Applications of this Framework

Each approach can be used to address any discrete matter requiring action. Adherents advocate applying the same approach for every matter. However, the appropriateness of the application often depends on the issue and other factors as explained here.

Each approach, taken singly, lends itself to being taught and learned. Each is associated with its own distinctive skills, theories, knowledge, methods, and computer technology. To really use a decision approach well, even one that naturally suits you, demands both learning and practice.

It follows that it is possible, but by no means easy, to add a new approach to your repertoire.

Beware of the pragmatist in you getting excited by wonderful-sounding slogans from inspirational speakers. These require no learning whatsoever because they have little meaning independently of particular situations, where no objective criteria can be applied anyway.

Self-definition and self-development in managerial roles involve building on natural tendencies. Personal growth starts with ceasing inappropriate criticism or arguing about mentalities alien to your own.

Personal tendencies may have already shaped your choice of profession or type of work  e.g. intense rationalists become planners, committed imaginists become counselors, dyed-in-the-wool pragmatists become operational managers, empiricists go where facts are to be had and getting them is valued.

The logic, value and method for choosing a sensible subsidiary (secondary) approach to your primary approach is explained here.

You must distinguish between:

►feeling comfortable with an approach,
&
►developing yourself sufficiently to become confident and expert in its use

Any team needs a range of work-styles that are typically and naturally associated with the approaches.

If a team is to succeed: someone must feel at home driving action, someone handling procedural details, someone planning, someone being sensitive to group feelings, and so on. One person may need to carry several of these roles: but that is not always easy.

View from above:
Decision approaches are highly relevant to determining suitability for a particular post e.g. depending on the work to be done, a personnel post might require either dialectical or empiricist or imaginist or pragmatic attitudes and skills; a public relations department typically needs to be headed up by a rationalist or systemicist.

View from below:
Tempting as it may be to take a job that involves higher salary and status, you should seek to establish the approach that is likely to be expected of you by your boss, and whether you are comfortable with it.  A systematic manager achieving well in an ordered environment may be tempted by a CEO who respects him but offers promotion to run an intrinsically chaotic department. It won't be long before both parties wonder why the posting seemed such a good idea at the time.

Leadership requires you to get the right balance between systematizing and responsive ways of deciding.  This is the decision approach duality.

In the next section, these different styles are explained and varieties of leader are identified.

Research-consultancy has found that work at different levels of an organization's hierarchy varies in the way it ensures balanced management.

A derived framework to be posted will reveal a new natural way of handling management processes (e.g. policy development, program implementation &c) based on this decision duality.

The management culture of any organization (or department or team) reflects the prevalence of values from the dominant decision-making approach. All the approaches can and should be harnessed to generate the strongest possible management culture.

This framework was the first spiral trajectory discovered in THEE. These spirals depend on specification of the relevant TET.

Strengthening is an evolutionary growth process that must be encouraged and driven via its natural stages. The framework describes the nature of each stage, what values leaders must emphasize, what signals it is time to move to the next stage, and how the stages cumulate. Read more here.

Organizations can possess all decision approaches easily while individuals cannot. Any substantial endeavour requires all approaches because each naturally dominates a particular aspect of achieving.

The foundational domain is pragmatic because doing and appropriately handling others who work alongside is fundamental to the continuing existence of an organization. The operational systems in conventional organizations are primarily empiricist, growth and alliances are rationalist, the political domain is dialectical, the world of accountability is structuralist, strategic change is systemicist, and the ethical-creative domain is imaginist.

These various arenas are natural foci for development. The values associated with them, as identified for the growth of management culture, can be inter-related. The key choices associated with those values and their interaction provide a useful framework for organizational achievement.

While a person cannot integrate all decision methods, it is quite possible for a person to draw on key values of all modes of achievement that will be derived from the decision-making approaches.

This framework is similar to that for organizational achievement, but the relevant duality differs and the focus of a person is limited. So, while the Centres in the framework are slightly different, their inter-relationships have similar qualities. See the picture.

If the person is an entrepreneur within a start-up enterprise, then there is an unmistakable difference in the relevant duality that provides tension and dynamism. See the picture.

Working in an organization can be stressful, especially if you do not know exactly what to expect of yourself or what management can reasonably expect of you; or, if you are management, what is expected of management. These expectations are virtually obligations (if they are not explicitly so): so they need to be clarified.

From the spiral of cultural growth and framework of organizational achievement, it is possible to determine the requirements on a person employed by an organization. these requirements apply irrespective of their level of work, particular function or assigned authority. 

This structural hierarchy is explained here.

This framework makes it obvious that the thinking of The Management who are expected to function on behalf of the organization is rather different from the thinking of The Employee. Anyone in management is also an employee, so there is an inherent and often serious conflict of interests.

The majority of the population are employees, not entrepreneurs. For them, probably you, coping with being employed and handling management is a serious issue. Your life, not just your career, depends upon it.

Employees who are managers have great influence on the lives of others. They also have a significant effect on the organization. And many depend on large organizations: not just employees, but also suppliers, investors, local communities, partners and others.

Management has the task of handling employment for the organization. That means handling employees (recruiting and retaining them) and handling the work that employees must do if the organization is to thrive.

Two THEE trees may be derived from the structural hierarchy. These are two separate frameworks, each showing key factors and the dynamic interactions relevant to:

► being employed by an organization (for an employee)
► handling employment for an organizations (for a manager)