Tag Archives: hierarchy

The Lynchpin in the Framework

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Could it have anything to do with time?

Order is what we know. Chaos is what we don’t know. Most people talk about the past, up to the present time. It is tangible and concrete. By studying the patterns and trends of the past, we can forecast the future, with some reliability. At least for a day. After two days, that reliability begins to break down and by the time a week is passed, reliability becomes a crapshoot with probabilities and margins for error.

The leader is not the person who can best predict. The leader is the person who is comfortable with and can effectively adapt to the uncertainty of the future. The lynchpin in organizational structure is timespan.

Discretion is about decision making. The timespan of discretion defines the uncertainty in a role. We reserve certain decisions for certain roles based on timespan. Timespan helps us understand specific levels of decision making. And there is appropriate decision making at every level of work.

  • S-I – appropriate decision making from 1 day to 3 months
  • S-II – appropriate decision making from 3 months to 12 months
  • S-III – appropriate decision making from 1 year to 2 years
  • S-IV – appropriate decision making from 2 years to 5 years
  • S-V – appropriate decision making from 5 years to 10 years

Timespan helps us understand specific levels of problem solving. And there is appropriate problem solving at every level of work.

  • S-I – effective problem solving using trial and error
  • S-II – effective problem solving using documented processes and best practices
  • S-III – effective problem solving using root cause analysis
  • S-IV – effective problem solving using multi-system analysis
  • S-V – effective problem solving using internal system and external system analysis

Timespan is the lynchpin that defines the framework for organizational structure. It provides guidance to the complexity of the work. It provides guidance on who should make which decisions. Timespan provides guidance of who should be whose manager.

Most importantly, timespan structures the value stream necessary for a hierarchy of competence. This hierarchy of competence defines accountability and authority. Elliott describes this as a management accountability hierarchy (MAH).

Dilemmas in the Construction of Hierarchy

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With a group of competent people assembled in the same room at the same time, now what? Why organize, how to organize?

Without a why, there will be no coordinated effort toward anything. Most organization founders begin with a personal why, a defined mission and that’s the beginning. The mission may shift over time based on market conditions, maturation of the CEO or maturation of the organization.

How to Organize?
With a defined mission, someone still has to decide what to do, sequence of what to do and resources required to do. In the beginning, it’s the founder. As the organization grows, decisions are distributed from the founder to others. But to whom? And with what authority? We now have a hierarchy, intentionally or by default, based on some value. The nature of that value will determine the nature of the hierarchy and determine its energy flow. Organizations get to pick that value. If the value is power, we create a power hierarchy, not sustainable.

If we create a competence hierarchy, decisions made about what to do, sequence and resources can now be based on competence. The proper distribution of decision making and problem solving goes to those roles the organization identifies as requiring the most competence.

Degrees of competence determine which roles make which decisions. If we draw this on a piece of paper, this is organizational structure. But, what is the design criteria for competence? How do we determine, or consider who may be more competent than another? In a competence hierarchy, we certainly contemplate that we are going to have more than one competent person, so who gets which decision?

These questions determine how we divide up the work, who will have the authority for which decisions and who will be accountable for the outcome of those decisions. At some point, we run into conflict. The conflict may be about the priority of a resource, priority in a sequence or if a task needs to be completed at all. If there are layers of decisions, how many layers? Who decides?

This seems like a ton of questions to answer, and the questions keep coming. How do we define the working relationships between people and keep it all straight? What is the framework to guide us? What are the metrics in that framework?

We started with chaos and order. How do we examine the chaos to find the lynchpin that brings order to the organization? I am a structure guy. If you get your structure right, your issues related to motivation and management largely go away. What’s the lynchpin?

Flow in a Hierarchy

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Hierarchies are naturally created as a sorting process using a defined value. If the value is power, it’s a power hierarchy. If the value is command, it’s a command hierarchy. If the value is control, it’s a control hierarchy. If the value is competence, it’s a competence hierarchy.

Flow
In a power hierarchy, energy flows from those with the power. Authority is assigned to those with the power. Decisions are made by the person in power. Problems are solved by the person in power. Critics of hierarchy likely have this value stream in mind and complain about top down, command and control. It’s not a bad argument, but their angst is directed toward hierarchy, not power.

