Systems Leadership

Leave a comment Posted on Boards, Org Design, Requisite Enterprise, Systems Leadership

Time Span and Time Horizon? Logical Extensions – Elliott Jaques revisited.

Just to keep this simple,  the original concept of Levels (then called Strata) came from the work of Dr Elliott Jaques (EJ),  originally conceived  in the heyday of the factory and mass production.  This meta model has continued evolving over more then 70 years and now, it is more relevant than ever. Why?

Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity is the answer, plus climate change.  Not only corporate and governments MUST be accountable for long term planning and decision making, but all enterprises.  That means all prosumers (consumers and producers. (1)  It is not a luxury.  The 2.5 degree temperature rise is now the best scenario. As Harari says(2), ‘yet with all this information circulating at breathtaking speed, humanity is closer than ever to annihilating itself.’  Despoliation is unchecked.

Work Themes or Levels of Work (LoW), deals with increasing world in decision making.  It uses Time and Unique Value Adding as a differentiator between levels;.  This natural hierarchy is not about rigidity, power, control or prestige, the normal associated bullsh*t. 

Hand in hand with the Themes/Levels of Work, EJ used Time Span to sharpen the mind in order to estimate the work complexity involved.  He defined this to be the time to completion of the most complex task in a role… or the time that elapses before the Managerial Leader at the level above can see the completion of the task.  Thus work with similar time spans to completion belong in the same work theme/level of work complexity.

Very few people are able to think in long time –  we find making long term decisions really challenging and secondly, the market rewards short termism, measured by growth. Assistance is useful. Time span is a tool to help one think longer term.  It is  still a relevant measure as it’s about the complexity of work being undertaken in specific tasks. Consider it takes a few years to build a bridge, or to transform an enterprise using a new platform, or build an aircraft; yet it takes only a few months to sell real estate or half an hour for a dentist to fill a tooth. Yet it does not address consequences or impact.

What must be addressed for all goal directed work systems, is the issue of consequence or accountability for decision making. 

Not only internally, but to the broader community with which the enterprise impacts – directly or indirectly. That is tough.  How?  Returning to structure,  Time Span is a serious tool for gauging work complexity, but it is no dashboard of consequence once the task is complete. Technology has definitely impacted the relevance of Time Span in the first three operational work themes, while those at executive levels argue that it is impossible to plan longer term.  The best one can do is to build  organisational resilience.  This is a leadership fail, equivalent to fence sitting. 

While challenging, the impact of technology or short term market demands does not release us from accountability for thinking long term of consequences. 

 Time Span needs to be made more relevant to the current discourse of accountability. In practice, Time Span works well for operational roles, but becomes less relevant at the work themes of Corporate Citizenship (Level VI) and Corporate Prescience (Level VII).  In  Organisation Design (3)  I argued then that Time Span is no longer a fitting measure for work at the executive levels of enterprises or for state functions. 

Time Span is not about trying to envision the future.

Envisioning the impacts is referred to as the Time Horizon(4).

 A more suitable measure for these work themes is that of impact, namely Time Horizon.  I defined this in 2013 as;

“the amount of elapsed time before the outcome(s)  of the most complex decision can be confirmed.”

This by definition implies applying the mind systemically to envision all possible outcomes of the decision.  Time horizon may also be defined as: that distance into the future to which a decision-maker looks when evaluating the consequences of a proposed action.(4) This extends the functionality of the Time Span concept.  It allows for risk assessment by multiple stakeholders.  We should not do is confuse the terms. (5)  Jaques used Time Horizon to describe the individual future thinking capability. I have co-opted the term to use in planning and future envisaging, as a necessary extension to Time Span, as the onus now shifts to people, going beyond task completion.

 

What I struggle with is accountability.  How do you hold a board and CEO accountable for outcomes in a ten, twenty or thirty of forty year or more Time Horizon?  As we know, boards, CEOs and executive teams of large companies are not built for the long haul. How can they be accountable when we know with a 100% certainty they will not be there to answer for their decisions in as short a time as five to seven years?(5)

It is widely acknowledged that complexity of board work has grown.  A recent survey by Mckinsey & Company (6) of board members reported board members felt strategic activities require more active and regular board involvement. Examples were in the fields of linking strategy to purpose, assessing managements understanding of the drivers of value creation. The article was silent on long term consequences.

Accountability should be to stakeholders on the quality of thinking that made up the Time Horizon analysis.  Problem is of course, rewards are thin for long term thinking or planning.  So that leaves us in an uncomfortable place. Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

A practical answer is we need to assume responsibility for longer term thinking in our own Life;  how we work, how we consume, how we influence, our activism, how we vote. Secondly, if you are leader think longer, work in longer time, its a duty of human care. Its not a luxury any longer.  Governance needs to evolve to a point where Time Horizons become part of the boards compliance duty and requires stakeholder approval and shared accountability for the future.

Time Horizons are part of board governance.

 

Reference.

1. Tofler, Alvin., (1999).,  Third Wave.  refers to producers/consumers.

2 Harari, YN (2024)  Nexus.  page xx.  Prologue.

3. Olivier, Andrew.  Organisational Design. What your University Forgot to Teach You.  (2013)

4. I could not find this specific quote as the site was updated 21/07/24.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_horizon

5.  Confusing Time Horizons and  Time Span is fairly common, see Elliot Jaques’ Concept of Time-Horizon | xraydelta 

5. Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.  Average C suite tenure is 4.9 years and CEO 5- 7.2 years   August 4, 2023.

