Cycle-2: Social Challenges

Cycle-1: Stage-1 to Stage-4 to Mode-1

Cycle-1 was about moving from asserting the need for simple obvious outputs, to self-consciously planning and organising for substantial achievement. As a successful Stage-4 project-entity inexorably grows, it starts to impact socially.

As a result, the social environment starts exerting countervailing pressures with little concern for whatever achievement is desired. These pressures generate additional challenges and new complexity, which is managed with the sophisticated modes of Cycle-2, starting with an awareness of the need for strategy.

Stage-5: Evolve Strategy

derived from t5-shape evolution.

Essence: Expanding organizations find themselves needing to handle interactions with their context. Entities here are diverse and autonomous: markets and competitors, communities, governments, other organizations, industry groups, employee and discipline-based associations, activist and social groups, the media, churches, &c.

Consequence: The environment is dynamic, often unpredictable, and not susceptible to management control. The only possibility is to maintain liaison, try persuasion, and generally adapt. The management skill is to continuously shape operations so as to ride social forces and co-evolve with the environment.

Enough is enough: Organizations that incorporate strategy to govern their own development can persist and thrive without more sophisticated organisation,
but …

Pressure: The organization is now subject to a variety of challenges: often competitive, but also activist and political, regulatory and fiscal. It becomes easy to lose the plot. Staying the course adds a new degree of complexity related to values.

Stage-6: Formulate Policy

derived from t6-impose guidance.

Essence: In steering its operations through a social maze, all staff (many of whom will be labeled as managers) must be clear about what is most important and what the main goals are. So this must be formulated and communicated internally.

Consequence: The organization specifies its priorities and its strategic objectives i.e. the main outcomes desired for the entity as a whole. (Remember that outcomes and outputs are not the same.)

Enough is enough: Managing that incorporates policy to govern all activities can persist and thrive without more sophisticated organisation, but …

Pressure: The organization is now a powerful participant within the community, with a constant dedicated focus on its own values and goals. The issue is how that power will be used, and that raises the question of standards now visible in public. This ethical dimension adds a final quantum of complexity.

Stage-7: Control Identity

derived from t7-set parameters.

Essence: The organization must be able to revise or renew its mission, and position itself appropriately in the social environment. This must be communicated externally so as to continuously attract and keep staff and customers (or clients or members or shareholders).

Consequence: The organization determines its own identity and recognizes its multiple responsibilities to the various stakeholders. Maintaining standards and balancing obligations in the face of temptations allows for maximum advantage.

Note: Outputs are no longer about what is prescribed on an intuitive obvious basis, or even what is defined and delivered within costed programs, but rather focus on what is maximum and feasible given determined well-organised and adequately-resourced initiatives. So there is a re-entry to Mode-1 further down the ellipse.

Enough is finally enough: Organizations that control their own identity (while ensuring all capabilities, values and methods from lower Stages are properly sustained) are managing as powerfully as is possible. That power should be used wisely and beneficially.

More? Any entity may get larger (if that makes sense), but there are no greater complexity challenges that can emerge, and no need for more sophistication in managing.

Common Questions

Q: Why have the names of the methods changed?

A: A Stage is not about using a method as such but a general manner of working using principles based on appreciating the value of the method. In other Spirals, e.g. Politics, the Method becomes a Mode and their cumulation is called an Ethos—and yet there are no name changes. A change of name seemed helpful here to facilitate an understanding of Levels of Management within organizations, which is the next THEE architectural transition.

Q: Why can't a lower Stage of organisation handle a higher Stage method (e.g. have policies or set ethical standards)?

A: It can and should. That simply follows the principle that any method can be used at any Stage, just as it can be used at any level of management in an organization. However, no organisation of work at one Stage can fully realize the values of a later Stage because energies are being captured elsewhere, and the pressures and opportunities are less evident.

Q: Why can't there be other combinations e.g. when I specify outputs, why can't I simultaneously set parameters?

A: You can certainly set parameters in relation to outputs but that is just giving more detail about your needed outputs i.e. that is not using the «set parameters» method of managing. The essence of setting parameters as a method is that you give the worker full discretion to specify the outputs. So in the one project you cannot both specify and assign specification. However, in the face of complexity, your project will need both the specification of essential outputs and certain assignments where outputs are not specified. (Note that you would not permit that freedom if key priorities and outcomes (Stage-6) were not already established.) In simpler situations, you may have two different jobs/projects which you manage in two different ways. That is not the same as combining within one job/project.

The Stages show an oscillation in orientation between initiatives based on inquiries and adaptations based in acceptance. See diagram.
If you convert this Spiral of Strengthening the Organisation of Work to a hierarchy (as usual in THEE architecture), you will discover the Levels of Management in Organizations, developed in detail in the next section.

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Originally posted: 13-Dec-2013. Last updated: 17-Jan-2014