What’s so bad about a power hierarchy? There are a number of problems. First is organizational speed. If all decisions have to made by those with the power, the speed of decision making will slow down or stop. If all problems have to be solved by those with power, the speed of problem solving will slow down or stop.

If decisions require local knowledge about the subject at hand, those with power must stop to learn the local knowledge. If decisions require technical expertise, those with power must stop to learn the technical expertise. The decision slows down.

If the power hierarchy vests power in those who have the power (circular reference with a purpose), how do those in power remain in power? The only basis for remaining in power is by edict, corruption or tyranny. The justification resembles the parent response, “Because I said so.”

The initial response from a child is obedience because the child is dependent on the parent, but the impact on the psyche of the child is none too positive. “Because I said so,” eventually creates counterproductive sandbagging, passive aggressive behavior, outright defiance. The endgame for the child is to create a condition of independence and leave the family, sometimes not so amicably.

The impact in a power hierarchy is that team members will seek to become the person in power or they will leave. Except for those employees who remain dependent on the structure for their own survival.

Those who seek power in a power hierarchy will use whatever means to gain that power, which may include intimidation, tight control, harboring knowledge and deception. Those who leave create a turnover statistic which eventually gets noticed by HR. And those who stay, because they have no other option, will behave in all manner to remain in the good graces of those in power. None of these scenarios create the culture of a thriving, forward looking, innovative organization.

But, what if the value in the organizational hierarchy was one of competence? A hierarchy of competence.

Water Flows Downhill

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It’s a plumbing analogy, but demonstrates a law of physics.

Hierarchy is a value sorting process to bring order to the chaos of the world, order being what we know, chaos being what we don’t know.
Hierarchy, in a functional organization, is a value stream characterized by competence. We build the organization based on the competence required in the roles in our design. A visual picture of our design, on a piece of paper, looks like our organizational chart, our organizational structure.

Organizational structure is the way we define the working relationships between roles, related to accountability and authority. The way we define the value in the hierarchy determines the energy flow and whether that organization is functional or dysfunctional.

If the value is power, the organization will be a hierarchy of power and its energy will flow based on power. If the value is command, the organization will be a hierarchy of command and its energy will flow based on command. If the value is control, the organization will be a hierarchy of control and its energy will flow based on control.

And, if the value is competence, the organization will be a hierarchy of competence and its energy will flow based on competence.

Water still flows downhill. 

Hierarchy as Framework

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Can the hierarchy change based upon the nature of the work?

Response:
Hierarchy is just a framework. The framework gets populated only by those functions and roles necessary (Lee Thayer) for the work of the mission. So, yes, it changes.

A painting contractor with 20 employees is likely an S-II organization. Team members play roles as painters, and helpers at S-I with a supervisor and a scheduler at S-II.

A software developer may have no team members at S-I, with coders at S-II and S-III. If it’s complex software, likely a senior project manager at S-IV, CEO at S-V.

Structure may also change over time. Many years ago, I worked for a CPA firm who made most fees from bookkeeping services at Hi-S-I. Review of the books was done by supervisors at S-II and the work product delivered to the client by a manager at S-III. Between 1986 and 1990, computer accounting systems emerged inside of our client companies and all of our bookkeeping services disappeared.

So, hierarchy is the framework, but the business model (the work) defines what sits inside the framework.

Hierarchy of Competence

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Hierarchy, of anything, is based on a defined value. In a proper organization, hierarchy is based on competence.

Competence in relation to what? Competence in relation to the work.
Work, defined as decision making and problem solving. Competence begins with the potent combination of capability and skill. A competent person must possess the necessary cognitive capability and the skill to exercise that capability. Skill is a potent combination of technical knowledge and practiced performance. Practiced performance is the expression, the application of competence.

The first question in organizational structure is, who should be the manager? Hierarchy in an organization is based on a value of competence.

Natural Hierarchy

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Order out of chaos. What we know and what we don’t know. There are people in the company now. As the mission was discussed, some left, some stayed, some enrolled. Those that are left have to work together, but in what way?

Organizational structure is simply the way we define the working relationships between people. Some of those relationships are vertical. Vertical working relationships are described as managerial and define two things. In that relationship, what is the accountability of each person? In that relationship, who has the authority. Accountability and authority. And, so, a manager is born.

