How Type of Communications Determines Work and Organizations

Speaker A Once I had grasped this, I'd had to deal with the fact that in the seven levels of work, there were similarities and resonances. With seven levels, should we say, of action or the seven levels of inquiry or the seven level, there were resonances. But of course, resonance is a correct word. They're obviously different. And one of the dramatic differences was that in level six, in these other things, you had another seven level hierarchy. It was a different sort of hierarchy. It was like a seven level topology. In other words, there were seven types in the hierarchy. You have a sense of one encompasses the other and one implies the other, and there are links between the two. They're all part of one thing, really, whereas in a typology you got seven types. They can exist independently. But I was concerned about the formal. Formally, you follow it like mathematically, how could this be? I mean, it must be something different. And I came to the conclusion that the levels of work, I felt the others were more primary, to be honest, that there was something absolutely primary about experience, about action, about inquiry, that work is complicated, work is a complicated concept. So it had somehow emerged from something. It was not as fundamental. And I thought, well, perhaps it's emerged from communication, because in order to work and this is one of the things that Elliot and Rafe emphasized at each level you see the world differently, different things are important to you. You talk about the world differently, you handle. And even then, and I didn't realize it then, as I do now, is that once you've articulated a purpose in your mind, the next thing you have to do is communicate it. Because if you don't communicate, it doesn't become real. So communication suddenly became very fundamental. It was one of the fundamentals. If purpose was fundamental, and I thought it was, because in fact, remember, all these entities had been defined by function, which is purpose. So purpose is fundamental, experience is fundamental, acquire is fundamental, communication is going to be fundamental. So I found a wonderful book, and it was amazing how when the pupil is ready, the teacher appears. And the teacher was often a book for me now and then it was a person. And in the case of Elliot for that, it was Elliot. But the book was called The Language of Mind. I can't remember who wrote it. So when it came to communication, these were the elements, right? Stimulus is the smallest element, which is what you have. In all these are the smallest element. Then sign, signal, symbol, word, which is the most a word is a symbol, a signal, a sign. It can be all these that's typical of your hierarchy and this sort of encompassing nature. And then we have language system, and then at the highest level, understanding as a mode of communication, which is sort of I assume that may not be correct, but anyway, it's what the best I could do to define that entity? So all the language systems were going to have to be built by reflection on those seven levels because that's how it works. And by sort of reflecting and some reading and just working at it and using the sort of heuristics that I developed over the years to help me do things, it was clear to me that the most basic language system was a very concrete one. It's the sort of language you have in software manuals, or when you buy flat pack furniture, take plank B, orient with grooves upwards, move section C to the right. In other words, every word relates concretely to something, to an action. To an action, yeah, that's right. That's procedurally, logically. One, two, three. Then you had words are really representative and this is where where they relate to this is the language of information. And it is not really precise, right? But in an organization, when you say get me the schedule, the person knows what you mean by the schedule. The word schedule represents something or other which is shared among the people there at the next level, language is built on concepts. Now, concepts are things that are defined and that creates a sort of precision. So schedule as a concept is different to schedule. It's a different type of discourse. Different level of discourse. That's right. The level above that is the level which I call universals, in which words are universals. And it is the language used by journalists. So it's a good example to see that when you read a journalist article and it's an area that you don't know about, it seems to read, you seem to feel you understand it. But when you read it in an area where you yourself know, have expertise or experience, the article seems absolutely horrific and seems to be completely wrong. And that's because they're using language in a particular way such that everybody can understand it. It seems to have meaning for everyone. The level of that, you have the language metaphor, where words are really evoking the spirit of reality. That's what they're there for. The level above that, you have words. The language system is formulaic. In other words, the words have a direct correspondence to reality. What I've been talking about, naming psychosocial entities, is a formulaic approach. And finally you have word as image. So for example, in the beginning was the word. What does that mean? Right? In other words, which is a language through images, which is another way. Now, what levels of work showed us was that each of these languages existed in four modes, levels one to four in information. So there had to be four modes, and then five, six, seven in concept level five, six and seven in concepts. But logically, if there's going to be four modes in information, language represent there are going to be four modes in all of them. The basic formula articulate and asserting, accumulating and choosing systematizing involving multiple systems was going to apply to each of these. So we're going to end up with 28 levels. Furthermore, if levels of work went in this 28 level of structure from 5567, 910, eleven, then there was going to be another domain which started at nine and went on, and there was going to be another domain which started at 13. And it was easy to see actually what these domains were. Some are easy, some are more difficult, but let's do the easy one. What domain of work? Because we think we're talking about work in all this. Because if those are levels of work, these other things are going to be, in some sense, work. Well, what domain is built at its fundament? Not on information, but on concepts which are defined academic disciplines. Academic disciplines are built on. And that to start work in an academic discipline, you have to be able to use its concepts. You have to, at the very minimum, be able to articulate and assert those concepts. You look at a lab technician via Technology Lab or Immunology Lab, they can articulate and assert concepts. They couldn't do their work if they didn't. They're working at level one within that academic discipline. What about the next one? Well, that's basically the domain of what I would call societal work. This is where politicians work, for example. They have to be able to this is where judges work. This is where journalists work. Do they work in organizations? Well, that's a separate issue, right? Because if they work in an organization, you got to organize their buildings and their human resources, whatever. But of course, what you find is that you've often got, in these organizations, two chiefs. You've got an editor in chief and you've got a chief executive. Because a chief executive is trying to run the tangible organization. The editor in chief is trying to run this societal enterprise and so on. At the top, which might interest people, of course, the work is artistic work, which at the first all levels is image, and then recycles down the bottom to making. Because all artists have to actually make something concretely. They actually have to put paint on the canvas, or they have to put brass or whatever into a mold or wax into a mold or whatever. So there's this basic making. They're back down into this most tangible form. So it's a cyclic structure.