Organizations of all stripes from family to political party structure themselves in some way.  Whether hierarchical,flat or any of the other numerous formations possible, their is always some shape.

Elliott Jaques

Years ago I had the great fortune to do some work with the renowned Canadian organizational pyschologists, cretor of the stratified systems theory.

His basic concept is organizational work crosses descrete levels (strata) and each level adds value of a specific quality.  The types of work at each level can be classified by length of time to complete, complexity and level of reliance on earned or granted power.

For Example

Consider a hypothtical organization where the work is building planes. This organization has five organization stratum or levels.  The work at each level contributes to the job at hand, i.e., building of planes, but the level of detail at each level is very different,

Examples of the level of detail and concepts at each level follow:

• Level Five

This is the strategy and definition level.  We build high quality planes at a low cost (the direction is set)

• Level 4

o&The strategies start to take shape.  Our planes are for civilians, cover medium and long range flights and will appeal to full service airlines

• Level 3

Details organization and planning begins.  We’ll focus our engineers on 12 to 18 month build cycles using locally sourced products with just in time delivery.

• Level 2

Down to details.  Our wing manufacturing plant have a staff of twelve responsible for assembly of all aspects of the wings producing 2 wings a month.

• Level1

The wings are manufactured.

To be continued in tommorows post.