Dear Colleagues,
I’d like to share with all of you an interesting article I came across in Monday’s (July 16) Business Section of the New York Times. It’s about a new business book, “Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions”. The book, while cast as a fable ostensibly about a colony of penguins faced with the loss of their habitat, is in fact a serious exploration of how to deal with a drastically changing business environment so it is distinctly applicable to our current challenges.
The star of this tale is a feisty fellow named Fred who mobilizes the colony against the imminent threat of its melting iceberg. Author John Kotter uses this device to demonstrate a number of important business ideas. Here are just a few that are relevant to us. In an early stage Fred puts together a guiding team, acknowledging that the task is too complex for any one penguin. Kotter emphasizes that this team “needs the right kind of membership”. In a later stage the author articulates that it is essential “to empower a broad base of people to take action by removing as many barriers to the implementation of the change vision as possible”. As the author points out this was difficult for Fred to put into place since “making everyone, even the children, feel empowered, was unprecedented in the colony”
There are certainly clear analogs to our situation. I think that the emphasis on the need for a team, not an individual nor a homogeneous group, and the need for wide member empowerment in order to implement change are concepts we should take to heart. I’d also like to emphasize that, like Kotter’s penguins facing a melting iceberg, we too are facing major, secular changes. This isn’t just a gratuitous embracing of change for change’s sake.
The complete article can be accessed by clicking on the address below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/business/media/16penguin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Warren R. Procci
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Relieving our Tensions
Dear Colleagues,
I hope all of you have had a pleasant and restful holiday.
I was reflecting a bit more on the outcome of the Denver meeting when Paul Mosher’s posting about the Barbershop Harmony Society caught my eye. I too saw it as a cautionary tale. I had just come across some words of Einstein’s that seemed relevant to our own organizational dilemmas.
“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we crated them.”
My Denver reflections centered on two related issues that seem to me, if not the crux, at least a major source of our current problems. First is the sense expressed by some BOPS Fellows that even the possibility of an overruling of a BOPS decision related to standards by the Board of Directors (the Executive Council) of our membership organization is unacceptable. Second is the current inextricable intertwining of TA status with the certification process. I believe that if we could at least loosen this tie and open the door for alternate paths to TA status that we could diminish at least some of the concerns of BOPS about being overruled by the Council. (To the best of my knowledge this has never happened in over sixty years with our current governance structures.)
To me these are difficult but definitely solvable problems provided we don’t approach them, per Einstein, with the same attitudes with which we originally framed our governance structures. All of the current contingencies among which are our changing membership patterns, shifting candidate characteristics, declining level of interest in certification, as well as many others, must be included in a major way.
Warren R. Procci
I hope all of you have had a pleasant and restful holiday.
I was reflecting a bit more on the outcome of the Denver meeting when Paul Mosher’s posting about the Barbershop Harmony Society caught my eye. I too saw it as a cautionary tale. I had just come across some words of Einstein’s that seemed relevant to our own organizational dilemmas.
“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we crated them.”
My Denver reflections centered on two related issues that seem to me, if not the crux, at least a major source of our current problems. First is the sense expressed by some BOPS Fellows that even the possibility of an overruling of a BOPS decision related to standards by the Board of Directors (the Executive Council) of our membership organization is unacceptable. Second is the current inextricable intertwining of TA status with the certification process. I believe that if we could at least loosen this tie and open the door for alternate paths to TA status that we could diminish at least some of the concerns of BOPS about being overruled by the Council. (To the best of my knowledge this has never happened in over sixty years with our current governance structures.)
To me these are difficult but definitely solvable problems provided we don’t approach them, per Einstein, with the same attitudes with which we originally framed our governance structures. All of the current contingencies among which are our changing membership patterns, shifting candidate characteristics, declining level of interest in certification, as well as many others, must be included in a major way.
Warren R. Procci
A Listserve for Certification?
Dear Colleagues,
I am responding to Arnie Richard’s note on the members list here on the openline since it is the proper venue for candidates for office in APsaA.
The matter of certification is probably the single most controversial issue within our organization. Resolution of this would afford us a giant step in the direction of focusing our energies much more effectively on our many other pressing difficulties in advancing our profession, our practices and not least of all our patients. It is now also clear that there is controversy within BOPS about certification with a number of institutes seeking more flexibility regarding TA appointment.
In my view Atrnie’s call for a moderated listserve discussion could be very helpful in generating a broad conversation on this subject and, hopefully enable us to truly understand our membership’s views on this matter. I am an optimist and I believe this will be a useful step in the development of a consensus on this issue. A crucial element is the issue of how it will be moderated so I think we need some discussion about this first. I do recall the value of the moderated list serves during Newell Fischer’s Presidency and this model might serve as a starting point. Hopefully such dialog and discussion will help bring us together.
I am responding to Arnie Richard’s note on the members list here on the openline since it is the proper venue for candidates for office in APsaA.
The matter of certification is probably the single most controversial issue within our organization. Resolution of this would afford us a giant step in the direction of focusing our energies much more effectively on our many other pressing difficulties in advancing our profession, our practices and not least of all our patients. It is now also clear that there is controversy within BOPS about certification with a number of institutes seeking more flexibility regarding TA appointment.
