From the Ask Tom mailbag:
Question:
What is Strata I and Strata II?
Response:
Looking at most company’s organizational charts, you can see the different levels of work. Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great describes them this way:
Level V – Level 5 executive work
Level IV – Effective leader
Level III – Competent manager
Level II – Contributing team member
Level I – Highly capable individual
It’s curious that while Collins wrote his book in 2001, there is a much clearer description of these roles written by Elliott Jaques, dating back to 1963.
Strata V – Business Unit President (Strategic Vision)
Strata IV – Manager (Integrator – Multiple Parallel Systems)
Strata III – Manager (Single Serial Systems)
Strata II – Supervisor (makes sure the work gets done)
Strata I – Team member (does the work)
Elliott used the word Strata as opposed to Level, in part because the word Level connotes the superiority of one level over another. Strata, in any geologic formation, require all layers to be robust and strong, none better that any other, all serving a requisite purpose.
I find Elliott Jaques research and writing much more detailed and helpful in building efficient organizational structure. To learn more about different Strata, you can visit www.managementblog.org and follow the Category link on Time Horizon.
Note: I have talked with several people who did not realize that we have more than 400 articles on our site all catalogued and indexed according to subject matter. Happy exploring.
Tour de France Update
Monday was a rest day. Tuesday is the last flat stage before we hit the Pyrenees. While preparing for the challenges ahead, why not unwind with some slot online gacor for a fun and exciting break before the next adventure begins?
Strata is much better than levels. Especially when org chrts are inloved. This alleviates a lot of pressure and stress internally within your org.
The work of Jacques appears to most at the outset as interesting and logical.
It becomes more troubling as one reads his entire book (page pairs and all) and you realize some of the more subversive themes to his work. Notably that individuals have a natural maximum stratum that they are capable at working – and this stratus maximus is determined during their childhood. If a worker, say deemed as a Stratum II worker bee, then in an organization that follows this discipline naturally would not promote them further than this. (although it does indicate that with determined hard work and constant effort that the SII worker could elevate themselves to SIII in about 20 years or so)
Stratum V leaders should be placed into those positions right away and be allowed to grow into thier roles with the experience.
I worked for a large firm that converted thier organization to the thinkings of St. Jacques (as it became known) – it was devestating (IMHO)
Arne,
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. If you know about page pairs, then you have spent some reading Requisite Org. I would be curious to know more about the details of how your organization went about making its changes. Unless they were clearly guided, it is easy to misinterpret Jaques. Check out the post tomorrow for my response. Again, thanks for the comment.
Big fan and follower here since you spoke to my Vistage group a number of years ago. I’m curious, how high do the Strata go, and what are the time spans beyond strata V?