DR. RICHARD FARSON
TOPICS:
Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership
Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The
Paradox of Innovation
MetaManagement: Transcending the Conventional
Educational Leadership in the 21st Century
Management by Design
 Dr. Richard Farson,
psychologist, author, educator and president of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute
(WBSI), an independent, nonprofit organization he helped found in 1958, devoted to
research, education and advanced study in human affairs. Among his current
responsibilities, he heads the development of WBSI’s pioneering International
Leadership Forum (ILF), 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.
Dr. Farson is the
author of the critically-acclaimed bestseller, "Management of the Absurd:
Paradoxes in Leadership," now in eleven languages, and the newly published work
on success and failure, with co-author Ralph Keyes, "Whoever Makes the Most
Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation" (Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2002).
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."
Born in Chicago and raised in
Southern California, Dr. Farson attended the University of Minnesota as a Naval Officer
Trainee, Occidental College, from which he received both a bachelors and masters degree,
UCLA for psychology graduate study, Harvard Business School as a Ford Foundation Training
Fellow on the Human Relations Faculty, and the University of Chicago, from which he
received a Ph.D. in psychology in 1955.
At Occidental College, in the
summer of 1949, he met famed psychologist Carl Rogers, and began what was to be a lifelong
association. Rogers invited Farson to study with him at the University of Chicago where he
became Rogers’ research assistant and eventually an intern and counselor at the
Counseling Center and a research associate at the Industrial Relations Center. Farson and
Rogers collaborated over several decades on a number of research, education, publication
and media projects, including their widely-reprinted article, "Active
Listening," which introduced that term into the lexicon of human relations training,
and the Academy Award winning documentary film, "Journey Into Self."
Following two years of
postdoctoral active duty as a Research Officer (LTJG) studying motivation, morale,
leadership and training at the U.S. Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San
Diego, Farson entered private practice in La Jolla as a consulting psychologist. At the
same time he teamed with his former University of Chicago professor, Thomas Gordon, best
known for his books and programs in parent and leadership effectiveness training, to form
Gordon and Farson Associates, a management consulting firm.
In 1958 Farson, along with
physicist Paul E. Lloyd and social psychologist Wayman Crow, formed the Western Behavioral
Sciences Institute (WBSI), an independent, nonprofit organization devoted to research,
education and advanced study in human affairs. As president of WBSI during its first
decade, Farson led a number of research projects in education, leadership, communication
in large organizations, self-directed therapeutic groups and the use of mass media
approaches to community mental health. In the latter effort, he conducted the first
televised psychotherapy group in the series "Human Encounter," aired in 1966.
Upon being named Chairman of the
Board of WBSI in 1968, Farson left the staff to become the founding dean of the School of
Design at the California Institute of the Arts, where the emphasis was on social and
environmental design. Farson’s continuing interest in these issues is also evidenced
by his thirty-year membership on the board of directors of the International Design
Conference in Aspen, the world’s leading forum for interdisciplinary discussions of
the designed environment. He was twice elected its president, serving from 1976 to1980 and
again from 1994 to 1997. In 1999 he was elected the Public Director (non-architect) on the
national Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects, and in 2001 named
Senior Fellow on the Design Futures Council.
From 1973-1975 Farson was
president of Esalen Institute, an innovative educational organization located in Big Sur
and San Francisco, California. In 1975 he joined the faculty of the Saybrook Graduate
School and Research Institute in San Francisco, formed by the Association for Humanistic
Psychology, where he supervised the doctoral research of advanced graduate students.
Returning to the presidency of
WBSI in 1979, Farson guided the institute’s development of educational, scholarly and
therapeutic communities formed through the use of advanced computer communication
technologies. The centerpiece of this effort was the highly regarded School of Management
and Strategic Studies, a network of senior executives from twenty-six countries who joined
a distinguished faculty to deliberate together, via computer conferencing, on the new
requirements of leadership. This project, begun in 1981, launched the now burgeoning field
of online distance learning.
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," each of which was the first to bring to a
national audience the need for legislative and policy reform.
Throughout his professional
career Farson has consulted on management and human relations problems with a wide variety
of organizations including IBM; Westinghouse; General Dynamics; TRW; Digital Equipment
Corporation; Herman Miller Company; Kaypro Corporation; City of San Diego; U.S. Forest
Service; Department of Mental Hygiene, Los Angeles County; Planned Parenthood; Kresge
College, University of California, Santa Cruz; U.S. Army; and the World Economic Forum.
In addition to "Management
of the Absurd," "Birthrights," and "Whoever Makes the
Most Mistakes Wins," Farson has published two other books, "Science and
Human Affairs," (1967) which he edited, and "The Future of the
Family," (1969) which he co-authored. A theme in his writing for many years has
been exposing the paradoxes in human behavior, and to that end he is at work on a book
dealing with paradoxes in family life, in particular the counter-productive ways in which
marriage and parenthood are regarded in America, and the backfiring effects of the
misapplication of technique and skill training in the effort to improve relationships.
The International Leadership
Forum (ILF), which he serves as Executive Director, is the centerpiece program of the
current incarnation of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. The overall objective of
the institute is to increase the humanitarian use of the Internet. The ILF, therefore, is
conducted mainly online, augmented by an annual residential meeting in La Jolla. Its
dialogues address the policy and leadership implications of pressing global issues. They
range from the failed connection of top management to the growth of information technology
to the dangers of corporate concentration of media power to the growing acceptance of
deception in public life to the misdirected security measures in the war on terrorism to
the erosion of community in America to the problems of providing medical care to those
without access to the changing nature of leadership in global organizations.
"We have access to everyone who speaks".
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