Complexity vs capability
Fabiaan Van Vrekhem
Partner
Accord Group Belgium
What do you see?
Do concepts help YOU to see what you are expected to see?
When are systems and means to an end?
When do they make an end to a meaning?
What really makes the difference
Experience & knowledge , personality or capability?
… in stable conditions
“ knowledge and experience allow judgement”
… in new / uncertain conditions
“ then what is it that makes a difference?”
Elliott Jaques (1917 – 2003) – founder of BIOSS
•
•
Graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Earned a Ph.D. in social relations from Harvard University,
•
Created BIOSS (Brunel Institute of Organization and Social Studies) – a spinoff of the Brunel
University).
Gillian Stamp took over as Director in 1974. Gillian led Bioss for twenty-three years and
expanded it across the world.
•
Became well known for :
Social Power and the CEO (2002)
• identifying the "mid-life crisis“
• and his breakthrough discovery that a
person's capability to perform complex tasks
is both a lifelong evolution and predictable
• Organizations are systems build up through
distinguished layers of complexity
• Work = goal directed behavior
Levels of work
Levels
Time span
Value systems
7 – Corporate Prescience
6 – Corporate Citizenship
Value for the future
20 years – 50 years
10 years – 20 years
5 – Strategic Intent
5 years – 10 years
4 – Strategic Development
3 – Practice
2 years – 5 years
1 year – 2 years
2 – Service
3 months – 1 year
1 – Quality
1 day – 3 months
Value for the present
Each particular level is established to achieve particular objectives
Level of complexity correlates 100% with the time-span of realisation of the objective
Human Capability – The Theory
A person's capability
to perform complex tasks
is both
a lifelong evolution
and predictable.
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
There is a 0.97 correlation between
organisational layers
and each step in complexity
of mental processing
and thus potential capability
Levels of Capability
Level of Capability
Global Business/
Societal Innovator
Global Industry
Structure Innovator
New Business Model
Innovator
New Product, Market,
Service Innovator
Process Innovator
Problem solver
Executor
Touch &
Feel
Quality
Accumulati
ng
Service
Connecting
Practice
Modelling
Strategic
Development
Weaving
Strategic Intent
Revealing
Previewing
Corporate
Citizenship
Corporate
Prescience
Individual Resilience – Being In Flow
Effective decision-making
The experience of work
Anxiety
Inappropriate or
no decisions
Worry
C
BIOSS
Hasty/delayed
Decisions
Frustration
Boredom
Anxiety
Scale of Challenges
Scale of Challenges
Perplexity
Sales
Indecisiveness
Vacillation
Automatic solution
Levity i.e. lack
of serious thought
Range of Capabilities
Range of Capabilities
Where challenges exceed capabilities, financial and human costs rise;
where capabilities exceed challenges, resources are wasted.
PERSONAL Growth Curves
Knowledge, experience and your human relations capacity will help you to get the
most out of your capability
Capability grows over time. Transitions between levels of complexity
reshape how people see and make sense of their world.
Effects on work structures
Learning to see gaps and overlaps in work structures allow
leaders to make latent waste, cost and value in the organisation explicit.
Why organisations grow
Corporate Prescience
Corporate Citizenship
Strategic Intent
Development
Practice
Service
Placeholder text
Quality
Managerial hierarchy
Is a reflection of discontinuous steps
in the nature of human capability
Trends Top Analysis
•
(based on sales)
Impact on company results
Quality
Service
Practice
Strategic
Development
Strategic Intent
Corporate
Citizenship
4.406
665
104
globalization
35
5
874
17
3.593
6.858
109.731
# COMPANIES
Sales
560.000
9.300.000
39.000.000
327.500.000
8.506.000.000
Gross Operating Margin
349.000
2.763.000
9.500.000
74.250.000
739.000.000
GOM/fte
69.000
78.000
91.000
112.000
168.000
Strategic resilience
1987
25.000 euro
“To be the most dynamic
pan-European OTC company
“
1998
2000
2009
23m euro
178m euro
811m euro
Continuous innovation
Geographic expansion
Start
Internationalization
Growth means adjusting your organisational structure at each level
Quality
Service
Practice
Strategic
Development
Strategic Intent
Corporate
Citizenship
Corporate
Prescience
Strategic resilience
“To achieve the financial goals, we have a growth
and efficiency strategy which aligns behind our
focus on fewer, faster, bigger and better. This focus
is being applied to all aspects of our business.”
A level 6 company
A level 3 strategy
Leadership is about choosing the right level and creating context for the levels below
Quality
Service
Practice
Strategic
Development
Strategic Intent
Corporate
Citizenship
Corporate
Prescience
Goodwill
Viability
Value creation
Leadership ensures that viability and reputation are sustained through coherence,
review and individual judgements about and at each level.
Value control
Cost efficiency
Reputation
Cost control
Cost reduction
Quality
Service
Practice
Strategic
Development
Strategic Intent
Corporate
Citizenship
Capability drives complexity
Who makes what decisions
At what level of complexity
For your organisation?