Digital Drama

Are you a victim?

In 1968, a post-graduate student at Duke University, Stephen Karpman, M.D., published a theory on human interaction that he called the Drama Triangle. Deliberately named to highlight the human tendency to cast ourselves in a certain role and then dutifully play the part, the model defines three interconnected characters that people are prone to take on in stressful or conflicted circumstances. In our age of rapid technological advance, Karpman’s theory has something to teach us about managing digital transformation.

Digital transformation is the process by which a pre-digital incumbent — a business created during and structured for a bygone world — remodels its operations to tap into the exponential growth opportunities afforded by platforms, data, and AI. Any organisational restructure creates some level of anxiety, but digital transformation carries a particular spectre of the unknown and unknowable, untested and mistrusted. Employees from the IT department on through to the call centre feel at risk of being replaced by robots. And when did a bot ever do anything for you? Except Siri. She’s cool.

The Drama Triangle became a mainstay of psychotherapy and family mediation through the 1970s and 80s, as middle-aged baby boomers sorted out their relationships with WW2 generation, PTSD-affected parents. It is an elegant tool for mapping the dynamics of groups or teams fraught with controlling behaviour. We also see it crop up in corporate settings as a means to explain and resolve workplace strife. As soon as there is a victim, there must be a perpetrator, and a rescuer must be called upon. A predictable theatre ensues.

Here’s how the drama plays out:

It’s important to recognise that all the triangle’s players do not necessarily need to be people. Groups, ideas, things, events — all manner of entities can take on each of the characters. Another central fact is that the positions are dynamic, and players tend to shift between roles as dialogue and time progress. Remember, the roles are a matter of self-identification. Once someone, usually a victim, starts to speak his lines, the other two characters naturally materialise. Relationships are perpetuated by the specific desires of each role: the victim seeks security, giving purpose to the rescuer, who craves being needed, and so acts to defend the victim from the outcome-focused perpetrator. By nature each character breeds and enables the others; it is a system of co-dependence, a classic vicious cycle.

Now, about those pesky robots.

By one rough count, there were 26 gazillion articles published in 2017 alone with some variation on the headline: “How AI is stealing your job!” And if you managed to tune out that message in the media, you were probably inundated with something similar in the workplace. “Automation”, “Innovation”, “[Your industry here]-tech”, “Disruption”… sound familiar? There’s also the threat of new, fast-moving competition, especially for the aforementioned pre-digital incumbents, as technology-led businesses have decoupled intellectual property from human capital and are enjoying a resultant exponential growth curve. Traditional industries like automobile manufacturing have already experienced the takeover of their assembly line by robotics. The tea leaves say every other industry is at risk too.

Any career-minded professional could be forgiven for feeling somewhat vulnerable as the future of work descends upon us. Workers are besieged by new initiatives, cost-cutting measures, and bosses in general. Leaders, for their part, are at the mercy of market forces and tides of change. Technology advances, and we humans cast ourselves as victims.

Who will rescue mankind?

The hero depends on the day. Media does a pretty good job of parachuting in with helpful information to explain what is happening in emerging tech, tips on how we can proactively adapt, etc.. But then again, sometimes the news feels like the fear-mongering perpetrator. Technology is in fact here to rescue us from drudgery. Next, consultants enter the fray, full of sympathy and advice to manage transformation. Text-book rescuing. Everyone, raise your hand if you’ve seen a recent white paper with the word “enable” in the headline!

Karpman’s model is powerful because it depicts natural human behaviour in the context of change and uncertainty. So long as we continue to play our roles, the vicious cycle of upheaval is perpetuated, at a rather hefty expense to our energy and productivity. This is a problem for leaders who want to tap into the new economic drivers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. To be the instigator of digital transformation in your business is to embody the threat.

A Way Forward for Digital Leaders

The Drama Triangle is the antithesis of the forward momentum that can be created by digital. When a business adopts technology that collects, analyses, and redeploys information, it instigates a virtuous cycle that improves value for customers, seeds innovation, and raises internal morale. This was as true during the First Industrial Revolution as it is today. The difference is semantic; Luddites burned weaving looms and stocking frames to thwart mechanised textile production, today’s naysayers cut themselves off from the future when they refuse to buy in to the potential of data analytics and machine learning.

Here are three things leaders interested in digital transformation can do to break the vicious cycle of digital drama and get their organisations moving in a positive direction:

1. Refuse to accept your assigned part. Channel your inner Broadway diva, and refuse the role that people and events hand to you. Leaders are generally cast as persecutor, a natural fit for the outcomes-driven executive. Check yourself for signs of criticism and disappointment — aim to set clear direction and expectations instead. If you think someone or something deserves blame for being difficult — guess what, boss — you’re creating a victim. Careful you don’t slide so far towards sympathy and pity that you become a rescuer. Rescuers create victims by enabling them.
2. Don’t give the prologue. It can be really tempting to be first onstage. Creating drama draws others in, and gives everyone something to do. The problem is that activity is easily misconstrued as action — and what you want is change, not noise. If you’re in charge, you have a right to be confident, not authoritarian. No leader, aspiring or actual, has any business wallowing in a victim identity. And rescuers… well, they give really dull monologues.
3. Get a different script. A leader who wants to get things done must create a generative dialogue. You can initiate a virtuous cycle (what Acey Choi called The Winner’s Triangle) with a simple question: “What do we want to see happen now?” This is useful both as an opening salvo, and as a circuit breaker for a Drama Triangle already in full swing. It stops the characters getting their desired payoffs, and suddenly tragedy is not so interesting. Focusing outwardly on mutually desirable outcomes, you and your team can plan steps towards a future that everyone wants, or at least isn’t terrified of.

“Every time you have to speak, you are auditioning for leadership.” — James Humes

But you are not the CEO, you say? No matter. The best thing about the digital transformation play is that everyone gets a part. You even choose your own lines. The global stage is set for structural economic change. Will you pick the part of the winner, or the victim?

Thanks to Anthony Stevens, Louis Strauss, and Warwick Cavell for inspiring this article.