Work Naturally.
After reading Harald Solaas’s article, “Why Requisite Organization (RO) Theory Is So Difficult to Understand”, I’m pretty convinced that he’s right: the starting point for describing Requisite Organization is not mental processing — yes, it is pretty cool, even then — but that Requisite Organization represents how people naturally want to organise in hierarchies. Requisite Organization is an emergent function …
![Employees at Mid-Continent Refinery [ca. 1943 Tulsa, OK (LOC). By John Vachon]](https://i0.wp.com/www.manasclerk.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2179123915_75b400bf47_o-men-group-Employees-at-Mid-Continent-Refinery-c-1943-Tulsa-OK-LOC-Vachon-John-e1377964113665.jpeg?fit=862%2C519&ssl=1)
In order, let’s go over what I think are the truths of Requisite Organization. Some of this comes from a result of reading Solaas’s article (see my other posts for a link) and some from fighting through my own questions. And, yes, I know that TSD is validated and I already have the Craddock bibliography. That wasn’t quite my question …
Time Span of Discretion is what determines the size of the role, and not some measure of “complexity”. Harald Solaas, who wrote a comment to “Does Requisite Organization Really Work Over the Weekend?“, has written an article entitled “Why Is Requisite Organization (RO) Theory So Difficult to Understand?.” In it, he relates the following story about working with Elliot Jaques …
West reviews the philosophical underpinnings of the battle between structured programming and object-oriented programming. It’s an interesting read, as he goes back to the basic fight between the rationalist/formalist Enlightenment camp and their pesky detractors, variously called “hermeneutics”, “constructivist” or “interpretationalism”.
When I asked earlier about whether Elliott Jaques’s Requisite Organization could really work over a weekend, I was asking a specifically micro-question: Does changing the structure of the organization produce “instant” results in individuals? I got an answer about the macro question I wasn’t asking: Jaques just doesn’t talk about the process by which the change occurs, from old structure …
I propose that arguing from the top down makes more sense. The board can determine an appropriate Total Compensation (TC) for the CEO. We then take that and divide to get the lower ranks’ pays. Let’s take a real-life example, American Express’s CEO and President, Ken Chenault.
There’s something missing in Jaques’s Requisite Organization theory, which is described in the ideas of social networks. There is something missing in social network theory that is described in RO theory. Interestingly, both “solutions to the ills of contemporary Western civilization” are socially based, rather than psychological.
In Waltzing With Bears, Lister and DeMarco describe the benefits of running IT projects within a portfolio. Not every one of them would have to succeed: you could take on several very high-risk (but high-payoff) projects and balance it with several low risk / low payoff projects. Having low-risk/high pay-off projects would be great, but most of the time those …
Is there any evidence, even from your experience, that Elliott Jaques’s Requisite Orgainzation (RO) will solve the Model I problem of defensive coverups that Argyris describes? Does it really work over the weekend, so to speak? [full post]
Raccoon describes the basics of learning curves — they go down and start at the top, so you actually want them to be as steep as possible to get back to parity and start process improvement. He points out that all people learn.
