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.

Determining the Order

My chosen order followed my contemporaneous work on the Inquiring Systems, several of which are similar and receive similar names e.g. Dialectic Inquiring System; Empirical Inquiring System; Rational Inquiring System. The ordering for five of these had been developed by C. West Churchman (who gave the systems philosophers' names In ascending order: Leibnizian, Lockeian, Kantian, Hegelian, Singerian Inquiring Systems. You may ask: Who is Singer? This is Edgar Arthur Singer Jr, a teacher of Churchman at the University of Pennsylvania.!). His knowledge was so deep and his work looked so right and beautiful, that I accepted it. My own work By a curious twist of fate this initial paper on scientific analysis had C.W. Churchman as a referee. He commented in approving it for publication: "...interesting, I've never seen anything quite like this." on the structure of scientific analysis, the Primary Hierarchyof Inquiry led me to realize that Churchman's Inquiry Typology He had omitted the two highest levels even though he commonly used them. was nested in its 6th Level. It was evident that the Types got their nature from the corresponding level in the Primary Hierarchy. Subsequently, I investigated the Primary Hierarchy of Action and this confirmed the ordering.

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:

• the axes' names such that: Y-axis = psycho-; X-axis = -social: here task v people
• plotting all the decision methods
• identifying the nature of the two diagonal sets:
  here LL → UR = systematic , LR → UL = responsive
• recognizing the unusual nature of the Pragmatic Approach
  

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.

More on the Discovery 

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 At the same time, development of the framework of "Realizing Values in Society" placed "culture" as the third Tetrad. This third Tetrad has become notable in many frameworks for the difficulty that people and groups have in using it properly. 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.

Background to Progress

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 .

Why It's So Difficult

There are approaching 100 different elements/names that have to be perceived and teased out with (initially) only the faintest sense of what the framework is supposed to be representing. These are not 100 physical things, they are human activities with distinctive functions and properties. These have to fit together like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle to produce an immensely satisfying picture of a whole domain of personal or social life.

How the Structural Hierarchy is constructed: Extract 7 elements from the originating hierarchy, and then combine adjacent levels in every possible way. Every combination must produce Groupings and Groups that are immediately recognizable as important psychosocial phenomena—all without resorting to clever word-play or neologisms.

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.

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Originally posted: 23-Dec-2011