Work Naturally.
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.
Jesse Poore, the University of Tennessee professor, is interviewed by ACM’s Ubiquity for his recent article in IEEE Computer, “A Tale of Three Disciplines… And a Revolution”. Poore talks about how if we made correct specifications, our software would work. While I agree that software should not fail as often as it does, I think that he misses the point …
Blanton et al. did a small study in one metropolitan area of IT professionals, measuring variables that the earlier literature on professional obsolescence and how they interact with these IT pros keeping up (professional development to avoid obsolescence).
