Healing from wounds. The Art of Scars.

Kathy Hagler has been an organisational consultant for almost 40 years but prior to that was a pianist, a mathematics teacher and a college dean. It was while she was working as a college dean that she first met one of her mentors, Dr Edwards Demings. When he discovered her background in music and mathematics, he offered her the opportunity to work with him and she travelled with him extensively across the US as his ‘Girl Friday’ for over twelve months. At the same time, she was doing a Phd at Claremont College where she met her other mentor Dr Peter Drucker who was her major advisor and he also went on to become a personal friend. Kathy has taken the thinking of these two pioneers of management forward through her practice K2OH Solutions where she focuses on culture and climate and the reciprocation between them using her Organisations of Character Model which embodies her belief that culture drives every aspect of development, learning, execution, and reflection.

In her childhood Kathy suffered from a number of illnesses. Later on, her twenty-year old son was killed in car accident and her husband died shortly afterwards.  Kathy herself was then diagnosed with cancer so over the years she has developed a number of scars. She feels though that she can relate to the physical, emotional and spiritual scars she had. She then realised that organisations are similar in that they too have wounds and, like people, they can break and can heal. Kathy uses the Japanese art of Kinstugi or "gold joinery” as a metaphor for healing scars with both people and organisations. An ancient Japanese art, Kinstugi repairs a broken object by emphasising its scars with gold powder which creates a unique version of the original object. Kathy’s vision is to introduce the idea to people and organisations that you can break but you can heal and that if we put ourselves back together with gold, we are stronger and more distinctive.

Kathy’s work with organisations has shown that fear is often present. Her process is to show organsiations how to turn fear and brokenness into healing and then understand that they have healed from their wounds. Fear sits in the subconscious but this is the culture of the organisation so we can find out where the fear is coming from.  The fear can be removed and raised up into the conciousness so they can innovate and be better than before.

Kathy understands that people and organisations are imperfect and emphasises the importance of being upfront and honest about our flaws and mistakes. She helps organisations heal these “wounds” as she transforms organisations to one of character, trustworthiness, and resilience.

 You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Kathy here. Our previous podcasts, upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more about Kathy here.