"Often we suggest that the
companies adjust to a smaller number of larger-scope teams. It is remarkable how much better the organization can perform, and how much morale can improve, where there are fewer dependencies, more end-to-end responsibility, and, overall, a stronger feeling of sense of ownership and empowerment."
–Marry Cagan
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This concludes my thread on #sociotechnical design principles. If you like to have a look, use this as an entry point, as the threading was a bit tricky to get right. Click on each one for more details. There are so many valuable insights here that we need when establishing sociotechnical systems
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As you see, there has been a proliferation of the principles from Cherns' nine, even more so from the original handful of ones from the origin of STS back in the 50s. So much so that some have seen the need to synthesise them, one being this paper from 2020, which arrived at a total of 20.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333611744_A_Synthesis_of_Sociotechnical_Principles_for_System_Design
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Pava '86: "In linear work systems, this emergent configurations has been designated the autonomous work group organization. In nonlinear work systems, the new template is a reticular organization, which is characterized by a fluid distribution of information and authority that shifts as required. Reticular organizations are 'heterarchical,' not hierarchical."
"Most work systems likely use a mixture."
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Pava '86: "Effective coalitions reach informed tradeoffs and avoid lapses into ritual posturing or arbitrary battles over turfs." I.e. coalitions cuts across conventional technocratic and bureaucratic organisational structures and the issues are owned by the coalition.
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Discretionary coalition – a population engaged in deliberations.
The second pattern from Pava is the social artefact matching the technical one, the deliberation. It was a novel organizing principle where the formal organization chart became scaffolding.
https://stsroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/Pava-Redesigning-STS-Design.1986.pdf
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Pava '86: "Deliberations are not decisions."
"Deliberations are more continuous affairs, sequence of activities, from which decisions occasionally crystallize."
"[It] emphasizes encounters, exchanges, and reflections in general that help resolve an equivocal topic."
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Pava '86: "Through deliberations, a computer engineering design group may pursue diverse topics such as system architecture, product design, competitor analysis, benchmark standards, or employee development."
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Pava '86: "These exchanges are necessary for dealing with complex or uncertain issues that cannot be solved with a specific rule or algorithm. As technical artefacts of cognition and exchange, they have two salient aspects: topics and forums."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Deliberations – sequence of exchanges and communication
In the 80s, Calvin Pava felt that STS needed updating to keep pace with change and accommodate non-linear and non-routine knowledge work. He proposed extending the design practice with two patterns,
https://stsroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/Pava-Redesigning-STS-Design.1986.pdf
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Berniker '96: "The primary implication of self-regulating work group design is that we should avoid designing individual jobs. Individual job design is a traditional means of direct control through the fragmentation of work into tasks that can be readily supervised."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Self-Regulating Work Groups
This makes an organisational pattern frequently used in STS explicit.
Berniker '96: "The self-regulating work group is the building block of the organization. Design work groups rather than individual jobs."
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Any thoughts on why imposed plans usually do not pan out that well? Apart from the obvious natural resistance to imposition?
"The people who have to live with them cannot recognise themselves in the plan; it simply isn’t theirs. Character, like ideals, must be brought to consciousness and used."
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"In causal thinking and research the task is to single out, from a multitude of data, pairs of acts between which there is a necessary connection. In systems thinking the task is not to find direct relations between items but to find the super-ordinate system in which they are connected to define their positional value within such a system".
–Emery in "Systems Thinking" (1981)
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Berniker '96: "The STS literature suggests a deep belief that groups of skilled workers, organized cooperatively with the responsibility, autonomy, and knowledge to deal with challenges, and motivated by the opportunity to meet their own goals at work, are the most effective organizational means to deal with emergent challenges to their productive performance."
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Berniker '96: "We can interpret the widespread acceptance of needs-satisfaction models by management as an extension of their manipulative and controlling roles to psychological domains. Some researchers suggest that managers manage employee perceptions of autonomy, responsibility and variety as a substitute for changing their organizations."
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Berniker '96:
"Work is a purposeful causal interaction between a person and an environment that produces changes valued by that person."
"Work is motivated behavior conditioned by individual needs, expectations and opportunities."
"Practical design requires that we attend to both sets of concerns."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Work as Problem-Solving Action and Motivated Behavior
Paradoxically, work can be seen as behaviour controlled by psychological needs and job satisfaction on one side, while on the other it is about autonomous capacities to adapt, control, and manage problems.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-GsDvi9hAZjaxrL1LkBA5TqsuNPW-IEz/view?usp=sharing
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The 24 principles presented so far are lifted from Cherns '67 and '87 and Clegg '00. I recently was made aware of other sources covering a similar list but some also have a few additions. One was from Eli Berniker who sent me his unpublished paper from '96 and permitted me to share it with you.
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Detailing the plans for a Search Conference next week with Capra Consulting.
Super excited to be able to put the training by Merrelyn Emery with the OST group in Canberra two years ago into real practice.
https://opensystemstheory.org/home/learning/origins_of_our_group/
https://opensystemstheory.org/home/tools-of-ost/search-conference/
[#]OpenSystems
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