Knowledge Matters™

Hi Patrick.

Thank you for taking the time to provide a considered response – I appreciate it! Actually I have had archetypes shoved down my throat several times in the past few months in the social, work and research domains. I’ve also had the suggestion that unless I am autistic my research will inevitably be biased because of the methods I employ, but that’s another story. As a result of these engagements I have taken the time to look a bit deeper into archetypes, and refresh my memory of them, which as I say is 30 plus years old.

I think your language is interesting, as no doubt mine is, and this language is key to some of my angst. You say “The organisational archetypes we work with are produced by employees of that organisation out of stories they have told about their experiences in the organisation …”. I say this automatically introduces a bias. Why don’t you collect stories from the managers as well? (Perhaps you do, and didn’t mention it in this response?) Surely if you are trying to understand an organisation the totality of the organisation must be considered. I’m a manager and have been for most of my adult life. I am very sure I would introduce an archetype or two if I was asked, and these would differ from the archetypes I see in the “literature” such that it is. These may or may not be “validated” by other managers from the stories/narratives they tell.

The second point of your language relates to a specific example. I of course cannot argue against a specific case because I do not have the context or the facts. Indeed I can even see how, where, and why archetypes might be useful in a specific context. My objection is to archetypes as presented by Arthur Shelley, Professor Han van Loon, Katie Altham, and others, as being both authoritative and general. Based on your presentation to actKM on the 14th of August 2007 I would level the same criticism to your work, but this may be unfair – you at least haven’t published a book or journal article (to the best of my knowledge) that purports to be generalisable and authoritative!

The third point of your language relates to the assertion that: “Archetypes are simply sensemaking filters. They compress a lot of information into ways that audiences can work with. In the same way that personas are built by marketeers or website designers, they are a useful way of packaging up lots of information into useful and actionable patterns”. I say this entirely depends on the worldview of the person interpreting the archetype. As an extreme example I remember teddy bears being sent by the Australian public to Rwanda in 1994 following the genocide. When we gave the teddy bears to the children it elicited a very negative reaction - some children were just plain terrified! To extend the metaphor if the archetypes were say characters from the Harry Potter movies how can we be sure managers understand and recognize the intended meaning? (I for one empathise with Snape – my son and wife don’t! I also know managers who have never read a Harry Potter book or seen a Harry Potter movie!)

So in summary my major objection relates to presenting archetypes derived in a specific organisation at a precise time and place, as being generalisable and authoritative. My second objection relates to drawing conclusions from what appears to me to be a selective population. My final objection relates to the interpretation of the archetypes.

Best Regards, Graham