Transactional Analysis by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

Transactional Analysis is one of the most popular ways of explaining the dynamics of interpersonal communications. Originally developed by Eric Berne, it is a model of people and relationships that encompasses personality, perception and communication.Although Berne used it initially as a method of psychotherapy, it has been convincingly used by organizations as a training and development programme.

TA has two basic underlying assumptions:

• All the events and feelings that we have ever experienced are stored within us and can be replayed, so we can re-experience the events and the feelings of all past years.
• Personality is made up of three ego states that are revealed in distinct ways of behaving. The ego states manifest themselves in gesture, tone of voice and action, almost as if they are different people within us and they converse with each other in transactions either overtly and covertly.

Berne identified and labelled the ego states as follows, each with their own system of communication and language:

• Adult ego states- behavior that concern out thought processes and the processing of information. In this state we may be objective, rational, reasonable-seeking information and receiving facts.
• Parent ego state-behavior that concerns the attitudes, feelings and behavior incorporated from external sources, primarily our parents. This state refers to feelings about right and wrong and how to care for other people.
• Child ego state- behavior that demonstrates the feelings we remember as a child. This state may be associated with having fun, playing, impulsiveness, rebelliousness, spontaneous behavior and emotional response.

Berne believe these transactions, that take place in face to face exchanges and verbal communication, form the core of human relationships. He claimed that the three ego states exist simultaneously within each individual, although at any particular time any one state may dominate the other two. All people are said to behave in each of these states at different times. We may be unaware which ego state we are operating in and may shift from one another.

We all have a preferred ego state which may revert to: some individuals may continually advise and criticise others(the constant Parents); some may analyze , live only with facts and distrust feelings( the constant Adult); some operate with strong feelings all the time, consumed with anger or constantly clowning (the constant Child). Berne emphasized that the states should be judged as superior or inferior but as different. Analysis of ego states may reveal why communication breaks down or why individual may feel manipulated or used.

Berne insists that it is possible to identify the ego state from the word, voice, gestures, and attitude of the person communicating. For example, it would be possible to discuss to discern the ego state of the manager, if they said the following:

" Pass me the file on the latest sales figure"
" How do you think we could improve our safety record?
(Adult ego state)

" Let me help you with that-I can see you are struggling"
" Look , this is the way it should be done; how many more times do I have to tell you?
(Parent ego state)

" Great, it's Friday. Who's coming to the pub for a quick half?
" That's a terrific idea-let's go for it"
(Child ego state)

A dialogue can be analyzed in terms not only of the ego state but also whether the transaction produced a complementary reaction or a crossed reaction. Complementary means that the ego state was expected and preferred response. So for instance, if we look at the first statement, "Pass me the file on the latest figures, the subordinates could respond: "Certainly- I have it here' Adult ego state) or " Can't you look for it yourself? I only gave it to you an hour ago' (Parent ego state).

The first response was complementary whereas the second was a crossed transaction. Sometimes it ma be important to cross a transaction. Take the example "Let me help you with that- I can see you struggling' (Parent ego state) The manager may have a habit of always helping in a condescending way, making the subordinate resentful. If the subordinate meekly accepts the help with a thankful reply, this will reinforce the manager's perception and attitude, whereas if the subordinate were to respond with "I can manage perfectly well. Why did you think I was struggling ?, it might encourage the manager to respond from the Adult ego state and thus move their ego position.

Knowledge of TA can be of benefit to employees who are dealing with potentially difficult situations. In the majority of work situations the Adult-Adult transactions are likely to be norm. Where work colleagues perceive and respond by adopting the Adult ego state , such a transaction is more likely to encourage a rational, problem -solving approach and reduce the possibility of emotional conflict.

If only the world of work was always of the rational logical kind. Communications at work as elsewhere are sometimes unclear and confused, and can leave the individual with bad feelings and uncertainty. Berne describes a further dysfunctional transaction, which can occur when a message is sent to two ego states at the same time. For instance, an individual may say " I passed that article to you last week, have you read it? This appears to be an adult to adult transaction and yet the tone of voice or the facial expressions might imply a second ego state. is involved. The underlying message says, Haven't you even read that yet... you know how busy I am and yet I had time to read it! The critical Parent is addressing the Child ego state. In such " ulterior transactions" the social message is typically adult to adult and the ulterior , psychological message is directed either Parent-Child or Child- Parent.

Given the incidence of stress in the workplace, analysis of communications occurring within the workplace. TA can aid the understanding of human behavior. It can help to improve communication skills by assisting in interpreting a person's ego state and which form of state is likely to produce the most appropriate response. This should lead to an improvement in both customer relations and management -subordinate relations. Therefore TA can be seen as valuable tool to aid our understanding of social situations and the games that people play both in and outside work organization.

Collaboration by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

                                                      
Collaboration is one of those words that immediately makes us feel good because it implies friendship and giving. We all enjoy collaborative events: a warm fire or barbecue, family and friends all together for a birthday or an anniversary. Yet a failure rate of collaboration in business is incredibly high.

Collaboration works when we know and trust each other, but the moment someone takes something without asking that trust is eroded.

