Common Issues

Opponents of hierarchy claim that it stifles innovation and creativity. Exactly the opposite should be the case when levels of work and THEE-based line management are instituted. Nevertheless, even effective structures commonly degenerate into bureaucratic rigidity. Attention must be given to the management culture and actively moving beyond dependence on structuralist values.

In relation to concerns about stifling initiative:

• Higher levels of work can be performed in any post if it only involves the part of the organization for which the person is responsible, or if it is specifically authorized.
• Lower levels of work can be performed in any post so long as the expected higher level work is not neglected.
• Cross-level interactions of all sorts are positively supported by a well-designed hierarchy. Any staff-member can cooperate far more easily with another elsewhere in the organization if each has the well-defined expectations that can only be provided by applying this framework and defining authority relations.

More

In practice, certain cross-level and cross-functional interactions are particularly significant, and these are explained further in the framework for organising management.

More aspects of staff interaction can be understood using a framework derived from the self-interested perspective of interacting-for-benefit (not yet posted).

• There may be flexibility in assigning work-level to a post. Assignment is determined in practice by:

• current work demands &
• aspirations for development.

The greater the aspiration, the higher the work-level and capability required to meet these. However, if that aspiration and higher-level assignment are genuine, there must be corresponding evidence in social reality as follows:

1. For a role within an organization, there should be appropriate privileges in relation to access to resources, provision of support staff, access to senior management, use of personal time &c. Often much of that is missing—the promise of high level work turns out to be just talk.
2. In regard to the organization as a whole, aspirations might relate to the size or social impact, to funding required, and to the quality of staff to be employed. The CEO must have the necessary calibre to handle these matters.

• Avoiding specification of the work-level is unhelpful. Broad terms like «hospital manager» or «factory manager» may sound powerful, but they could be at any level from WL2 to WL5. In such cases, actual size does matter e.g. there are community hospitals too small to be run at WL3, and general hospitals that are too large to be run at WL3.

Quantification and Work-Level

You cannot determine the work level required by simple quantifications like size of budget or staff numbers, as these do not measure responsibility. To appreciate responsibility, you must look at the actual complexity of the work i.e. the diversity of functions, the type of tasks required, the development expected, the time-span till success can be evaluated.

Example: 
In considering the responsibility of a ward sister in terms of beds or nurses in the ward, you will find that an intensive care ward has just 4-6 beds and more nurses than a geriatric ward for chronically ill patients with 25-30 beds.

Irrespective of organizational size, work may be required at all levels even in the smallest entities. Size only affects whether full-time posts within the outfit are appropriate. The challenge for any organization is therefore to ensure that all necessary work gets done at all levels. Failure at any level may well lead to collapse of the organization.
Reminder about Size

A one-man outfit, say a window-cleaner managing at WL1, barely qualifies as an organization, although it could incorporate. A corner-shop with perhaps one or two assistants is a proto-organization running at WL2 with its systems often provided by outside bodies. An organization proper starts at WL3: but its ability to handle change, expand territorially and increase social impact is rather limited. From WL4 upwards, organizations become larger and employ more and more staff in specialized functions. The price of an enhanced social strength is greater managerial complexity. WL6- and WL7-enterprises have WL5-subsidiaries, each of which may be small or large.

• Just because a person holds a high level post and is paid a small fortune does not mean that high level management is occurring. It is evident that leaders in big organizations often think that throwing their weight around or borrowing vast sums can substitute for working responsibly.
  
• It is all too common for those at HQ to lose all sense of what happens with customers/clients. This is because the «real work» where such interactions occurs is at a low level in the organization: most commonly WL1 (for products and services), or WL2 (for services like advice, appraisals and diagnoses).
• Small consultancy outfits built around 1 or 2 partners, often provide a much higher quality of service than large bureaucratized firms. The leader not only sustains the mission and basic parameters (WL7), but ensures with associates that the necessary WL3, WL4, WL5, and WL6 management work gets done. Then all deliver high quality WL2 assessments to clients.

