I view that people at all levels of the organization have strategic, tactical, and operational views of the environment, but the relative proportion devoted to each perspective varies by organizational level. Thereby, I find it justified to stratify the organization by these perspectives to come up with an abstract yet applicable model.

This is in line with the discussions I’ve also had with the Holacracy folks: as you pointed out, all types of meeting practices (strategic, governance, operational) are used at all levels, but their relative importance and “heart beat” varies by level.

Janne

Thanks for this, very useful! There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about since you explained your mental model to us last weekend.

Do the different logical levels (real-time to strategic) necessarily correspond with hierarchical organizational levels? Or do they cut across the hierarchical levels, in the way that Robertson also proposes? I.e. that each circle, whatever its hierarchical level, operates at the operational, governance and strategic level, or at the four logical levels that you propose…

Curious to hear more!

Diederick

Thanks for your “mindrambling”. I really like the way you put it in the second paragraph: getting oneself out of the way of what emerges! This is also what Scharmer suggests to take place at co-presencing: retreat and reflect. Once the deepest-level basic assumptions (Schein) or theories-in-use (Argyris) have been unfrozen, things are “up in the air” and new cognitive consonance is sought. Through presencing — being present and sensing in individual or collective stillness — the new emerging future stage can be perceived and jumped into. The change is then, indeed, operationalized at the lower strata — the new systemic organization is crystallized at the tactical level, the new systemic structure prototyped at the operational level and finally new operations performed at the real-time level. The change does not need to be instigated from the strategic level, but the need for change can be seen or sensed at the lower levels and propagated to the strategic decision-making, i.e. triple-loop learning can be triggered by double-loop that can be triggered by single-loop.

My typology of decision-making levels in an organization corresponds to Jaques’ strata I-IV, the symbolic verbal order of complexity, which Laske sees as the domain of formal logical thinking. Interestingly, strategic level, or stratum IV, borders with the higher conceptual abstract order of dialectical thinking. According to Laske, this stratum is the level of balancing present and future — in perfect line with the U!

Janne

I believe it’s a great attempt to point out the singularities of U, RO and Lewin. I believe the feedback loops and the levels of organisation (Jaques and Laske) (also see:Action Inquiry, Bill Torbert) and of cognitive development required for working there (Laske) correspond with the levels of deepening Scharmer points at.

There is one other important thing that you seem to capture in the last paragraph, namely the fact that for deep change to occur, the team responsible for the initiation of the change can go thrue the U Process. This is, as I percieve it, a collective state experience that corresponds with the deep internal stages of meaning making both collectively and individually. Which also distances (and frees) these people in that process from there current perceptions, occupations and ways of thinking within there current system and even structure. I believe it is about getting themselves out of the way and be receptive to the future that wants to emerge. This is a translogical / transrational state!
The U as Scharmer seems to describe it is a process that is a great method or tool to use in the lower left (cultural) quadrant (Wilber).

I might lack the RO knowledge to see how accurate this actually is, although I wonder:
I wonder if the feedack loops, the steps of the U and the strata are congruent. Since the higher strata is about managing a larger timespan and greater compexity it requires higher forms and capacity of thinking (Laske). At the strategic level the team can actually initiates a change that will be operationalized by the teams in the lower strata, which seems to be the prototyping and crystalization part of the U. Is this a collective follow up process?
And then is the strategic level of cognitive development actually transrational here?
Just some mindrambling to get something going, Like to get the discussion going…

Nice work!
Cheers, Teun

This sounds like a very interesting conference. I am currently investigating the use of HIM within BPM, to enhance web services, but there appears to be very little on this topic. Throughout literature, HIM is pushed at the ‘next wave’, but, what exactly is the problem that HIM is answering within BPM, and what are the challenges that HIM are presently faced with to overcome?

The are of HIM itself is refreshing, and puts a new lens on business process, but to date, what has it accomplished. And a mentioned above, I am new to this topic - can you recommend any interesting literature/sites which may shed light on this? I have read most of Keith Harrison-Broninski’s work, but I would to see more argumentative work on HIM.

Thanks for the update n the SOLEA 2009.

Regards,

Noel

Haven said that have u tried
a) Business Studio for process modeling, BS artifacts can be imported in iprocess. It uses standard BPMN also has swimelane
b) General interface as iprocess UI, there is also extended jsp options.

Hopefully things will come together in ActiveMatrix.
BTW Aqualogic ESB / web/aqualogic integration is long shot from existing tibco capabilities. I don�t buy argument that BEA has better ESB stack.