Time-span
Up to: | Organistion Type | Description of Work | Required Human Capability |
50 years
VII
(Strategic) | Trans-national Corporation
'Corporate Prescience' | Create major social institutions and shape organisational culture/values in relation to global needs. Maintain systems capable of developing, establishing, operating and dismantling Level V units.
Global environment. | Previewing: contributing to the future by playing an active part in bringing new configurations of nations, markets, ideologies, social institutions into being Developing world-wide strategic options. Creating business units via growth, mergers, acquisitions, joint -venture. Working in a collegial way. |
20 years
VI
(Strategic) | Groups; Corporation
'Corporate Citizenship' | Interpret organisational strategy and objectives. Make judgements about the world environment in order to select options and determine priorities. Filter environmental instabilities for business units in order to give them a semi-stable context.
International environment. | Revealing: generating a range of perceptions of complex Level V systems and filtering the social, political and economic contexts in which they operate. Viewing peer relationships as collegial. Creating trans-national networks - intellectual, economic, social. Screening the environment to identify and influence developments that might affect projects. |
10 years
V
Tactical / Comprehensive | Business Unit
(Corporate Division)
National Company
'Strategic Intent' | Manage a business unit within corporate policies and contribute to creation of corporate strategies. Create culture through vision/ mission.
Working within a national environment. | Weaving: making relationships between previously unrelated material. Creating general rules and redefining fields of knowledge and experience. Engaging with an open context and deciding when it should be closed. Operating a complex 5 level system, modifying its boundaries and coping with second and third order consequences arising. Seeing elements explicitly as inter-dependent; to change one part is to change the whole. |
5 years
IV
Tactical / Comprehensive | General Management:
Division, Function
'Strategic Development' | Co-ordinate given activities of operating units and consider and develop alternative operating processes to maximise efficiency. Translate mission into practices and procedures appropriate top operational efficiency.
Environment includes networks within /out organisation | Modelling: maintaining contact with what currently exists and detaching to conceptualise something completely different - not a modification but a point of departure. Contrasting and comparing alternative operating systems and alternative modes of deploying or modifying them. Maintain a patterned structure within which hypotheses are tested. Handling a number of interactive projects, each adjusted in relation to the others. Networking within and without organisation in relation to function. Beginning of collegial thinking? |
2 years
III
(Operational) | Operating Unit
(mutual recognition)
Department
'Best Practice' | Adjust, modify and fine-tune an operating system in order to cope with changing trends and make the most of the particular operating system.
Environment = system | Connecting: extrapolating from given rules and handling ambiguity by creating new connections with defined systems. Moulding operating tasks and methods into a system of direct work and fine-tuning that system to cope with changing trends. Making plans, balancing future requirements against current activities, holding other options in reserve, should original plans be ineffective. |
1 year
II
(Operational) | First-line management
Section
(mutual knowledge system)
'Service' | First line management of a group of operatives who are producing the outputs.
Internal environment which is somewhat unpredictable | Accumulation: generating different perceptions of a given situation; organising perceptions in alternate ways; handling ambiguity by polarising. Putting together a programme of operating tasks in order to accumulate knowledge about their aggregation and to change the programme in the light of the given situation. Working on a case-by-case basis, in an environment dealing with others. |
3 months
I
(Operational) | Direct Output
'Quality' | Responsible for direct operating tasks.
Largely predictable environment of self-product
© Copyright Sheila Rossan, BIOSS 1994 | Touching and Feeling: seeing the world through a few focused dimensions and engaging directly with physical objects, serving people, one task at a time. Following one assigned plan to a goal; overcoming obstacles by direct-trial-and-error judgements as met en-route |