GA Consultancy survey of nearly 800 country in 2011 showed a major consensus that collaboration was the most fundamental activity for successful innovation. This is because no company in these times can own all the knowledge it needs for new products or services. Our world is moving too fast. Knowledge is growing too rapidly.

In the later stages of innovation , product development and new product introduction, we tend to operate in close or "cluster" networks. Trust is higher ,communication better and collaboration is more successful. It is in the early stage of the innovation process where collaboration is more difficult. This is where diverse and dispersed networks are needed and because of this trust levels are lower. The raw material of innovation is less tangible in these early stages and so accusations of intellectual property theft become prevalent.

As an antidote to IP theft, company engage in legal and financial  negotiations and yet this is not the answer.

When we meet new collaborators we engage in the early discovery process and this is exciting. We tend to ignore the aspects of the other person that are different. Instead constantly look for common grounds. When we initiate collaboration we need to fully understand the behavior of our new best friend. It is vital to invest time in understanding diversity and why other people do things differently.

My book, Strategic Management: Putting Things In Proper Perspectives , 2nd edition, 2012, has been adopted as the course book for an innovation course in Asia. Before  engaging in innovation projects students use a self assessment tool on the book to better understand the different modes of behavior in their diverse project teams

My work with ISO engages me in collaborative work with people around the world and I form friendships with some far more easily than others. To quote an old saying, "my roots are showing" and I gravitate easily towards people who have a Filipino and a Duensanon-Ilongo heritage like myself..

It's those Duenasanon-Ilongo roots which makes us feel safe, share the same jokes and trust each other. We naturally gravitate to people who mirror our own values and behaviors. As result we form closed or " cluster" networks very easily. These networks are great for getting things done, but are not good for generating new ideas.

For successful innovation, comfortable collaboration doesn't give the essential jolt that releases new ideas. In the ISO technical committee to which I belong , we get that jolt from other cultures whether it is China, Germany, Japan or Mexico. We learn to work with different cultures and I have made many great friends over the years from across the globe. If you want to develop new ideas you have mix with people who may be outside your comfort zone , take time to understand them and freely give your ideas to them in order to get ideas back from them.

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The Size of the Population:Is it a Problem? by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

Many argue that the planet is already over-populated with 6.7 billion inhabitants. Growth to 9 or 10 billion will be unsustainable. There is a number of arguments put forward to sustain this proposition.

Malthus was an early nineteenth century British economist who put forward " the iron law of wages".He argued that the food supply could only increase arithmetically over time (e.g. 2,4,6,8,10...) while the population would grow geometrically (2.4,16, 256...). The result would inevitably be poverty trap. This was because a rise in wages would lead to more children surviving into adulthood.This would increase the supply of labor, driving down wages, with more children starving to death. In equilibrium, most of the population can only live at subsistence level.

Malthusian economics has proved to be incorrect in the developed world. World food supply has more than kept pace with population growth. In the developed world, average daily calorie intake is more than twice what it was 100 years ago. Modern day Malthusian argue that the pace of technological change cannot be kept up. Farmers cannot increase their yields per acre forever by improving the land, applying more fertilizers and developing better strains. There has to be a limit to how much food the planet can grow. Critics of this view say about two and one half percent annually for 100 years, more than outstripping population growth. Why should this trend not continue? Moreover, the developed countries of the world already have the potential to grow more food than is currently being produced. The objectives of the USA, Canada and the EU are to restrict food production from current levels. Food is not a physical problem today, it is a market problem. Starvation occurs because consumers don't have the money to buy food, not because it cannot be produced.

GNP of the developing countries of the world grew at an average annual rate of 3.5 percent in the 2000. Yet average population growth over the same period was 3.2 percent.Growth percapita was  therefore 0.3 percent. Almost all the developing world's increased resources during this decade were needed to provide for a growth in the population. Is this typical? On GA Consultancy grounds, it is very much what is to be expected. Increased incomes lead to increase population, leaving the mass of the population at subsistence level. Critics of this view point out that countries do break out of this cycle. France, Germany and the UK all had high economic growth in the nineteenth century but economic growth per capital was positive. Equally between 2008 to 2011 , the GNP of developing countries grew by an average annual of 5.7 percent but annual population growth was only 1.3 percent. Low income countries performed better than this, averaging GNP growth of 6.5 percent whilst population only rose 1.9 percent per annum. So high growth per capita is possible with the appropriate policies.

Even if the growth in food production and in production of all other goods exceeds population growth , this is not environmentally sustainable.Giving every household in the world a refrigerator would do irretrievable damage to the ozone layer when those refrigerators are thrown away. Giving every household a car would lead to global warming on a scale not even predicted today. Constant intensive farm production would lead to permanent degradation of farm lands. Pressure for living space would result in the destruction of countless species of plant and animal, reducing bio-diversity, with unpredictable effects on the environment and on the human species.

For these reasons, economists argue that development must be sustainable development. The 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development stated that development needed to meet "the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future generations. In economic terms, this means maximizing the net welfare of economic activities, while maintaining or increasing the stock of economic, ecological and sociocultural assets over time and providing a safety net to meet basic needs and protect the poor. Meeting today's needs should not rob the next generation of the ability to grow and develop. Successful efforts by First World countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ban CFCs and recycle materials show that sustainable development is possible when threats to the environment are clearly identified.