Speaker A Taking that point in which there was almost impossible to not develop knowledge in the process of consoling away and taking a point Jillian made about the very real possibility of using CPA as an offering in an organization? What about the role in which CPA is offered to individual independent employees as a sort of a thing the company makes available with the understanding that it is a unique development experience, private and owned by the employee. In other words, not linked to any of the other purposes of assessment and so on.
Speaker B It's done right outside the organizational context.
Speaker A In a way the organization may pay for it or authorize it, but it's outside the organization context. It would seem to me that that's a particular piece that could be of great value and usefulness to various employees who might want to seek out that experience and so on and have it not necessarily come back into the organization as a catalyst to get the organization thinking about requisite. Attorney or if it does, it's very indirect because there's no grounds on which.
Speaker C To talk about it.
Speaker A Does that make any sense about have you ever done anything like that?
Speaker D No, I don't think so.
Speaker E That would be it would be canceled rising for the individual and it would be instead using an appreciation outside context and it wouldn't be taking the responsibility of making some. I think that I'm more inclined to use appreciation as a route in to a gradual increase in understanding, particularly with sexist capacity within the organization as a whole. And I want to say that there is a sort of league table around antirecomfort. I actually work with a lot of organizations that are not organized organizations that are in many ways don't be sexual, quite care about what they're trying to do. And a lot of what I was trying to contribute is something which actually.
Speaker D Moves a little bit further.
Speaker E So that may be a part of it. Perhaps organizations which are in a very state of maximum confusion wouldn't bring them engaged in something accurate cost appreciation anyway. But I think there's another point I want to make, which is that, by and large, my work now tends to be rather more with organizations.
Speaker D That are.
Speaker E Shifting from one level to another, in which case they are wanting to engage in a review of their human capabilities, their structural capabilities, their philosophical capabilities. And I would do all those treatments in an interconnected kind of way. So the career partition wouldn't be a single it would just be a part.
Speaker A Of what was being done in those kinds of situations. The issue of whether they are more or less requisite is not really then the focus for them. They may want to be requisite, they may not be close to it but their issue is what form should they take the middle of that orphan that's right. That describes the Edison experience because in a sense what we did is transform the department from a four structure to a five structure. And frankly, the issue of record was never and it still doesn't come today. I don't think five people would recognize the word.
Speaker D We know that from the training course because remember that one part we were using the term requisite and the first reaction of these managers who've been using it for several years. But what is that about? Remember, they had to have an explanation.
Speaker A But the debate about we're moving from a four to five structure would be instantly recognized and worked with as a regular.
Speaker F Can you come back to what you were raising a second ago around the use of CPA for individuals out of the context of their organization? There's one that recently arose that was not entirely a new thought but connected with something else. That was an interesting thought to me, that well, as Carl mentioned the other day when we were talking well, maybe it was in the case study session, but anyway, he was saying that the reality is when you move towards requisiteness. You need fewer roles in the organization to do the same level of work at least than you need it in a non requisite organization. And that has a clear personnel implication that needs to be thought through as a part of any kind of a process of moving through how fast you move, how quickly people are displaced, or can they be absorbed in other parts of the large organization or really talking about outplacement that has to occur. Our experience so far is that that is true in space and because the approach that we have employed is a consulting approach as opposed to it's not social analysis in that sense, it's taking the technology and applying it in the place. It happens rather quickly that a new structure emerges and there has been displacement. And one thought around CPA usage is to use it, actually for those people who are displaced in terms of career planning or development, in helping them to choose effectively, more effectively than they have been otherwise. What? New job? They move into so that it, in fact, is a clear match for their abilities. Much as all these outplacement people do have all these batteries of tests that have many things around, disposition or whatever, but in terms of looking for a new job. I can't think of anything more meaningful than being able to make sure you get into the one that is, in fact, a fit for your level of capability. That was a new thought for me.
Speaker A In that kind of a situation, it would still be within context, maybe not maybe not action.
Speaker F It's a different organization. That's right. Clear context of that's right.
Speaker E But the increase in the understanding of the individual and all the people around those individuals of what they are trying to do and where they're trying to do under career cross initiation is one way of doing that looking at the emergence of new form is another way of doing it. But the whole thrust of certainly what I'm attracted is simply to enhance people's own understanding of what it is they're trying to do. And in most of the organizations in which I work, many people in the organization are actually trying to do that anyway and so they tend to turn to social analysis as a part of actually doing that.
Speaker A I actually had to work with a client recently. It was really our terms were given.
Speaker C The responsibility but accountability to create a.
Speaker A Whole system, a level five system. That's what he was signed up and then he reached out for some help because it wasn't happening. And he was looking for ways of trying to figure out what he's trying.
Speaker C To accomplish and why it wasn't working very well.
