Organizational Choices

Organizational Advantage

Any person only becomes truly expert and comfortable in, at most, two or three of the seven alternative approaches to decision-making (PH'1): because ►Closed their assumptions and methods are incompatible and conflicting.

By contrast, however specialized it may be, an organization must handle many varying situations to survive. The luxury of restricting activity to specific types of situation that suit one decision method is lost. But an organization, fortunately, does not need that luxury. The organization must value and incorporate all decision methods, and there is a simple solution to this need:►Closed Employ many people with diverse specialized skills and interests. Those in charge can then determine which decision approach is most relevant to the particular issue, and assign someone who is naturally expert in that method.

However, achievement by the whole organization could draw more easily on many decision approaches if there was a way to ensure sufficient compatibility and coherence.

Fortunately, we now know there is a way. Formulating management culture clarified that substantial compatibility can be obtained by focusing on distinct values, intrinsic to each approach. These were named: modes of achievement.

Strengthening the management culture takes time, but it is worth the effort in terms of its enormous potential to enable achievement.

Nevertheless, culture remains the context for work, not the work itself—i.e. not the efforts that produce tangible, desired achievements.

The actual work—in running operations and pursuing strategies for growth—must go on irrespective of whether the culture happens to be chaotic or sophisticated, improving or degenerating.

In discovering the Spiral that linked the 7 modes, the sequencing was altered, and that new, compatibility-oriented sequencing will apply here.

The spiral sequence of modes for achievement emerged naturally because each mode directly handles the nexus of critical problems in the previous mode.

The ordered sequence turned out to be markedly different from the initial ordering of the decision approaches.

As with strengthening the management culture, we continue to adhere to the following conventions:
► Roman numerals for the Decision-making Typology
► Arabic numerals for the Spiral sequence dealing with Achievement.

A fuller account of numbering shown in this Table is available here.

The letter C will usually be added in diagrams and text (e.g. CL1, CL2 &c. or CG1, CG2 &c.) to indicate the hierarchy is one that has emerged from the Spiral trajectory of growth.

End Result

Organizational choices interact with each other as part of a «dynamic» and evolving process. This framework provides a comprehensive picture of the factors and forces that enable an organization to achieve. You can see the final picture-answer before starting your journey.

You gain a deeper understanding when you explore step by step. Recall that THEE posits that an intrinsic tension, the dynamic duality, is required to convert a hierarchy of static levels to a Tree form.

  • The starting point is therefore recognition of the dynamic duality intrinsic to organizational achievement.

This framework can be adapted to assist any employee (possibly you) to achieve within your employing organization. It can also be applied to entrepreneurial achievement in a start-up. All that is required is identification of the relevant dynamic duality: it will be different in each case.

Originally posted: 2-Jul-2011