But, who should be the manager? The instant the founder selects a manager, a hierarchy emerges. Some modern companies decry, that because they are modern, they have no managers and thus no hierarchy. Some modern companies believe that hierarchy is an evil social construct that should be banished for social good. But, if there is no manager, there is no hierarchy. If there is no hierarchy, there is no accountability and no authority. And chaos re-emerges.

Hierarchy is a natural sorting of value. Hierarchy is a product of nature, not a social construct. Value can be placed on many things. For mate selection, the value may be attractiveness, physical, chemical, economic. The Tinder swipe is based on a hierarchy of value.

For a company, the value is competence. The organizational structure is a hierarchy of competence. A person climbs the ladder of organizational hierarchy based on their ability (capability) and expression of competence.

Discontinuous Levels and Hierarchy

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This is a series on Teal and Levels of Work. Here is the backstory for the series in case you are interested. The purpose for the series is to explore the tenets of Teal through the lens of Levels of Work. Links to each post in this series, below.
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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
In your post yesterday, you said that growth (of capability) is nested in discontinuous levels and that these discontinuous levels were readily observable. What did you mean by discontinuous?

Response:
An electric car has a continuous power-train and no gears. It goes from minimum to maximum in one continuous power curve. Humans are more like a multi-speed transmission, where each gear winds out to its maximum, shifting into the next gear.

Jean Piaget was the pioneer who observed distinct stages in childhood development.
Non-verbal sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), where objects that cannot be sensed (seen or heard) do not exist. I have five fingers on each hand, but hands behind my back means I have no fingers at all.
Pre-operatonal stage (2-7 years) where symbolic language emerges to indicate relationships, though relationships are ego-centric, the child is the center of its universe.
Concrete operational stage (7-11 years), where the understanding of tangible concrete elements are organized, and abstract, conceptual elements are barely understood. Attention span (timespan) at age 6 increases from fifteen minutes to one hour at age nine.
Formal operational stage (11-18 years), where cause and effect logic, abstract conceptual elements are recognized and assimilated.

Elliott Jaques continued these observations of discontinuous stages throughout adulthood (age 20 through age 70).

  • Symbolic Declarative (S-I) – Timespan – 1 day to 3 months
  • Symbolic Cumulative (S-II) – Timespan – 3 months to 1 year
  • Symbolic Serial (S-III) – Timespan – 1 year to 2 years
  • Symbolic Parallel (S-IV) – Timespan – 2 years to 5 years
  • Conceptual Declarative (S-V) – Timespan – 5 years to 10 years
  • Conceptual Cumulative (S-VI) – Timespan – 10 years to 20 years
  • Conceptual Serial (S-VII) – Timespan – 20 years to 50 years
  • Conceptual Parallel (S-VIII) – Timespan – 50 years to 100 years

Cognitive development is not simply how many problems are solved within a time-frame. All problems are not created equal. Some problems are more complex than others, and that complexity is discontinuous.

For example –

  • Problem solving at S-I – Trial and error.
  • Problem solving at S-II – Cumulative diagnostics, comparative.
  • Problem solving at S-III – Root cause analysis, cause and effect, single critical path.
  • Problem solving at S-IV – Multi-system analysis, capacity, dependency, contingency, velocity.

Each of these stages in problem solving requires capability at that level. Levels of capability are observable and distinct, become the basis to understand levels of work. Levels of work define the framework for organizational hierarchy.
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Here are all the links to this series on Teal and Levels of Work.
Teal and Levels of Work
Hierarchy is Just a Shape
All Problems Are Not Created Equal
The Question of Accountability
Teal and Theory of Constraints
Hidden Hierarchy in a Self-Managed Team
Accountability and Authority
Behaviorists Without Children
BAMS and Teal
Back to Hierarchy, For a Reason
Most Teams are Functional, Few Are Accountable
Manifest-Extant-Requisite
Stratified Levels of Self-Organization

Stratified Levels of Self-Organization

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This is a series on Teal and Levels of Work. Here is the backstory for the series in case you are interested. The purpose for the series is to explore the tenets of Teal through the lens of Levels of Work. Links to each post in this series, below.
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Some interesting responses, as this series evolved. Over the next few posts, I will feature some of these with my own thoughts. This post comes from Jan De Visch in Belgium. More of his thinking is in his book Dynamic Collaboration: Strengthening Self-Organization and Collaborative Intelligence in Teams.

