Hierarchies, decision making and a real-life example

Mon Apr 5 12:45:32 PDT 2004

Here are some constructs I find useful when helping top-down hierarchies become more healthy. [these apply better to  employment based organizations  than to membership, professional or community groups]
  a.. hierarchies are healthier when they induce trust, reflect layered nests of increasing accountability and capability and serve to actualize potential  - both that of the organization's purpose AND its members
  b.. pathological or dominator hierarchies achieve their ends by the [implied] use of force - physical, emotional, verbal or positional
  c.. naming and formally establishing a hierarchy is only helpful in stable space, where outcomes and procedures are predictable enough that more formal structure can be put in place [ie maybe after a good Open Space! Self-organization is always happening, but in stable space the variances are small or slow enough that visible formal hierarchies can be helpful for communication, if they are healthy
  d.. accountability is about 'being called to account' for your own effectiveness and [if you are a manager] for the outputs of others [think Enron, or any of the other corporate scandals, where we hold the top people ultimately to account]. It is not about responsibility, or the normal felt human passion to contribute, which will occur - wherever it will occur!
  e.. a healthy definition of accountability is about service and support, eg "a manager is accountable for her/his personal effectiveness, for the outputs of others, for sustaining a team capable of producing those outputs and for giving effective leadership to that team". Notice how this shifts the prevailing view on its head, ie if I don't 'deliver the goods' and I've done my best, then it is my manager who is held accountable, as it is they who [should have] ... agreed to have me on the job, trained and coached me, secured the resources, budget etc to help me do my job. Found more often in the breach than in fact!
food for thought/conversation?
Meg Salter

MegaSpace Consulting
(416) 486-6660
meg at megsalter.com

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: chris macrae 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 11:01 AM
  Subject: Re: Hierarchies, decision making and a real-life example

  Wonder if anyone could help me with NOT reinventing the wheel on an extended question about hierarchies (albeit not a pure open space question)

  I have decided I want to survey when is top-down organisational hierarchy useful (and not useful) as

  well as how can  hierarchy interact with useful and not useful impacts on self-organisation, co-organisation, inter-organisation (as where 2 or more organsiations truly partner each other)

  Here are some 'guesses'. Has anyone seen more definitive research in one or more of these areas:

  1 Hierarchy has good impacts on human relationship systems when

  -All know who & how biggest decisions are made

  -Authority has respect for expert-decision status but doesn't cause person bossing nor block bad/change news flowing up

  -Top people care deeply about goodwill=how deeply caring organisation is around its greatest human context. This identity proacts around core; top people should cultivate a further out sense of vision & use that to give people as much time as possible to prepare for relevant change (competitive/environmental)

  2 Teams have good impacts when:

  Hierarchy does not get in way of social dynamics of team; eg

  Often team performance is inhibited if personal performance measures or timesheets drive company

  Teams need various positive emotional intelligences:

  Eg trust to share to the full; focused happiness to be energised and learn to accomplish the full.

  2.1 Teams also need to be classified by type which will detail extra nuances:

  Eg a 24 hour service team such as healthcare or an airline crew is different from project teams, and other parameters include within organisation or for external client, co-located real or with aspects of virtual/global

   3 -The extra of social networks (SN) of individuals multiplies value of an organisation's relationships:

  in areas the internal organigram can't traditionally connect: it may be happening outside the organisation, too tacitly  for explicit process to be valuable, or emerge Next innovation skill we'll need

  -particularly in the innovation situation- a knowledge audit should discover who's best to multiply this fast however junior, possibly giving them a boardroom sponsor as and when formal attention and connection of the new skill will be needed across organisation

  Vital SN applications include security of cities, venture capital banking, scouting for sports superstars, R&D sectors where innovation will need to link diverse competences which company can't own all of, software when developed as a standard?

  Chris Macrae, wcbn007 at easynet.co.uk

  All above meant to be conversation not definitive answers! But passionate line of inquiry for me just now

  * * ========================================================== OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: 
  http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html * * ========================================================== OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: 

  http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20040405/a05e7aed/attachment-0016.htm>