Business and Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome is the classic problem of becoming so engaged with our captors that we end up identifying with them. It happens over time, and if we're the captives, seems to make absolute sense. It requires hard work by those who care for us to help us understand what is going on.

It has been going in in organisations generally, and business in particular for some time. We identify with a problem so much that we give it a respectable seat at the table.

'Wellness" seems a good example. We create ways of working that are so toxic that we create whole departments to address what we have created and in doing so, legitimise the problem to the point where it becomes invisible.

It was therefore a breath of fresh air to read an article on Octopus Energy, a billion pound fast growing energy business who gets it. It has few of these ancillaries, and no HR department. The challenges reside where they belong, with the people who run the business.

There's a very telling line in the BBC article by …