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Work, Work Everywhere, But Not a Drop of Understanding

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 6, 2007 

Not all work is the same.? Would you agree?? Aren’t some roles more complex than others???Having a definition of work levels and a common language to discuss them would advance the field of management by leaps and bounds.

I went to a business simulation yesterday and the crowd was loaded with human resource and organizational development professionals.? The group was arbitrarily divided into three groups:? the tops, the middles, and the bottoms.? Each group was charged with making money for “the company” and each person with advancing his/her career.? The odds were against the bottoms.? Their opportunities to earn were less, and because there were double as many of them, their earnings were divided by more heads.?

Fair Does Not Mean Equal?
This well intentioned?group quickly began to dismantle the companies “systems” in order to create an egalitarian workplace.? The tops were nobly looking for ways to get the earnings divided equally amongst all levels.??

When you are in a room face to face with other humans, the fact that we all? inherently have equal worth can cloud the fact that some are accountable for more complex work, and as such, should be paid more.? When it comes to compensation, fair pay does not mean equal pay.

Hierarchy Hysteria
When futurist books and articles predict the end of hierarchies, I think they aren’t looking at the work but rather the faces of the employees.? Hierarchies will always exist because work exists in a hierarchy!? Granted, hierarchies as we currently misuse and misunderstand them, need to be eliminated, but hierarchies are the foundation of the universe.? They are not going away.? Let’s seek to understand them and use them to our benefit, not eliminate them.

Clarification through Stratification!!
We often vilify what we don’t understand.? If we understood work levels, when we talked about innovation, we could specify which level of innovation we were referring to instead of confusing one another by implying it looks the same at all levels.? When we talked about competencies, such as leadership, project management, or sales skills, we could specify by level.? Competencies look different at different levels and call for different capability.

• Leading a team of equipment operators is leadership but it is different work than leading a team of executives.
• Organizing a seminar and luncheon for a local chamber of commerce is project management, but it is different work than organizing a week-long international business conference.
• Asking a customer?if they want fries with their fast food order is sales, but it is different work than being accountable for ensuring McDonalds chooses Pepsi products instead of Coke when the contract is renewed in 5 years.

Just as H2O can be present in the forms of steam, water, and ice, work exists in different states.? These can be measured and observed.? Any role in any organization in any country can be stratified into one of eight levels.??Correspondingly, as our hierarchical universe would have it, human capability to solve problems can be stratified?into levels as well.? Once this is understood, it paves the way for sane-making organizational design, talent management, and managerial leadership.?

Recommending Reading?
Elliott Jaques discovered these truths decades ago, and you can read more about them in his books, Executive Leadership and Requisite Organization.? If you are interested in integrating your people systems – selection, performance management, leadership development, succession planning, managerial practices, organization design, strategic execution (through people), embedding values into operations – after my blog, these books are the place to go for information gathering.

I’m OK.? You’re OK.?? Let’s fix the system.

Your thoughts?

Filed Under Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization

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