The Tavistock Institute and Me
- Hilary Claire Frazer
- Apr 3
- 2 min read
Transcript:
My connection to the Tavi goes back to 1981, studying A-Level Sociology. It put it in such a different context.
When I was doing my undergraduate, I did sociology as one of the options. I did a combined humanities degree, and again, the Tavistock Institute: Trist, Miller, all of that, was mentioned. And again, it was all about looking at the world in such a different way.
It was trying to understand; well, what is going on?
The Tavistock has been, for me, a bedrock in terms of research, methods, frameworks for understanding. The Tavi has been part of my – let’s call it my body of knowledge – like I said, since 1981.
I think it’s the history, the gravitas. It’s the quality of what they do. It’s the fearlessness to go in where others have tried and failed, or will not. I think it’s also the nerve it takes to adopt and apply psychodynamic approaches and processes. Because then people are forced to hold up the mirror and look at their own behaviour. However may calculations you do. However many numbers you’ve got on your balance sheet.
At the end of the day, and I think this is something that my odd career has really taught me, it’s down to the people. You can have these very well-formed, designed and robustly executed processes. You can have as many performance metrics as you like. But
if you haven’t got the people thing right, and if that is dysfunctional, you’ve going to get some very strange stuff.
The Tavi, for me is one of the few places where you go in and you hold up the light. You
shine the light. You hold up the mirror and you go: OK, you’ve got your design, you’ve got
your structure. There might be what you think is going on, but if we hold this up, what’s
really going on?
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