6.  Huber, C., Lund, Fritjhof., Spielman, N.,  Better together; Three ways to boost board-CEO collaboration.  Sept 25, 2024. Survey.

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), Requisite Enterprise, Systems Leadership, UN SDGs

Scaled Systems Leadership

Gaia Asleep. Gouache on Paper. 30×27. 2020. Andrew Olivier

Network and Ecosystem Leadership

Is it possible to organise complex ecosystems to achieve a shared purpose?  Indeed is it possible to organise something which by nature is emergent, uncertain and comprised up of autonomous and semi-autonomous parts? Often with powerful agents? Are there clear guidelines that might help?

The questions this chapter seeks to answer.

  • What are the general principles of large systems design? For example – does a shared sense of purpose exist or is latent and requires articulation? What are the  activities taking place in the system and are they broadly understood?  
  • What are the characteristics of large systems leadership?  Achieving progress among diverse,  often conflicting part of a large scale systems requires different skills from those running an enterprise.

This chapter focuses on answering these questions using two specific examples; the global response to COVID 19, the other, an emergent, thriving global ecosystem of volunteers, committed to sustainable living.

Networks operate at different scales of complexity serving all manner of purpose.   For example, businesses operate a range of commercial networks serving diverse needs.  Behind networks sit organisational structures. Evolutionary trends now see  Agile, Platform and the multi dimensional enterprises emulating the principles of Systems Leadership.

Other networks exist for special interests, we know about terrorist networks and hear of the dark net.  Social media connect relationship networks, promote and organise specific causes (e.g #MeTo, Extinction Rebellion, BLM, Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street).  The internet has enabled the mushrooming of this online phenomena, while COVID 19 has enforced dependency. 

As networks scale in size, stakeholders, functionality and diverse purpose, ecosystems emerge around shared interests.  Accompanying scale, comes complexity, uncertainty, disruption, ambiguity, surprise and hyper-connectivity.  

Complexity. pencil on paper. A Olivier. 2020

Before addressing the two case studies of a pandemic and a voluntary global movement, the following observations are pertinent to the analysis;  

  • Shared purpose – the need to identify key players / stakeholders, activities, and nodes of development within the associated networks or larger ecosystem. Engaging stakeholders in creating common ground, shared purposes and domains of authority and accountability is necessary. This is a first step, accomplished through a helicopter view of mapping and collective learning. 
  • Leadership of scaled, social networks and ecosystems is different to leading an accountable goal directed business. Large scale systems leadership requires a different set of meta competencies to galvanize and orchestrate diverse stakeholders. 
  • Different tools for building collaborative leadership are required to build trust, advocacy and communication flows.  Top down command and control is not optimal because of systems complexities.   Tools which connect, engage and empower are critical. Understanding there is no master neuron, no one is in control or has complete authority is a fundamental mindset. Therefore leadership maturity and wisdom is fundamental.
  • Leveraging complimentary capacities to advance progress is essential and that is done by having clarity of vision and understanding it’s all up to us.
  • What’s going on in the System – Understanding the activities and developments within the ecosystem’s different networks is important.  By understanding stakeholder’s involvement and contributions, one can create empowering and autonomous conditions.  It is important for leadership to know what is going on rather than giving instructions. This is the requisite leadership at scale.
  • Leadership can cluster ‘what is going on or needs to be going on’ into one or more existing or emergent domains of work. This  allows the ‘chunking’ of activities into semi-autonomous parts. Through understanding the semi-autonomous nature of the parts, empowerment of local decision making, relevant information flows and distributed accountability and authority takes place.
  • Complex adaptive systems operate at different speeds and scales of complexity and thus have different design requirements. Activities (work) within the parts of the whole ecosystem can be grouped into Domains, regardless of purpose.
  • Understanding the nature of existing or emergent Domains of activities within large complex systems (think COVID 19, UNSDGS, global emergencies) allows for recognizing relevant accountabilities and authorities, information requirements and flow, empowerment and decision-making rights at all the different network levels, from local to strategic.

We call this Scaled Systems Leadership. This chapter seeks to explore network activation, activity chunking and systems leadership competencies.

Let us now turn to COVID19 and The Global Ecovillage Network…

Notes to this Extract

1. An ecosystem refers to multiple networks within an umbrella of shared interests.  Networks are regarded  as bilateral cooperation while ecosystems are multilateral – ie will work with anyone in the ecosystem. 

2. Andrew will be presenting a series of Masterclass sessions with the Singapore Institute of Management in 2021 and Requisite (as required by the nature of things) Leadership of Scaled Systems will be on the topics.

3. My thanks to Reos Partners for the invitation to their workshop in Geneva at the UN Innovation Lab in 2018, to David Nabarro and Peter Atkinson, for their input at the 4SD lab in France in 2018. Thanks to the GEN ecosystem (fellow trustees and network members), for gently showing me the real complexities/ challenges of consensus leadership. Also thanks to Gillian Stamp for taking EJ’s work from hard physics of design into the nuanced and messy world, now just being discovered in OD. All this has really formative in thinking about fractals of work activity at scale.