Speaker A And so we introduced some of the concepts to him and it really began to make sense.
Speaker C The other part of his pain was.
Speaker A Paying with the rest of the system, particularly his boss, the CEO. He was called a group president and his boss was the CEO and the system around him, while I had given.
Speaker C Him that tax explicitly, it was doing everything in its power to prevent that from happening.
Speaker A And so the notions about systems I'm.
Speaker C Offering CBA to him, which Kay did for him, helped put that together to help him figure out what he needed to do. Actually what he needed to do was leave to go somewhere where he could.
Speaker A In fact do that. Because his ability to change the system here was it just wasn't a math. He was clear about his own ability and power and he was master that assignment.
Speaker C But that wasn't a math.
Speaker A Organizational level and personal level.
Speaker E I think for me, based on an issue about relationship between the Body of Knowledge and any work, because I was sent into the Body of Knowledge as a set of reference points to which one would kind of draw. People's attention so that they could then make a choice as to whether or not those reference points or part of those reference points actually give any meaning. If you work with an organization over a long period of time, at one stage they want that much reference point and then maybe matter about a few more that are a bit wider and they sort of and then they come back to the civilization, they say did.
Speaker D You want to say something about X, Y and Z?
Speaker E At which point or alternatively they come back and say why on earth did you mention X, Y and Z? And you know quite well that you.
Speaker D Did mention X minus.
Speaker E It's very clear and you come back to that involved. But again, there's a constant interaction between one hope growing a deepening set of.
Speaker D Reference points and that giving of meaning.
Speaker E Or giving to people the tool so that they can. And that seems to me that then takes particular responsibility from the people creating body language and those people who are finding ways of mediating that to the actual experience of different organizations and that's very much.
Speaker B Shall we move on to yes, I think it's time to move on maybe to some of the questions of technique, unless there's something technique what do you have under technique? Chief labeling question of labeling people I think was raised here consulting as against waiting for the opportunity and being asked in offering consulting help as a method. I had myself the question of the problem of the use of language and getting rather more precise thinking.
Speaker A I would like to invite Katie, if she can talk further in this context about the importance of your experience in not taking a stand relative to the capability of a worker focusing on the work to be done.
Speaker C You know what I mean?
Speaker A All the times that you said no dad, I can't make and what that is, why that's important. It's a technique issue. It's a method.
Speaker D Asked to look at issues of structure and help them develop and evolve the concept stratified systems theory which can help the managers do their work. In process of doing that, I have to interview a great many people. I get very intimate knowledge of the work they are doing and the way they define it. And I can make some judgments, they're not necessarily very good judgments. Over time I get the reasons as to what somebody is doing and how capable they are of doing it. But if I then go talk to their manager or someone else in the organization and say oh, you don't know who's going to talk to me. And so this came up early on, and it still goes on ever so slightly, because the vice president now especially early in it, was always trying to sneak information from me, trying to get me to respond, sometimes almost just to see the expression on my face when he would put forward a proposition about a person. And I would keep saying, look, I cannot do this. And he knew why. And the time that we knew we had the breakthrough on this was when there was a discussion in a whole group of people. The vice president had recently taken over the organization and he raised some kind of point which called on me to make a comment about another person. And he immediately, as soon as he asked the question, he said I know, I know you never talk about people. Well, that is widely known and so therefore makes it possible to work in the organization and people share things with me which they could not otherwise share. Only the manager can make the judgment about whether someone can hold a particular role. When you clarify the work of the role, it makes the manager's judgment and the issues surrounding that judgment much clearer. But I cannot know even if I have some sense of the cognitive power of the person. I cannot know all the nuances of conduct, appropriate conduct, political savvy, knowledge, experience, skills, all the things that Ellie just talked about. Only the manager can know that. And so I think that it is vital and depending on the kind of work you're doing, that you simply do not do that work. Where we have wanted to talk about people, someone else has been brought in to do career path appreciation. For example, we've had Jillian in, we've had Catherine Kason in, we've had Ian McDonald in, and they do that work and it is kept quite separate. And because perhaps we do not have the background of Jillian where she can integrate these things in her work in a way that we've not been able to. We found that although we did career development workshops about career path appreciation with a significant number of people, one of the outcomes, which I think we predicted at the Denmark conference was it started to get away from we didn't have the roles available yet. We didn't have the administrative capacity. And so a number of people had appreciations that were offered to them that they accepted, that worked quite well. And then suddenly there's nowhere to go and nothing to do with them. And that whole process essentially has come to a halt. And now managers are learning more and more about how to identify people and it's a managerial judgment. When I'm now wheedled by various managers to try and get information about who might fit in a role, I turn the conversation to a discussion of what is the work of the role and engage them. They think out loud, and I don't really offer very much, and they analyze the work of the role and in process of that analysis can then make clearer decisions. And I never discuss the person at all. I just don't know any other way of working that may be my limitation. I don't know if that covers what you were thinking.
