Dr. Richard Farson, psychologist, author and educator, is president of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI), an independent, nonprofit organization he helped found in La Jolla, California, devoted to research and education toward the advancement of society, the strengthening of democracy, and the enrichment of life for all. Among his current responsibilities, he heads WBSI’s International Leadership Forum, an Internet-based think tank composed entirely of highly influential leaders from business, government, academia, science, journalism, literature and the arts, addressing the great policy issues of our time.
Richard Farson's Video - CUSP 2011
Among other books, Dr. Farson is the author of the critically-acclaimed bestseller, "Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership," now in twelve languages, and with co-author Ralph Keyes, "Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation." An article based on this book won the McKinsey award for the best Harvard Business Review article published in 2002, the one "most likely to have a major influence on managers worldwide." His new book, The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything,” published in November, 2008, calls for an expanded role for the design professions in addressing our global society’s most pressing needs.
Long interested in the field of design, he was the founding dean of the School of Design at the California Institute of the Arts, and a thirty-year member of the Board of Directors of the International Design Conference in Aspen, of which he was president for seven years. In 1999 he was elected as the one Public Director (non-architect) to the national Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects, and is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.
A University of Chicago Ph.D. in psychology, he has been a Naval Officer, president of Esalen Institute, a faculty member of the Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, and a Fellow on the Human Relations Faculty of the Harvard Business School.
A student of social movements, Farson has had a long-time involvement with civil rights issues, notably his pioneering efforts on behalf of women’s and children’s rights, marked by his 1969 Look Magazine article, “The Rage of Women,” and his 1974 book, “Birthrights: A Bill of Rights for Children,” now a classic in youth rights literature, each of which was the first to bring to a national audience the need for liberation and policy reform.
Speeches:
1) The Power of Design
In recent decades architecture and the other design professions have moved increasingly into a business model, commoditizing themselves to meet market demands. In the process they have moved away from a professional model. Businesses serve "wants," while professions serve "needs." This has resulted in their subservience to their clients, and often to the compromising of their higher order professional judgment. As a consequence, the ability of these professions to exercise their power to address the global tragedy of a billion or more people without adequate shelter, or the great social issues of crime, illness, school failure, divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, and suicide, or to contribute to the realization of human potentialities in creativity, community, cooperation and affection, simply remains untapped.
The market will not pay for it. These are public concerns and must be funded as are the other professions that we cannot do without, such as education and medicine. This funding should be in the hundreds of billions annually, and represents a largely untapped field for architecture and the other design professions. But to make that happen will require leadership that can restore design to its professional status and its acceptance into high councils of decision making, leadership that can transform the current professional posture from protectionism to collaboration, leadership that can end the practices that seem benign but in fact undermine respect for the profession, leadership that can convince the public that architecture and design are at least as important to our development as are education and medicine.
2) Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership
This presentation draws from his critically acclaimed bestseller of that title, now published in eleven languages. About the book, management guru Tom Peters raved, "This may be the best book on leadership I’ve ever read." Fortune said, "If you are willing to look at your life, your career, and your company from an entirely fresh angle, this book may provide more surprises and insights than you will find in any ten other management tomes …" Making the case that paradox, or seeming absurdity, is the rule not the exception in all human affairs, Farson illuminates the otherwise puzzling and frustrating behavior of both individuals and organizations. In so doing, he equips managers with a powerful new way to cope with the dilemmas of leadership.
3) Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation
Recently, Farson, and co-author Ralph Keyes, published another highly praised, and highly contrarian book, of that title, casting new light on the subject of success and failure. The Miami Herald called it "inspirational and revolutionary." When ingrained attitudes about success and failure change, the meaning of every act of management changes too. This is especially true in the effort to stimulate innovation. Fostering innovation requires encouraging risk taking, accepting failure, and treating success and failure similarly, as steps to further achievement. Success and failure do not work at all the way most people think they do. Relying on conventional, outmoded ideas about these fundamental concepts stands in the way of a manager’s ability to innovate, compete, and stay ahead of the curve. (An article based on this book won the McKinsey award for the best Harvard Business Review article published in 2002, the one "most likely to have a major influence on managers worldwide.")
4) Management by Design
"Design" will be the byword in management during the coming decades. The reason is that the design of situations, environments and organizations, is the most powerful determinant of human behavior and achievement. More powerful than personality or leadership style or any other factor discussed in management texts. Compare, for example, a discussion at a round table with one at a rectangular one. The participants, agenda, time, and everything else may be the same but the interaction, leadership and outcomes will be importantly different. Or note the effect on creativity when a small autonomous unit is set up separately from a large organization (a "skunkworks"). Adding other social design concepts gives managers an important new approach to solving some of the most difficult problems they face, as well as a valuable way to elicit innovation. As a leader in both management development and design, Dr. Farson is uniquely qualified to address this new area.
5) MetaManagement: Transcending the Conventional
Although most books and articles addressed to managers would make it seem as if their responsibilities can be mastered by learning a few simple rules and skills, the fact is that management is extraordinarily complex and challenging, one of the most complicated roles in our society. It should be regarded as a true profession. The term MetaManagement refers to that higher calling, that transcends the ordinary. To meet the new requirements of leadership in the 21st century managers need to be aware of concepts not typically covered in traditional business school curricula. These include, of course, paradoxical management and changing concepts of success and failure. But they also include the new significance of situation design, the shifting characteristics of the modern workforce, the role of intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, the actual conditions that elicit innovation, the altered context of work—globalization, virtual organization, new technologies, and, of special importance currently, leadership and ethics. This presentation introduces managers to these still largely invisible forces that will increasingly shape their working environment, giving them potent new ways to approach their multifaceted responsibilities.
6) Educational Leadership in the 21st Century
Public education is in the midst of a crisis that threatens its very existence. The public is demanding improvement, but most of the changes demanded, and now being instituted, are counter-productive. Educational leaders are caught in one dilemma after another, trying to utilize the latest in pedagogical research, and at the same time trying to satisfy the public outcries. The entire establishment upon which our nation depends for the development of an informed citizenry and a civil society is in danger. School administrators need new ways of perceiving and coping with these dilemmas. Dr. Farson’s approach to this issue is described in his recent article in The School Administrator, Decisions, Dilemmas and Dangers, which appears in the Commentary section of this web site.