Family Business, or Sensible Organization?
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Sandy Pentland and Daniel Olguin Olguin from MIT

Tom McGuire from NLP in Education just sent me the link to this video. It seems that MIT just discovered NLP, (NeuroLinguistic Programing), a discipline created at The University of Santa Cruz more than thirty years ago.

This is an interesting video for a number of reasons. What I always enjoyed about Bandler, Grinder and the early presenters of NLP is that they modeled the behavioral technologies they espoused. Indeed when I teach Family Therapists I always tell students that if they complete all the modules, and do all the homework assignments then I will give them a Foundation Skills Certificate. Why do I do this?

Quite simply because the homework assignments demand behavioral flexibility, the very skills that old-time NLP training demanded. People who are wooden simply don't do the homework and so don't get the certificate. Perhaps not surprisingly the people who do the homework aren't the people who think they know it all anyway but rather people who lack confidence initially but grow with the tasks.

Back to the film, isn't that interviewer wooden? And Sandy Pentland isn't presenting at his best either! Indeed everyone in the film looks most uncomfortable. He makes a good point about his epiphany though, although confuses the issue of 'great minds' with the ability to 'make money'.

You recall he remarks that he was in a room with these multi-millionaires and ultra successful people. It's rare for entrepreneurs to be ultra successful in multiple areas however. Moreover as Manfred Kets De Vries, and others, have noted 'Entrepreneurs can create in their own firms stem from their bias toward action, which makes them respond quickly rather than thoughtfully at times, this tendency can have dire consequences for an organization.

He writes: "Some entrepreneurs - especially those who found it hard to follow orders as employees - have great difficulty taking direction from experts whose help they need in running their own businesses. Most important, many of them have difficulties with authority figures and structured situations, which leads them to conclude that they had better take charge of everything themselves."

I think non-verbal communication IS a form of language. The other day whilst walking through our local market I found myself catching the eye of an elderly farmer, and shaking my head in a special way that I have learned since living in Turkey. He responded by turning the palms of his hands up to the sky.

This interchange may be translated as 'How's it going?' and his response 'We're here by the grace of God'. No one ever taught me this language, I simply have learned it in the way I learned the dialect of my native Dorset.

But there's something else that the MIT gizmo and thesis misses. Some histories are encoded in non verbal patterns. Attend an African dance course, a Kabbalistic rite, or a Peyote moot and you will discover that you already know more than you realize. Long standing business organizations, of course, have a collective culture similar to cults, or tribes. I am unsure that MIT will penetrate this using the technology they are proposing.

Will such people wear an MIT sensor, I wonder?

Have a great week,

Stephen Bray, Principal and Founder,
The Family Business School

Reference: Family Business In The Family Firm, (1996) by Ref: Manfred Kets De Vries, Clinical Professor of Management and Leadership, Raoul de Vitry d'Avaucourt Professor in Human Resource Management INSEAD , France, Thomson Business Press.

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