It’s telling that the technique of “tearing down” as a step in personal transformation has been a common technique, historically, when individuals were broken down and transformed in the interests of authoritarian organizations. That was the technique used to strip SS trainees of their humanity and transform them into obedient killing machines. That was the technique used in Chinese “self-criticism” meetings and POW camps, and in milder form in Marine boot camp. That was the technique used to tear Winston Smith’s psyche down to its component atoms in the Ministry of Love and recreate him as an entirely different person who loved Big Brother. Any organization whose survival depends on “tearing down” people and “transforming” them is an organization that deserves to die–and then to have the ground it formerly occupied sown with salt.

The majority of comments above relate to how the writer would not like to be addressed they way Flores addresses mr. Tomas in the Fast Company Article.

That is not relevant for a judgment of whether Flores’ methods are right, relevant or effective.

Quite the contrary, perhaps: What if Flores has identified that the core of underperformance in many companies is that people avoid unpleasant interpersonal situations that they don’t like?

I know that you know that we will all go very far to avoid an unpleasant situation. Many of us will tell lies to avoid a confrontational conversation.

I am now only speculating of course, but I am holding out the possibility that Flores might not be employing a method worthy of the disgust that has been proven in the comments above.

Breaking down is inherent in the concept of breaking with something, so the concept of tearing down to build new is unavoidable in any transformation. It’s not wrong per se.

If you speculate that Flores is breaking down something in the people who are working with him in the Fast Company article, then I speculate that he is only helping these people, with informed consent, to break down some habit of theirs, perhaps the habit of creeping away from confrontational discourse.

Again this as most everything else in this thread is just guesswork, because we did not hear how Flores sold or explained his work to the management team in the article. He might be just another phony one-man-band like so many hypnosis-based profiteers out there, such as nlp or est as one commenter suggested.

Or he might just be walking his talk, explaining thoroughly why he does what he does and what good it is supposed to do, in such a way that it made sense to the albeit desperate team of managers. If he did not do the latter, I think the management team in the article were well on their way to closing their company.

He should be beaten within an inch of his life by someone at the receiving end of that treatment, and spend six months in physical therapy recovering before he can walk again. I guarantee he’d curl up in a fetal position and wet himself the next time he even thought of treating someone like that.

I’ve had some bosses who acted like that, and they’re the kind of people who make me cheer for news stories about workplace shootings on my worse days. I worked for one woman (a ward supervisor at a VA hospital) who screamed at people until she was black in the face, just for the sheer joy of knowing she could reduce them to tears. When she quit and the news came back that she’d been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, you should have heard the comments. The mildest was “what goes around, comes around.” The harshest: “I hope before the end comes that fucking cunt is rolling back and forth in agony, drowning in her own body fluids.” Never in my life have I heard such expression of utter loathing for a human being. I myself periodically think of hunting down her grave just to spit on it.

But I suspect that if I’d been among those exposed to Flores, they’d have topped my VA coworkers.

What a piece of human garbage.

The “trickle down” effect, whether deliberate or inadvertent, would be both inevitable and harmful. I could easily see middle or junior managers assuming the technique was appropriate at their levels and mis-applying it. Whatever the alleged benefits of this approach, I just think there are better, more positive ways to achieve them.

And as for wanting your business to be run like the military, I think this quote from one of our pages sums that up nicely:

“Peter Drucker tells a story worth including here. He once asked the former head of a very large, world wide organisation:
‘What do you look for in placing the right people into the right places in an organisation?’ The old man, who had been famous for doing just that replied: ‘I always ask myself, would I want one of my sons to work under that person?’

Well I wouldnt!
http://www.the-happy-manager.com/good-manager.html
Phil

I’m mostly with Alex on this one, though. I see the -very- limited use of tear-down/build-up methods (where voluntary entry is the most important aspect). But in a business environment, with top officials, the most likely outcome of such a practice is to encourage a climate of abuse by legitimizing such methods.

Look at it this way: Flores legitimizes tearing down people in public as a method for getting more honest dialogue. Let’s say one of the managers in his meetings feels that his employees or middle-managers below him aren’t being honest with him, either–what method is he now more likely to use? (Compare it to how kids who are bullied are more likely to become bullies themselves, or children who are abused are more likely to be violent/maladjusted themselves. It’s not universally the case, but destructive behavior usually leads to -more- destructive behavior.)

There’s something to be said for these kind of methods in, say, a military setting. Boot camp for a soldier makes sense; the military is supposed to be strict with a rigid hierarchical command. But boot camp methods for employees at a construction firm? Would -you- want your business to be run like the military? KF

Follow the link below to Steve Roessler’s comments on this subject and you will find the association.

http://www.allthingsworkplace.com/2009/08/just-when-you-thought-it-was-safe-to-go-out-.html

“ZOMG! OUR COMPANY IS LOSING TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!”

“OH LOOK! THIS TOTAL SOCIOPATH SAYS THAT BY ABUSING EACH OTHER WITH STOCK PHRASES WE CAN TURN OURSELVES AROUND!”

“RIGHT! LET’S DO IT!”