientation and Education in his professional life of some 40 years. He had his Banking Career with

Citibank Türkiye, Byblos Bank Belgium SA and Credit Lyonnais Türkiye; he also conducted training

programs at major universities, private and public banks, enterprises and institutions (1986-2003); his

experience as a Corporate Executive had been in Pharmaceuticals; in Chemicals, Edible & Essential Oils;

all in Türkiye. He was assigned as one of Türkiye’s experts to IMD Lausanne’s panel entitled “World

Competitiveness Yearbook” (Jan. 1998-Jan. 2005). You can contact Vardar at [email protected] .

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