Needs at a lower level of work are always more immediate and more pressing than at higher levels. This is because they are more concrete and directly engage with external reality. So if that work is not done, then disruption or external intervention is likely to occur. In poorly designed or under-staffed structures, managers feel regularly «dragged down» into work they do not wish to perform.

Managers may also willingly work briefly at lower levels. To deal with situations, managers at higher levels find they have to regularly zoom down and work there. They resolve the matter, and come back with fresh understandings. Zooming is not possible for those working in HQ (at WL6 & WL7).

Start-up Frustrations

A single person starting up a small business quickly finds that time and attention get taken up by trivial but nonetheless essential tasks (WL1 or WL2). These consume attention needed to put essential WL3-systems in place and manage WL4-programs for development. It is not always easy to employ assistants and delegate low level tasks, because their training and management may take precious time.

Jobs are typically described in heroic and fantastical fashion that gives little idea of what actually is expected. Titles are inflated so that a WL1 plumber is called a «sanitation engineer»—which sounds like it might be a WL2 title, or even WL3.

Instead of focusing on the essential issues of calibre and work output, most jobs are advertised with requirements that apply to every job because they are simply intrinsic to any endeavour-RH e.g. commit willingly (RL7), think strategically (RL6), communicate effectively (RL5),tolerate frustrations (RL4), handle change (RL3), solve problems (RL2), make things happen (RL1).

Other common features in job descriptions are intrinsic to line-management e.g. manage time, develop other staff, set priorities, provide leadership. (Of course, that does not necessarily mean that line-management is properly instituted or that the person is given requisite authority to function like this!)

Amidst this mess, there is a single beacon: the salary being offered. It represents a down to earth reality not subject to spin and distortion. So the easiest and usual way that any applicant assesses the level of work expected is through the salary being offered.

Holistic hierarchies possess oscillating dualities revealed as Levels are ascended i.e. odd- and even-numbered Levels have opposite qualities. That applies here but capturing it in a phrase is tricky.

Organizations definitely reveal a difference between management work at the odd-numbered levels of work, and at the even-numbered levels.

The WL1, WL3, WL5 and WL7 levels all have charge over a coherent system, whose boundaries usually seem clear and natural. In designing the roles, there is an acceptance of what seems to be there, or should be there.

The WL2, WL4 and WL6 levels, by contrast, have a system that is expedient and even uncertain. In designing the structure, there is often a need to determine and insist on what is to be covered. Some subordinate roles in the levels below may appear to be arbitrarily pushed together.

This phenomenon also shows up in comparing whole organizations that have instituted different numbers of management levels.

From the perspective of managing, the oscillation fits the inquiry-initiative v acceptance-adaptation pattern: see diagram. The easy-natural levels are where acceptance-adaptation is the feature.

«Levels of work-responsibility» was developed for conventional old-economy organizations with tangible goods and services i.e. the QH2-domain. However, even new economy organizations (QH3-domain), have tangible issues to handle e.g. buildings, personnel, management accounts, quite apart from managing their intellectual work and knowledge output.

So the findings here are relevant to all organisation and management, even if they do not engage the raison d'etre of organizations in other domains-QH•.

Much criticism of hierarchy has come from small (or initially small) new economy organizations. Some is valid, but much is not. Design of these organizations will be examined in detail later.

• See ordinary work.

All work and all organisation of work must be viewed as a response to personal and social need. If the need is not there, then the work will not be rewarded. Resources will be drained in the effort to sustain such projects.

This need is taxonomically a social value-PH6-L5. No distinction is made between whether the need is a «real need», beneficial for each and all, or a manufactured desire or self-destructive wish. Communities are built around the needs agreed by their members, regardless of their rationality.

The service (including production of goods) that meets those needs is taxonomically an entity defined by its principal objects-PH6-L4 i.e. organizations and projects are set up to perform activities driven by the values alive in the community.

It is up to the community to ensure that its values are genuinely good. In any case, the community rewards work that serves its values via prestige and/or profits.

• See more on needs and services and social territories v service territories.