What is the board for? The board of directors should own the anxieties of its organisation, says the Tavistock Institute. This is the ideal. In practice, the board will often build group psychological defences that enable it to duck that core responsibility and to spend its time on less important matters. In my view, we all have a tendency to do this in our own individual lives.
What are the anxieties of an organisation? All organisations are characterised by their own set of tensions: between the interest of the staff and the interests of investors; between the interests of the production team and the interests of the sales team; between the culture that favours a European manufacturing base and the financials that favour a shift to China, and so on. Many of these tensions are not essentially resolvable; they can’t be completely solved, one way or another; the board must reach decisions that optimise the way forward at any given time. Its job is to balance the competing interests, to keep watch and to rebalance in the light of changing circumstances. These are the “anxieties”. But it is uncomfortable to own them, to be continually watching and rebalancing; it feels easier to opt for an answer and to sit down, assuming that the problem has gone away. Boards do this frequently and, as a consequence, find later they have a substantial problem. It is better to own the anxiety, live with the discomfort, and continually rebalance, but easier not to.
Similarly, as individuals we have such irresolvable tensions: between our duty to self and to others, for instance; between our desire for pleasure and the imperatives of our health; between temptation and longer term sense. Such tensions are the basis of our anxiety; we should own them by finding an optimum balance, and maintaining that balance as circumstances change. But, like the board of a business, we have a tendency to neglect our core anxieties by dealing with the immediate or distracting; and by leaning one way (overeating) or the other (restrictive control). The anxieties then grow, becoming overwhelming monsters that are hard to manage.
With business boards, I have found the hardest work is to get them: (1) to accept that it is their job to stay uncomfortable in this way; and (2) to identify the specific tensions/anxieties that are and must be the on-going generators of this discomfort. Once these two things are achieved, the board typically needs little help with the business of finding and maintaining the optimum balance.
I suspect that the same is true for each of us individually. Life is easier when we recognise that being grown up means living with the fact that there are no easy answers – that we are always in effect on duty. And it’s better when we identify the tensions that are most important to us, to what we value, and when we recognise our responsibility continually to balance them.
Peter Gelf 