Review of Framework Development

Decision Typology & Its TET

THEE, the Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour, gets its logic and power from human action. It is not a theory of human action, but an observation and categorization of human action looked at from within the person.

The Decision Typology was discovered long before the existence of a comprehensive taxonomy or the possibility of deriving related frameworks was ever imagined. The uncertainty at that time lay not in the constituent Types or the completeness, but in their hierarchical ordering.

ClosedDetermining the Order

The discovery that a Typology of incompatible systems (Types-Methods) could be converted into a Spiral of compatible systems (Modes-Values) occurred in relation to the Decision Typology.

At a very early stage, the TET (Typology Essences Table) was plotted using a common convention in the literature. It took 15 years for me to recognize the psychosocial nature of the axes and incorporate that convention within the taxonomy.

Although the significance of a TET was not understood, it is now apparent that its important features include:

Spiral of Management Culture

Despite the limitations of my knowledge, I learned from multi-year organizational transformation projects that the management culture was a primary focus for positive change. Once the significance of management culture (and not just any culture) was appreciated, the discovery of the Spiral just fell into my lap.

ClosedMore on the Discovery 

It was blindingly obvious that pragmatic cultures were the baseline state in organizations. The initial intervention was invariably to restructure so as to clarify roles, authority and reporting relationships and get the right people into jobs. In my consultancy, this was in accord with THEE principles. But any experienced management consultant would diagnose similarly and likely produce considerable improvement.

However, after a couple of years, when the new structure was fully staffed and bedded in, problems emerged that screamed out for dialectic resolution. Once that penny dropped, it created three points with an easy-to-see move to rationalist values, and then onwards in a second cycle by intuitive extrapolation. Over the years, societal developments provided addtional validation of this progression.

However, it took a little while to work out all the details and test it in practice. It was more difficult to specify cultural modes of management that were not yet common in organizations.

Clients were often disturbed by the incompatibility of the approaches. A significant side-benefit of this discovery was the conversion of incompatibility to compatibility by focusing on:

► the value context of decision approaches
as distinct from
► the activity content of decision methods

Achievement in Organizations

The discovery of a Spiral and awareness of culture had an additional effect. It changed the focus twice:

■ decision → achievement
■ the person → the organization

The Tree implied by the Spiral was identified but never fully developed or published or even properly named. But it was used in consultancy at times. For a thousand reasons, not all of which I would be proud of, the workings of this framework were not given the necessary thought. That is how matters stood for 20 years.

ClosedBackground to Progress

The full pattern of development starting from a Typology was never understood or pursued until I made the decision to investigate Politics for TOP. That has its own story. Rapid progress in unraveling Politics combined with my determination to show what reflection using THEE principles could accomplish. This led to a series of tentatively valid frameworks.

The big commitment was the leap from the Typology of Ethical Choice (PH'6) to the Spiral of Political Maturation (PH'6C). Fortunately, I had struck gold, as this led naturally to the Tree of Political Choice (PH'6CK), which in turn led to the Structural Hierarchy of Political Life in a Society (PH'6CsH), which led to the Tree for Handling Political Tensions (PH'6CsHK). You can see a fuller review of this process.

I started work on Decision-making about a year after completing the modeling of Politics. It was natural to assume that a similar evolution of frameworks would develop. It may perhaps look rather obvious now, but it was not obvious at the outset. It was confusing, as usual.

The first step was to get 100% clear about the general context for decision. It was like one of those primary school math puzzles: 

decision :  ??? :: ethical choice :  politics

I concluded that the unknown value was «achievement».

The other comparable was easier:

decider/actor/worker : ??? :: citizen : society

The unknown here surely has to be «organization».

So the Tree of the Determinants of Choice for Organizational Achievement (PH'1CK) was named about twenty years after its discovery.

There were, however, significant improvements in understanding that led to enhancements to the rudimentary Tree. This enhanced clarity was not theoretical. It led to the development of two new frameworks: one for employee achievement within organizations, and the other for entrepreneurial achievement.

Expectations Underpin Achievement

The next step is (for me) the most strenuous and frustrating. It is to create a Structural Hierarchy from the Tree. This is a rather demanding form of structural corroboration .

ClosedWhy It's So Difficult

It was apparent at an early stage that the organizational setting created an extra wrinkle in analysing. It took some time to determine that there were three distinct perspectives in play that must on no account be confused:

● the organization's which was wholly impersonal,
● the employee's which was wholly personal,
● the management's: a personal representative of an impersonal organization

The requirement of the organization, shown at the top of the diagram, had to be interpreted differently by management and by employees: shown at the bottom.

Employment = Relationship

Finally, by homology with Politics, there would have to be a final Tree. One created by turning the Structural Hierarchy on its side and seeing Grouping-1 (CG1) as Level-1, and so on upwards.

The biggest difficulty here was to grasp that this was a framework of employee relationships and dealt with unavoidable work-related social tensions. It was not about performance. Get the handling of employees right, and performance would follow as night follows day—assuming, of course, that the Tree of Achievement was being well operated.

Another difference from Politics was the need for two Trees. One Tree for Management, who have to handle employment of employees for the organization. This entails:

● finding and keeping employees
plus
● managing the work they do.

There was also the Tree for Employees, who have to deal with the state of being employed by an organization and working with its management. This entails:

● looking after personal interests sensibly
plus
● working hard, effectively and enjoyably.

Final Thought

Much of this journey must have seemed harping on the obvious and even unnecessary, but as Galileo said: "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered: the point is to discover them."

There is a lot more to discover within THEE's PH1: Action-Decision-Achievement. THEE is still mostly a vast expanse of unknowing.

Originally posted: 23-Dec-2011