Risks hiding in plain sight
- Mar 16
- 2 min read
Your organization has a personality. And it might be working against you. Welcome to the world of The Organizational Personality (TOP).
So bear with me: Let's briefly dive into scientific personality psychology. It's worth it, I promise. One short detour, and you'll immediately understand why I claim: organisations have a personality and there are risks hiding in plain sight.
Let's take it step by step.
First: The HUMAN Level
In a nutshell, here's the core insight of an innovative systems theory from scientific personality psychology (Kuhl, PSI Theory, 2001).
Every human being runs on exactly the same systems and exactly the same system connections. These systems process information of all kinds.
The difference? Lies in the STRENGTH of activation.
Every person prefers certain systems and connections.
Has, so to speak, ✴️ favourite systems and ✴️ favourite connections.
This means: the values for these systems and connections are significantly more pronounced than for others.
Additionally, every person has completely different content (knowledge, experience, autobiography, etc.)
This gives us the triad of the framework shared by all human beings:
Systems, system connections, cognitive content.
The challenge for all of us:
Learning to 'play' on ALL systems and ALL connections, not just the preferred ones. That's called personality development. And those who can do this have well-developed self-steering skills.
Then the fan of options 🪭 opens up, and new behavioural and experiential possibilities become available:
I usually prefer to do it this way, but I can do it differently too !
Second: The ORGANISATIONAL Level
Those who think that work outputs consist primarily of knowledge and experience are mistaken.
Authors and author groups also pour their ✴️ favourite systems and ✴️ favourite connections - with all their characteristics, strengths and weaknesses - into their work outputs.
Branding, strategy, customer feedback, and audit findings - they all carry the organisation's thinking fingerprint.
So what is the 'personality of an organisation'?
Simply this: The thinking preferences that are typical for an organisation, across different work outputs.
Those among you with an interest in a holistic approach to risk management use these patterns as additional levers for intervention and control.
Otherwise you have to deal with the consequences of risks hiding in plain sight.
And yes, that is exactly my work. Let's talk.