Speaker A Yeah, that's a real issue. I don't know. I have a heck of a time trying to mask a very clear sense of someone's capability.
Speaker D Well, it's not your role to do that.
Speaker A I'm debating with a peer about whether his person is acceptable to work for me on a project type thing. It is extremely difficult to do that. Also, when you're working with a client organization, as I do now outside the department, and you interview 60 70 of their people and you recognize with lots of performance related and observational documented data who their capable people are and who their capable people are not. And they're about to put into the key roles unqualified people, because they haven't yet understood the important requirements of cognitive power as a single.
Speaker C And that it's.
Speaker A Not a lot of times they assume you develop cognitive power like you develop knowledge, but what do you do.
Speaker D Will fail. They are failing because, you know, the wrong person was put in the role and there was nothing to be done about.
Speaker B Well, is your responsibility not to draw to the relevant manager's attention, whoever it is? Look, there is this aspect of what you're trying to do.
Speaker A And that's where you cross the line that I think in some ways we pretend not to be.
Speaker D We don't talk about individuals, but they're aware of the importance of placing in different.
Speaker B Yeah, it's essentially the same.
Speaker A You go into the sponsoring manager of the project and you say, I was reading over your proposal in anticipation of our review meeting today, and I noticed the names you put in there. And I really ask you to consider very carefully whether this person is evidence of so and so. And there is no way if you were to say that there's no way to then turn around and say that you're not giving them a clue about something.
Speaker F Yeah, let me toss in a different position that should provide a little controversy for the late afternoon. Many years ago, I was following elderly statesman consultant around for the day and trying to learn from him. And at the end of the day, as we were discussing what he had been doing with a variety of different clients over the course of the day, one of the questions that I had was sometimes when a client asks you a question, you turn it back to them and have them struggle with it and ask some probing questions back. And other times you give them an answer. What's the criteria that you use to decide whether you have the client struggle with it or whether you give them an answer? And you said, well, it's very clear. If I think I know the answer, I tell them. And I've more or less used that as the guide around this work as well. If I have a viewpoint, I don't feel any need to lobby or whatever for that viewpoint. But in sitting and talking with someone for some period of time about their work and whatever, you do get a sense of whether the job as their boss and them they may describe it, is compatible with their own ability in the process.
Speaker A When they talk to their accountant, if the accountant develops a very clear sense of an out of balance condition someplace, they expect the accountant to come in and say, you may not think you have this problem, but here it is. And my reasons why they don't expect their accountant to say if you consider carefully the conditions under which you could reject if they go to a doctor and the doctor doesn't come back and consider your symptomology and let you reach a shared view of your illness, it's that sense of.
Speaker D I also think it's a very personal.
Speaker E Situation.
Speaker D I think everybody has your own sense.
Speaker E Of how you practice your work or your consultancy. And some people it is comfortable to advise on people and for others it's not.
Speaker D And I think you have to do what you comfort well what you feel is your own sense of ethical.
Speaker C Quite comfortable in here.
Speaker A I just don't think in many cases it's ethical.
Speaker C I think we're talking about two very different kinds of work. This is not all one kind of work, but alternatives as far as I'm concerned. Talk about organizational development and once one starts getting into the area of an external consultant commenting on individuals in the organization, I think they're entirely different field, not the same work at all. And Kay is absolutely right here kay's doing a particular kind of work. I can understand that work. I cannot understand work. If work involves not only helping an institution develop its organization, but at the same time the same person also makes observations on individual members of that institution, I think they're in an entirely different absolutely. I think that needs to be stated up front that that's what you do and if that's acceptable to the individuals, fine. But it's that kind of practice. This stuff cannot go by default. Profoundly important ethical issue here. These are two totally different kinds of practice and I think they need setting up differently from the word go. And if the external consultant is going to make observations about individuals, I think that needs to be stated and then stated that that is part of the practice and that is part of what will be done. So don't be surprised if you learn that the external consultant has made observations about you to your boss because that's part of the project. Set it up that way and then you've got that kind of project. Katie's point is that you may begin to find some of the organizational development work will be damaged by that because working relationship with the institute is going to be totally different. It is not the same kind of work. I do not think these are two possible different aspects or extensions of the same thing. I think they're suddenly into a very different discussion. That's why the conditions talking about this for CPA work absolutely crucial.
Speaker A It's why Catherine spoke with such meeting.
Speaker C The other day about it as well. Information proceed with those conditions.
Speaker A Now appreciating that point for consulting practice in the various stages it is a real practical experience that organization studies proceed through the phases of interviewing and learning various discussions of possible requisite structures into new formulation and documentation and presentation of the final requisite structure. And it is simply then the next step to talk about staffing then, but for whom to talk about the accountable.
