A lot of emotions and energies are blocked in organisations in the Unspeakables.
Unspeakables are those which people don’t speak about in meetings, to their bosses or in front of top management. As a consequence organisations miss out a lot of its potential because of this blocked energy in the system.
So what are these Unspeakables, really?
These Unspeakables contain a lot of wisdom (tribal wisdom) about what is really happening in the organisation. And this wisdom is an essential input to decode some of the complex issues that an organisation faces. These inputs are usually about deeper aspects of problems which are not easily seen, the inter-linkages with other processes, impact on people at individual and interpersonal level and how how work actually gets done.
When this “tribal” wisdom is missing from the decision making process, the decisions hence made are both: non-holistic and non-sustainable. The problems hence, keeps on persisting or worse still some new problems get generated.
So if these Unspeakables are so important, why are they not spoken
Usually the reason for these unspeakables not be to spoken is fear. Fear of what will happen to me if I speak; what will be the repercussion? Will I offend someone senior? Will this incident be used against me in future? It could also be fear that the inputs I have may not be so relevant and if I speak, I might look stupid.
These fears exist based on what people may have experienced in the organisation, or seen someone else experience it or heard stories about past from others or worse of all, based on assumptions of how things generally happen in organisations. Either ways, this fear of not speaking-up becomes a norm in many organisations and hence most organisations suffer the pain of superficial decision making, dis-engaged people and lack of ownership.
Unless these norms are consciously decoded and changed, people will continue to comply to what they understand is the right thing to do and keep these unspeakables to themselves, impacting both either own effectiveness and effectiveness of the organisation.
Read how Human Process Consulting can help organisations deal with these Unspeakables.