Tetrahedron of Productivity

The bottom line for management is the productivity of the workforce. The Tetrahedron of Productivity shows how this can and must be generated.

In the THEE model, the lowest section of the Tree can be conceived of as a tetrahedron because assigning authority-CG2B stands (imaginatively) above the others as the controlling feature in productivity.

Getting the structure of authority including specifications for each employee more or less right is one of the most difficult management tasks. Deficiency in the authority structure generally destabilizes the social order represented by the Tree.

ClosedHow to Get it Right

Structuring authority relationships requires the use of THEE principles and frameworks (either intuitively or deliberately). There is one key principle: get that right and much else sorts itself out. Get it wrong...and things get unnecessarily difficult.

Line-management authority must be set up to cross precisely «one level of work», as identified in THEE's levels of work-responsibilityframework. Line-management will be fatally flawed if it is set up within a level, or if it skips a level.

There are, however, important authority relations amongst employees within the same level of work. These pose less of a personal burden. The authority correctly assigned in each relation needs to be teased out with care.

Needless to say, any intrusions of politics, of favoritism, of fudging or pragmatic manipulation seriously damage sensible authority assignation-CG2B) and hence productivity.

That is why assigning authority-CG2 is notionally placed above the Triangle of Workplace Trust. This Triangle reflects Closed a naively attractive view of how work should take place in organizations. It omits and repudiates nasty things like control, authority and hierarchy.

Notions like «management oversight» and «management control» capture the necessary nature of this vertex.

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Originally posted: 30-Nov-2011