Our vision on Organizations

Everybody has a mental image about what an organization 'should' look like. Unfortunately, the idea that people have about the desired outcome of an organization or team, is very often not achieved by the picture that those same people have about how an organization should look and work. Aka, the expected outcome is not being achieved by the imagined best input. At TheoryY, we believe that the needs of people are of the highest importance, as they will influence all outcomes. This might sound logical, but this is not the prominent approach to organizations that is being adhered to in this day and age. Most organizations are designed and managed with the underlying belief that the 'system' of the organization is leading and that we can manage people as mechanical inputs, with the core idea being that people are motivatable by extrinsic drivers like pay, titles, promotions, KPI's, bonuses, up-or-out principles and training. We call this the control-based paradigm of organizational life, which stems from the beginning of the industrial era. There is another paradigm out there, albeit not as widespread as the previous paradigm, although it is about 60 years old. This paradigm focuses on Trust, specifically trusting that people have the ability and willingness to do the right things, if we trust that it will come from within them: intrinsic motivation.