I went ahead and read some more of the Tata Sons material on their implementation of Billis’s (Rowbottom’s & Billis’s?) Work Levels. They use a two dimensional model to measure the level of work done within a company (see page two of the interview with Exec. Dir. R. Gopalakrishnan; the diagram is down the page). “Management Scope” goes up the Y-axis while “Company Scope” goes out the X-axis.
Not a bad way of looking at it except that it doesn’t work to illustrate their point.
They use a distance from zero measure to get the combination of the two factors. If one is in a very large (high scope) company that requires a lesser management scope (smaller time horizon, among other things), you would still end up in the higher complexiy level. If the situation were reversed — low company scope but high management scope — one would still be in the simplest total complexity band.
The idea is still pretty good. Maybe what they really want to measure a cloud. We need a few more dimensions.
Imagine that instead of their “distance from zero” measure, you used a elliptical diagram with zero as the center. You would then measure the area of the ellipse to get the total.
Image Credit: ADLER typewriter Model n°7 (Frankfurt / Germany). Unknown model date (probably ~1930/40). © Dake. (CC BY-SA 2.5)