“A false assumption in the Teal movement is that every employee can grow to a level of self-awareness from which self-management becomes possible. Scientific research shows that this is not the case. One needs to acknowledge the variety in developmental levels of participants in self-organizing teams. An essential insight is that self-organization only works in larger contexts if you start to distinguish different types of dialogue spaces (We Spaces), which are nested in each other, and each with their own dynamics. Hierarchy is sometimes an effective answer to breaking through downward divided team dynamics. Thinking through the stratified nature within self-organization is the first step towards Teal’s sustainable development. This notion is not elaborated in the Teal movement.”

I would break this down, that a person’s self-awareness is a product of their capability (observed) and that self-management emerges (and blossoms) within that capability. Cognitive development within individuals translates into cognitive capability in the team.

De Visch’s description of dialogue spaces is consistent with Jaques observation that timespan and its concommitant evidence is language. Our ability to imagine into the future begins at a very young age with the simple words, “Once upon a time.”

Self-organization exists within stratified levels of work. Growth toward that self-awareness (and self-management) is nested within discontinuous levels. These discontinuous levels are readily observable and create the hierarchy that Teal might resist, except where it acknowledges hierarchy of recognition, influence and skill. Elliott would argue that hierarchy is more precisely identified as capability.
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Here are all the links to this series on Teal and Levels of Work.
Teal and Levels of Work
Hierarchy is Just a Shape
All Problems Are Not Created Equal
The Question of Accountability
Teal and Theory of Constraints
Hidden Hierarchy in a Self-Managed Team
Accountability and Authority
Behaviorists Without Children
BAMS and Teal
Back to Hierarchy, For a Reason
Most Teams are Functional, Few Are Accountable
Manifest-Extant-Requisite

Back to Hierarchy, For a Reason

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This is a series on Teal and Levels of Work. Here is the backstory for the series in case you are interested in the context. The purpose for the series is to explore the tenets of Teal through the lens of Levels of Work.
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If the purpose of hierarchy is not a power-grab, then why does hierarchy naturally exist as organizations form?

I recently ran into this issue in an organization with nine levels of managers. Without a guidepost to levels of work, people got promoted by reason of longevity, title instead of pay-raise, geography, too many people under a current manager, favoritism, nepotism. Totally out of control. The solution to organizational complexity was to add more people, more titles, more layers.

When hierarchy is grounded in levels of work (not power and not in nonsense), those layers naturally appear in the context of problem solving and decision making. AND, when we can see the distinction in the level of problem solving and the level of decision making, who-becomes-whose-manager is now a matter of organization sustenance.

We have explored the structure at Buurtzorg over the past couple of weeks. As an example of Teal, captured in Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, the who-becomes-whose-manager is left to circumstance, not clearly defined and when it happens, designed to be temporary.

In Requisite Organization, based Elliott Jaques‘ levels of work, the who-becomes-whose-manager is based on accountability. Indeed, Elliott describes Requisite Organization as a Managerial Accountability Hierarchy, “a system of roles in which an individual in a higher role (manager) is held accountable of the outputs of persons in immediately lower roles (team members) and can be called ‘to account’ for their actions.”

Elliott would describe the accountability for each manager, to bring value to the problem solving and decision making in the team. This is not a suggestion, this is a mandate, an accountability. Managers are required to bring value to the work of the team. This is not a power structure, but a value-stream.

I was reminded that Teal is not structure-less. While the nursing teams are well described by Laloux, the rest of the structure is not, so let me make some guesses.
S-II – nursing teams, accountable to deliver direct nursing services. (Longest goals and objectives 3-12 months.)
S-III – regional coaches and institutional facilitators, accountable to ensure nursing teams are working effectively in that delivery. (See prior post on Teal and Theory of Constraints. Longest goals and objectives 12-24 months.)
S-IV – integration executives accountable to ensure the output of nursing services works within the medical community and government ordinances for financial accommodation and payment. (Longest goals and objectives 2-5 years.)
S-V – would be Jos De Blok, the founder of Buurtzorg, accountable for enterprise design and value in the marketplace. (Longest goals and objectives 5-10 years.)

Each level of work is defined by context in its decision making and problem solving. When this hierarchy occurs (naturally), it creates organizational sustenance, intentionally, with purpose.
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