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Tuesday, 05 October 2010 00:26
What’s in a name? How we talk and write about what we do.
Wilfred Brown and Elliott Jaques spoke and wrote about their original concept breakthroughs as “The Glacier Project”.
Then Jaques writing alone called his approach Stratified Systems Theory.
Jaques’s colleagues at BIOSS (Brunel Institute of Organizational and Social Studies) adapted these concepts and called their approaches The Work Levels Approach and The Matrix of Working Relationships. At a later stage in his theoretical work, Jaques renamed his now more complete management system Requisite Organization.
Subsequently, various colleagues Jaques mentored created their own copyrighted names for their own derivative approaches, Accountability Leadership, Accountability Based Organization Design, Accountability Based Management, Organization Design, etc. Some practitioners credit Jaques and some do not.
Third-generation practitioners with some adaptation call their work DMA, Decision Making Accountability, The Integrated Model, amongst others.
What’s in anonymity?
A large number of practitioners use the methods without naming them at all.
We have evidence that these methods were introduced to GE in the early 1970s and again in the 1980s and that they became part of GE’s five-level business units and their talent pool management and broad banding systems, yet key people in the company are unaware of the original source of these ideas: the DNA lives without recognition.
A number of companies describe these same levels of work and accountability concepts as their own management system when communicating with employees and stakeholders: The Roche Management System, The Novus Management System, The Tembec Management System, et. al. Some credit Jaques, some do not.
How hard must our audiences work to connect the dots? -- to see that these variously named efforts are essentially the same?
So some observers say that levels-and-accountability-based organization design (Brown’s and Jaques’s work) is dying. They read the business press and no longer see articles about Elliott Jaques or organizations using these concepts. They may read the best selling book on talent management, The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company by Ram Charan et al, but can’t connect the dots to see that the described system represents the living spirit of Brown’s and Jaques’s Glacier Project in GE, one of the world’s most admired corporations. The same DNA lives largely unrecognized in Unilever, Shell, and Tesco.Some of us in the Society hypothesize that major applications of the work are unseen like the base of an iceberg. While Six-Sigma has a copyrighted training system to produce its famous black belts, with regard to the levels-and-accountability work, a chain of events and market forces have led to various copyrighted names to describe essentially similar work. As a result we find ourselves in a market place with no single flag or brand to help managers recognize the work we do, connect the dots and appreciate the work’s extent and importance.
Should we be concerned?
Raising our own consciousness first, then others'
At incorporation, our Society considered taking the name, Global Requisite Organization. However, as requisite organization was the title of a copyrighted book, we registered ourselves as the Global Organization Design Society.
The scope of Ken Craddock’s Requisite Organization Annotated Bibliography surprised Elliott Jaques and all of us all with the extent of research, writing and application over the years.
The Society’s seven years of video interviews, conferences, and publications documenting the work have provided further foundation, confidence and connectedness among us.
We must now look to explore what we can do to strengthen our individual and collective messaging to tell the world about this important work.
Your comments on the options you see before us are most welcome!
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Professional associations & universities that support and / or co-market society conferences
New York City, USA
IBM International
The Argentine Human Resources Association
The European Organization Design Forum
Canadian Association of Management Consultants
Human Resource Professionals of Ontario
Human Resource Planning Society
An institute for advanced human resources professional development
An association of academics, business users and consultants headquartered at Aarhus University in Denmark
A USA based association
A Toronto-based association of advanced HR practitioners
An Argentine Society for Quality Improvement
The Argentine Society for Training and Development
The Argentine Human Resources Association
Federation of Human Resource Associations in Latin America
The Buenos Aires Technological Institute
An professional association for public service employees in Canada
A management consulting firm in Toronto, Canada
Forrest and Company, Toronto, Canada
A global network of associate consultants headquartered in Toronto Canada
Toronto, Canada
USA
Australia
USA
USA
Toronto, Canada
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Web site credits:
2003 to 2007 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. of KAA Systems developed the first HTML website and two subsequent generations
2007 to 2010 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. redesigned and transitioned the site to Joomla and Moodle adding user friendly modular features and E-Learning capability
2010 to 2012 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. maintained and improved the site
2013 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and his Requisite Agility team at Miracle Group volunteered strategic advice and redesign of the home page
2013 to Present This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., the society’s current webmaster completed transitions first from Joomla version 1.5 to 2.5, and recently to 3.4 constantly expanding the site’s features and capabilities.