Incest 0000i-xiv FM 1 - William L. White

Systems Interventions: Boundary Management 255
• No single person is to blame! There are no villains; there are
only victims. The turmoil in your organizational family grew
out of a slow and subtle progression of closure that no one recognized
or consciously controlled. Most closure occurs because
there is a period when it meets our needs. We all participated in
the process without an awareness of its eventual consequences.
• The process is reversible! We may not be able to go back to
where we were, but we can move forward and regain our individual
health and restore respect and harmony in our relationships
with one another.
Providing Structure and Safety. At an early stage in the intervention
process a consultant will have collected a tremendous amount of data
from organizational members and have begun the process of emotionally
replenishing members. Some conditions in the environment will already
have begun to improve. Some improvement usually occurs when there is
an open acknowledgment of a problem and an announcement that an
outside consultant will be brought in to provide assistance. Many workers
already will have become more positive in their approach to their
work, and there will usually be increased expressions of hopefulness
about the future of the organization. The history of closure in the organization,
however, will have most members continuing to fear what is
going to happen. The task of a consultant or director at this stage is to
provide both structure and safety.
Providing structure and safety usually involves creating a plan and
process aimed at resolving organizational family problems, decreasing
immediate stressors, and bringing a halt to any scapegoating.
A. The Long-Range Intervention Plan. At an early stage of intervention,
organizational members will have begun to make
sense of the closure process and have come to some understanding
of how problems developed in the organizational family.
The goals at early stages are to give members a clear sense of future
directions and ensure their involvement in the problemsolving
process. Based on the data gathered in staff interviews
and on consultant and managerial recommendations, a plan is
prepared and presented to the organizational family. The plan
and its verbal presentation should openly acknowledge the
major problems confronting the agency. The first goal is to