In my view Atrnie’s call for a moderated listserve discussion could be very helpful in generating a broad conversation on this subject and, hopefully enable us to truly understand our membership’s views on this matter. I am an optimist and I believe this will be a useful step in the development of a consensus on this issue. A crucial element is the issue of how it will be moderated so I think we need some discussion about this first. I do recall the value of the moderated list serves during Newell Fischer’s Presidency and this model might serve as a starting point. Hopefully such dialog and discussion will help bring us together.
The Joint Exploratory Committee
Dear Colleagues,
I’ve just returned to L.A. from our Annual Meeting in Denver. I’m very pleased and privileged to have been given another opportunity to be the next President-Elect of APsaA. Over the next several months I hope to connect with all of you on our listserves and directly by phone. My aim is for us to share our ideas about how to best serve our profession and our organization.
For now I’d like to tell you that the constructive and positive tone that began at the Winter Meeting has continued. An important agreement was for the establishment of a joint exploratory committee to look into the possibility of externalizing some of the educational functions of our Association. This would represent a major change which would require a great deal of statesmanship and in depth discussion. If it is to succeed we will need to develop widespread “grass roots” support. I would look forward to this task and I think my considerable organizational background in APsaA has prepared me for this. I have always been for greater freedom for our institutes regarding the training of candidates, including the eligibility of members for appointment as TAs. There are a significant number of our institutes that argued passionately for greater flexibility and innovation in psychoanalytic education.
I will support efforts to assure fairness, flexibility and choice in our educational models preferably within ApsaA and if that can not be achieved then through a process of externalization.
Warren R. Procci
I’ve just returned to L.A. from our Annual Meeting in Denver. I’m very pleased and privileged to have been given another opportunity to be the next President-Elect of APsaA. Over the next several months I hope to connect with all of you on our listserves and directly by phone. My aim is for us to share our ideas about how to best serve our profession and our organization.
For now I’d like to tell you that the constructive and positive tone that began at the Winter Meeting has continued. An important agreement was for the establishment of a joint exploratory committee to look into the possibility of externalizing some of the educational functions of our Association. This would represent a major change which would require a great deal of statesmanship and in depth discussion. If it is to succeed we will need to develop widespread “grass roots” support. I would look forward to this task and I think my considerable organizational background in APsaA has prepared me for this. I have always been for greater freedom for our institutes regarding the training of candidates, including the eligibility of members for appointment as TAs. There are a significant number of our institutes that argued passionately for greater flexibility and innovation in psychoanalytic education.
I will support efforts to assure fairness, flexibility and choice in our educational models preferably within ApsaA and if that can not be achieved then through a process of externalization.
Warren R. Procci
"There's Been A Change"
Dear Colleagues,
There has been an interesting series of communications, stimulated by the most recent Soprano’s episode, concerning supervision and certification among other matters. I agree with Jonathan House and others who favor deemphasizing certification as a prerequisite for TA status. I think local option is an idea whose time may finally have come. However, I may well disagree with Jonathan about the concept of externalization. Most of our members are deeply concerned about matters of psychoanalytic education and it would be a great shame if educational matters were largely “externalized”
I believe we are also hearing allusions to a deeper issue here. Allow me a digression. I like using movies as teaching stimuli. In “The Queen” a crucial moment occurs when Elizabeth says to her mother with more than a bit of apprehension, “Something has happened. There’s been a change. Some shift in values.” I think this has happened and is continuing to happen in our profession. Arlene, Jane, and Henry have all given voice to a concept of supervision which seems different from the one which some of us experienced so many years ago. They describe a collaborative, mutual, more “two person” process than one characterized more by the passing down of expertise from a master to a relative novice. If so, we’ll need to assure that our organization and our profession responds accordingly.
Perhaps the final “Soprano’s” episode will be similarly fecund.
Warren R. Procci
There has been an interesting series of communications, stimulated by the most recent Soprano’s episode, concerning supervision and certification among other matters. I agree with Jonathan House and others who favor deemphasizing certification as a prerequisite for TA status. I think local option is an idea whose time may finally have come. However, I may well disagree with Jonathan about the concept of externalization. Most of our members are deeply concerned about matters of psychoanalytic education and it would be a great shame if educational matters were largely “externalized”
I believe we are also hearing allusions to a deeper issue here. Allow me a digression. I like using movies as teaching stimuli. In “The Queen” a crucial moment occurs when Elizabeth says to her mother with more than a bit of apprehension, “Something has happened. There’s been a change. Some shift in values.” I think this has happened and is continuing to happen in our profession. Arlene, Jane, and Henry have all given voice to a concept of supervision which seems different from the one which some of us experienced so many years ago. They describe a collaborative, mutual, more “two person” process than one characterized more by the passing down of expertise from a master to a relative novice. If so, we’ll need to assure that our organization and our profession responds accordingly.
Perhaps the final “Soprano’s” episode will be similarly fecund.
Warren R. Procci
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