Reflections on the Prescriptive Nature of Requisite Organization Theory

Speaker A When I was in graduate school, one of the things I studied was general system theory. I became very interested in, um, in systems. I was fascinated as a teacher how my role as a teacher teaching undergraduate students was interdependent with the students understanding of their own role as as students. And I primarily studied the there's a large family therapy literature that's grounded in general system theory. And years later, one of the aspects of that that became really salient to me was the notion of a norm. It's an important concept within systems. And I remember reading cases where the youngest child in the family would play the role of a joker, and that was the norm in that family. When something happened that the tension needed to be broken, the youngest son would crack a joke, say something silly. And what made it a norm was among what kept the norm going was homeostatic mechanisms that if someone else tried to break the tension, they get punished for it. When the crisis occurs, everyone's looking at the youngest son to make the joke and so forth. The norms in almost all the literature I read were descriptive. What they were saying is, this is how this family operates. And this was in the 1970s. I recall reading one therapist, Minuchin, who talked about norms in a prescriptive manner, that this is the role that parents ought to play. And I found in the 70s very offensive, the notion that there are any oughts to it. This judgment came back to haunt me when years later, I read Elliot's APA Section 13 paper, I think it was called, in which he set out in a matrix the norms of a healthy organization. I forget all the columns in it, but the norms was one of, you know, the name of it? What what is healthy varieties of unhealthiness consequences of that? What do you need to do to correct it? And what he was saying is that it's not just descriptive to say that your temperature ought to be 37 degrees Celsius. There's an ought to that norm. And the ought is saying if your temperature is significantly off from that, most likely you're going to have some symptoms. And a key aspect, a key tool, diagnostic tool for the physician is not just the symptoms that the patient brings into the office, but also these norms that the physician can test is your temperature. What it ought to be is your blood pressure. What it ought to be is the balance of blood chemicals. What it ought to be and so forth. And in part, the ought to it, I guess, is to say when you have a temperature, when you have a fever, we don't typically say, gee, what can we do to allow the brain not to fry when it's this hot? Typically, what we say is, hey, we're too hot. We really need to bring the temperature down. We need to address the fever. This identification of norms is what allows you to do a diagnosis. Elliott used to say that you can't have a diagnosis unless you have a theory. I think what he meant by a theory, actually, was this whole system of norms so that we can now say, gee, do you have a one stratum difference between your managers and your subordinates and their level of accountability? Do you have a matching of people to their roles in terms of their level of capability? Are you paying people fairly for the work they're doing? Et cetera, et cetera? Now, the reason why these norms become so useful and so important is because they are interdependent the rest of the body, the rest of the human being will be in sync with the temperatures being 37 degrees Celsius. Good functioning in your car depends on the tires being at the right pressure, your alternator generating electricity at the right voltage, and so forth. The whole system is designed so that each of those parts interacts well. What we get typically in management literature is a much more piecemeal approach, so that we give in the area of compensation, we give incentives for certain behaviors, not noticing that that makes it very difficult for the manager to manage because the organization is giving out one message the more you do of x, the more money you'll make. And the manager, in the meantime, has to say to you, look, here's some stuff I need you to do, and I need you to do it just because it's part of your job. You're not going to get paid any extra for it. The incentives, in my experience, always make managing more difficult, not easier. The reason why we want one strategy difference between manager and subordinate is that makes the management practices easier. All of these areas. The reason why we want teamwork done not through some matrix system, but through the manager holding the subordinate accountable for operating in ways that are required by strategy. We now have a self consistent system. We typically get most of what I read in management is pretty declarative. I don't know if it's declarative at one or at five, but they're saying, try this. Oh, that doesn't work, try that. Collins again starts out talking about how everyone thinks that leadership not, not everyone, but he was quoting a literature that said, well, the answer to every question is leadership, and I suppose that answer can be given at stratum one or at stratum five. I think his approach was at six. I think he was cumulative, and he said, here are the what was it? Six. I think it was six characteristics of an excellent sorry, a great organization. So here are the six characteristics of a great organization, and you need to do all six of them. This and this and this. Now, I don't know if Elliot's system, I don't know if that's at five or at nine. What he's got is processes that I think can be done serially in terms of structure, in terms of management practices and so forth. And it's not just that as a manager you need to pull all of those strings, but you need to be able to describe the underlying concept, the model which is represent organization. The beauty of that system is that all of those pieces are recognized as being interdependent and each of his prescriptions is totally consistent with his prescriptions in other areas. And not only that, I would say each of his prescriptions for it to be fully followed through on requires that the others be fully followed through on. Downside of this, of course, is that you need to change everything. The upside is that there's no real starting point, there's no natural starting point. We say you start with structure. We say find out what the client's strategy is that determines the structure, which determines the staffing, and how you can bring in management practices. I find the natural starting point is wherever it hurts the client the most, where do they have the willingness to go through and change? Is it the structure, the staffing, the management practices? You do any one of those points? Well, it will highlight the rest of the areas that are out of norm, though I do find that the most powerful uplift is management practices. I think when managers are actually doing the management practices and are held accountable for doing them, that's going to generate the loudest calls for action, for where structure is ill formed or where staff, where people are not appropriate for the roles that they're in.