Frequently Asked Questions

A. The reality is that work organizations need structure in order to ensure that work gets done. "Flexibility" is often misused as an excuse for lack of clarity and unwillingness to invest time and effort in creating a secure framework - about accountabilities, reporting relationships and relationships between roles and business functions. A lot of time, money and human energy are wasted as a result. If you have a robust infrastructure built on the validated principles of RO then changes can be easily and quickly incorporated. They are also more likely to be the right changes for your business.

A. Sorry, but it does not work. Matrix management systems usually entail people having more than one boss to report to, creating confusion about who is accountable for whose work. This is particularly evident during performance appraisals when the "managers" of an appraisee cannot establish a clear picture of what the individual has achieved. In times of crisis, to whom does the individual turn for guidance, or authority to make a decision?

The only time when there is a legitimate reason for having 2 "bosses" is when an individual is assigned or seconded to a special project with a project manager different from their "home" manager. On such occasions, the project manager creates clear accountabilities and expected outcomes for the individual and appraises them accordingly at the end of the project. The project manager communicates the results to the "home" manager for incorporation into the end of year appraisal for the individual's normal permanent role. It is up to the "home" manager to evaluate overall performance for the year and to decide on the salary increase, or other reward.

A. Of course teamwork is important but at the end of the day someone has to be accountable for the team's performance and to create context and direction for its goals and tasks. That team manager also is accountable for coaching the team members and to gaining their commitment to moving together cohesively towards the team's goals. The concept of "self-managing" teams simply does not work.

A. A number of reasons:

1) Dr Elliott Jaques was not like many other management "gurus". He was a genius (literally) who was more interested in seeking the truth about work systems, organizations and people and in testing his theories over long periods of time within organizations. His theories and discoveries challenged the received wisdom being offered by his contemporaries who rarely conducted the same exacting degree of rigorous scientific research.

2) Jaques was not seeking fame or riches, and consequently public dissemination of RO had, for many years, a relatively low global profile. This is starting to change as more RO practitioners are trained through the Requisite Organization International Institute and the Global Organization Design Society, who also organize information libraries and conferences. Join them to find the richness of RO experiences throughout the world.

3) Most organizations who have been transformed by RO reside in Canada (Jaques' home country), USA, Australia, South Africa, Sweden and Argentina. RO (then called Stratified Systems Theory) actually started out in the UK in the 1950s when Jaques worked within Glacier Metals (see About us - Profiles). Jaques also founded BIOSS at Brunel University where much of the continuing research and development takes place.

It is probably fair to say that some of the organizations who have implemented RO have kept quiet about it publicly so as not to give away a competitive advantage! Nevertheless, some are prepared to discuss their experiences as case studies.

4) Jaques wrote nearly 20 books (and countless more articles) which are available through Cason Hall publishers. Enjoy reading them!

A. Some of the reasons for this are stated above. There are also others, mainly:

1) RO is based on radically different (but proven) concepts. Many organizations today are still wedded to unproven theories about work, organizations and people. Practitioners of these theories dominate the lucrative management market, promoting tools of job evaluation, personality and aptitude testing, etc of low to medium validity. Organizations are sometimes scared to leave behind these familiar tools, even if they can be proven not to work. Such organizations also find a false sense of security in "cattle" mentality because so many of their contemporaries use the same tools.

2) The implementation of the RO framework demands an investment in time and energy. Conversely, business environments and market economies these days tend to be focused on short term goals and returns. Sustainable results and improvements in performance require a long-term vision and engagement which some CEOs simply don't have - a clue for the current global financial crisis. The ones who do are more likely to succeed and to sustain above-average performance in spite of changing market conditions.

A. What does "potential" mean? Why do people aspire to be senior managers? Jaques found, in his extensive research, that people wanted to do the best job they could - they wanted to fulfil their own level of potential and work within a supportive culture and structure to achieve it. They tended to know, intuitively, what type of role (and level of role complexity) they could handle.

Not everyone wants to be CEO, nor does everyone have the future potential mental capability to handle the complexity of work at that level. However, it is true to say that one of the prevailing management guru mantras (unproven, again) over the last 40 years has been to suggest that pretty much anyone can make it to CEO level of a multinational organization if they have the drive, personality, qualifications etc. As a result, there are a lot of disappointed and demotivated people out there!

Of course, there will be those individuals who are predominantly motivated by money, status or insecurity who equate "success" only with attainment of higher level roles in organizations. However, they could equally gain more money, grander job titles and status in their community by, say, running their own business at a Stratum III level.

Ultimately, it's about finding work which you are passionate about and for which you have the right level of knowledge, skills and mental capability. It creates that wonderful sensation of being 'in flow' when work feels challenging, satisfying and more like a hobby (yes, it DOES happen!)

A. These are completely different things.

The developers of IQ tests saw "intelligence" as static, and believed that it is fixed by the age of 18. When Jaques analyzed what "work" is all about - he defined it as "goal-directed activity" - he discovered that what we are doing, in essence, is processing information to work out how to achieve those goals within a given time-span. Tasks of greater complexity (i.e. with a longer target date of completion) needed correspondingly higher (more complex) levels of information processing. These levels of Complexity of Information Processing, whilst innate, were found to mature at a predictable rate with age. These rates he called modes of CIP. Everyone develops at different rates, but with a measurable and predictable rate (mode) of their own. Jaques and his colleagues analyzed thousands of individuals in many countries over a 30-year period to prove that their expected maturation mode had indeed been achieved - a phenomenal achievement in a rigorous longitudinal study.

At this stage, we do not yet know why people should have different modes of CIP or why they mature at the rate that they do. Different modes of CIP maturation have been found in members of the same biological family. Factors such as race, gender, education or social background do not appear to influence CIP. Is it part of our individual DNA? Does mental stimulation (or a lack of it) during the first 6 months of our lives make a difference? Research into this aspect is ongoing.

A. No. Your innate mode of CIP will mature at a predictable rate, but cannot be speeded up or slowed down. Qualifications may give you knowledge and skills (equally important within Jaques' Model of Human Capability), factors which are trainable if you value that type of work which requires them.

Beware the false claims that an MBA will turn you into a strategic thinker, or will create CEO potential. Without the requisite mode of CIP and the other factors in the Model, it simply isn't true.

A. Job evaluation systems do not have a scientifically proven basis for measuring work complexity. RO does. Consequently, any existing system like HAY would have to be removed. You will save much time and money and effort as a result!

A. You don't have to. By using time-span of discretion to measure the complexity of work you may well find that specialist roles are of equal value to managerial ones. It's only traditional job evaluation systems that give extra points for managerial work and that simply misses the point of understanding work complexity.

A. Like IQ, as stated above, these tests do not measure the raw cognitive processing power which is required to perform work at different levels of complexity. They do look at some skills (e.g. mathematical, verbal, and spatial) which are important attributes for some roles. However, they cannot be used as sweeping statements of overall current and future potential mental capability.

A. Jaques found that different personality profiles could be equally effective in performing work, provided that extremes of temperament did not disrupt working relationships or achievement of tasks. It is up to the manager accountable for one or more individuals to coach them to work together effectively, whatever their personality. This is one crucial aspect of managerial leadership.