The document discusses the role of fear in organizations and how it can limit innovation. It notes that fear is prevalent given today's climate of rapid change, austerity and uncertainty. Fear manifests in organizations through frustration, lack of control, and a toxic environment that breeds disengagement. This leads to a need for top-down control through strict hierarchies and targets. However, managing by fear does not foster innovation. Instead, the document advocates for building trust within organizations and encouraging an emergent, "hive"-like culture where employees feel empowered and responsible for innovation. This involves distributed leadership, open communication, diversity of ideas, willingness to fail, and viewing small improvements cumulatively rather than expecting large-scale innovation. Such an

1. The Psychology of Fear in
Organizations
How can we harness fear to fuel
innovation?

2. Fear, Anger and Frustration Why talk about fear?
• Fear is the elephant in the room. In this time
of rapid change, austerity and uncertainty, fear
is the spectre that haunts us the most, as
individuals, organizations and society –
whether we acknowledge it or not.
• Fear has many faces – the fear of loss of face,
prestige, position, favour, fortune or job
• The dominant fear at present is the fear of
the unknown
• What effect does fear have on our everyday
lives and our working lives, and our ability to
foster innovation within our organization?

3. Fear, Anger and Frustration Fear within organizations
• Frustration
• Powerlessness
• Lack of control
• The frenetic pace of life
• No time for reflection
• ‘Doing’ not ‘being’
• Alienation
• Toxic environment
• Emotional withdrawal
• Loss of identity
• Disengagemenent

4. Fear, Anger and Frustration
FEAR BREEDS A NEED FOR
CONTROL
-Hierarchical control
- Target culture
- Withdrawal/’working to rule’
“Everyone is faced with similar fears,
yet only those people who cannot
admit the threats hiding inside
(themselves) cope with them by
resorting to control… a controlling
person appears to be free from fear;
that is the façade that control presents
to the world. We put a high value on
seeming to be in control of our lives,
which further promotes the ego’s
belief that its controlling behaviour is
working.” (Deepak Chopra, 1996)

5. Fear, Anger and Frustration
“Many companies are held in an
invisible prison. Red tape, rigid
administration, procedures and
mushrooming regulations prevent any
emergence of dynamism.”
(Sprenger, 2004)

6. • Target culture – increased performance
monitoring, target setting for individuals,
departments and boards that are
increasingly beholden to shareholders etc.
has raised levels of fear and anxiety
• At best, targets can provide useful steers,
at worst, they can have long-term
detrimental effects
• In many situations, they undermine
morale and employees’ sense of self-
worth, autonomy, performance and
productivity
• Increases conformity and thus can hinder
creativity

7. Innovation rarely thrives in this
environment
What is the alternative to managing by fear
and control?

8. Fear, Anger and FrustrationTraditional ways of controlling
organizations
hierarchy, protocols, measurement
• Traditionally, rejuvenating large
organizations has been addressed through
expensive change management
programmes, which largely impose change
from above
• Variable degrees of success and often
tend to provoke resistance and cynicism in
the workplace
• Top-down change programmes
increasingly out of step with contemporary
organisational life
• Better to see organizations as a hive (as
in bees) of complex relationships

9. The hive is a network of (more or less) shared values, practices and
norms that we call organizational culture. The organization is not
‘out there’, separate from us. We – and the ways in which we
interact, work and create things, together with others, are the
organization.
From this perspective, viewing all employees as co-contributors, you could
argue that innovation is the responsibility of the whole organization.

10. • Use the knowledge we already have about
how human beings function effectively
• Research indicates that trust in
organizations and leaders is at an all time
low; at the same time, research shows that
trust in organizations is vital
• Employees who have high trust in the
organisations they work for stay longer, put
in more effort and work more cooperatively
• Employees with low or no trust often
reduce the effectiveness of their work,
engage in counter-productive behaviour
such as obstruction or seeking revenge or
simply deciding to leave
Overcoming barriers to innovation
through prioritising human values:
TRUST, ENGAGEMENT, MOTIVATION
INNOVATIVE CULTURE

11. Building control through trust
Relationship, egalitarianism, improvisation, hive culture

12. Fostering the Hive Mind in
organizations
• Strengthening the Hive to improve
productivity
• Foster organizational cultures in which
greater individual autonomy and small
organizational risks are part of everyone’s jobs
– not just senior managers
• Encourage people to think independently
• A shared responsibility: everyone is
responsible for the development of
innovative thinking
• This might sound grandiose, but it isn’t:
employees are often very clear about what
could be improved in their sphere of influence
– but they need reassurance and the resources

13. Command & Control Paradigm Emergent or Hive Paradigm
Keep people in ‘silos’ Build connectivity
Ensure everyone ‘salutes the flag’ Encourage diversity
Manage communication initiatives Have conversations in corridors
Blame people for failures Learn from events
Make it clear who’s in charge Give everyone leadership opportunities
Tell people what to do Tell people what not to do
Set objectives Agree clear goals
Keep busy Wait expectantly

14. • Changing the nature of conversations in organizations can be the most
powerful way to bring about an innovative mind-set and performance
breakthroughs
• An emergent or hive approach encourages employees to learn from
each other, to take initiatives, to experiment
• This helps to foster a more pro-active workforce and more innovative
approaches; it also helps to reduce fear and anxiety, because groups of
like-minded individuals are self-supporting

15. • Innovation is fuelled by passion
• Creative discipline
• Diversity: equal... but different
• ‘Fear’ is not a valid reason to avoid
innovation, yet it is frequently the
unspoken barrier to innovation
• Encourage people to think independently
and share in the responsibility for
innovation
• Encourage greater flexibility in working
relationships and thus greater initiative
•RE-HUMANISING THE WORKPLACE

16. • Innovation doesn’t always have to be big
• Innovation as the sum of the parts
• Taking the hive model further, we can
encourage small, practical hive steps,
initiated and/or progressed by employees
throughout the organization, which have a
cumulative, contagious effect, particularly
within an organization that fosters
innovation
• Through ongoing experimentation,
development and diversity of perspectives,
we can set in motion a process of rolling
innovation
“The whole principle came from
the idea that if you broke down
everything you could think of that
goes into riding a bike, then
improved it by 1%, you will get a
significant increase when you put
them all together.”
(Dave Brailsford, 2012)

17. “The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than
its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or
experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to
regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination
and marks real advances in science.” - Albert Einstein

18. • Trust is the foundation of employee
productivity and innovation. Work hard to
build trust: involve, communicate, adapt
• Encourage healthy dissent, diversity and
challenge: new thinking grows out of bringing
new ideas together
• Encourage trial and error – learn from failure
• Don’t overdo targets and performance
monitoring
• Innovation doesn’t always have to be ‘big’. A
series of small innovations may be more
sustainable and less daunting
“Fear, uncertainty and over-
caution within the current
business climate can be the
death of innovation.” – Sheila
Keegan, 2015

19. Fear, Anger and Frustration The Psychology of Fear in Organizations
by Sheila Keegan
• Explores the role of fear in organizations and its impact on
well-being, productivity and economic growth
• How fear limits us both on an individual and corporate level
in our willingness to take risks to innovate
• Examines the psychological barriers to innovation and some
of the approaches that can start to loosen the paralysis that
fear engenders, so that energy can be directed into more
positive, creative directions
• To regenerate the economy and shrug off the despondency
and uncertainty of the last 5 years, we need to be brave,
fearless and innovative
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20. Thank you