Speaker C Manager now the accountable manager then is faced with that situation.
Speaker F That is an absolute the accountable manager is faced with those all the way through and has reached out to get some additional.
Speaker A No, what I'm saying is the project in the consultancy, the relationship is one that starts from this early planning and discussion of what requisite is and the purposes of the project and all that stuff right through the doing of whatever it is. And it inevitably arrives at a question of staffing filling in the names at the bottom. I'm asking the question in raising the issue really that if we are not to participate in the commenting or suggesting or reacting or sorting out of the names to be put in there, you.
Speaker C Can'T be in the room when that Tucker is doing that.
Speaker A You can't no.
Speaker F You and I can't quite assume a role.
Speaker A This is a real issue that I struggle with and I've done it wrong both ways. If the person is faced with a real question, he's got to decide whether to put Joe or Mary in the job. And is the only comment that can go back is well, let me remind you of the things to consider when you're considering a person cognitive power, knowledge, skill, temperament, all that sort of stuff and train them and so on.
Speaker C You've been through all that already. You've got nothing to say at home.
Speaker A That's what I mean. So you just simply have to say that is your job, fill in the.
Speaker C Name, my point of view you don't even have to say it. That's understood from the beginning. They know that there's nothing to say.
Speaker A In which case at that point there is no such thing on which you happen to attend it.
Speaker C Well, there may be other points in the discussion simply that you just simply say nothing to be there for because you bring the point slap up if one even takes that in those stages you describe it unless it is known at the beginning that that's what will happen at the end, then you're in an ethical line.
Speaker A Yes.
Speaker C If it is known at the beginning that that will happen at the end. I think there are a number of people here who it's going to be a very different process, but there is.
Speaker E A possibility of winning because I haven't been associated to do it with the.
Speaker D Two consultants who have questions. That's what we did. That's what we did. But there was still some difficulty breaking confidentiality with anyone and actually I didn't have anything to do with that process.
Speaker A That still doesn't work out very well at all. It really does boil down and it's a methods question and it sounds like there's a fairly strong statement from experienced people. One of my billion.
Speaker D Well, keep in mind one other thing, Dan I think we're talking about the difficulties of external and internal and I think one thing that made it tolerable for you to know that I was talking to your boss was that you could be absolutely certain I was never going to talk about you. He knew that.
Speaker A Well, I wonder if you could take.
Speaker C That there are two statements made today that are really run for me for all time one of them was Carl's. If three is too many, this other one, just think of this. We've had a lot of discussion about relationship between Katie and Dan. It had some stresses in it. Katie seemed to be okay, but Dan got irritated from time to time. No, just put yourself in Dan's position. If the relationship began, Katie and your boss, and you could not take it for granted that Katie was not discussing you personally with your boss, that's a different vault.
Speaker A And what I'm saying is, I know Katie keeps her words, and I know what her word is, and I know that she did not, but I still thought she might have not unimportant. And the fact that people think they might have makes it, in this sense, a methodological stand. If there were ever going to be a sal statement of required procedure or you're going to be disconfirmed or whatever.
Speaker C It is.
Speaker A It would be this one for what?
Speaker D Yeah. I took the opportunity throughout this project, whenever there was a suggestion in a meeting or something that I might say something, I always made the statement that I did not comment on individuals. And like I said, when the vice president said, I know, I know, you never talk about evil, he said publicly to a whole series of his subordinates, something had been going on and on. I thought that was just a major I didn't really see a difference. I think people had confidence before, but it somehow solidified it.
Speaker B I think it does take a lot of time.
Speaker C I think the point of keeping it when I was internal president of the company was because it was a cultural thing that was okay to do that in that system was trying to get me to collude in writing performance appraisals.
Speaker A Of the vice presidents of the company, which I was one of them.
Speaker C And I said, Ma'am, I had to be careful in terms of saying what.
Speaker A I will do and what I won't do.
Speaker C I mean, what I won't do is.
Speaker A Write those performance appraisals.
Speaker C What I will do is to help you in whatever way I can in.
Speaker A Terms of trying to do that.
Speaker C But I won't write them and I won't be able to contact them. That's your job.
Speaker B I think there is one after that.
Speaker C At all because in that culture and.
Speaker A What I was going to say about.
Speaker C Your organization and the kind of work that you did in terms of Jillian's.
Speaker A Comment about organizations working responsibly, I think.
Speaker C What it sounded to me is that you're at a stage where the system.
Speaker A Is starting to be responsible about those.
Speaker C Things and not get into those traps.
Speaker A It is also quite true, recognizing that there are dilemmas and starting to talk about what do we do with it is also quite true that the boss has the responsibility and authority to assign tasks if he assigns tasks to a subordinate. To give me your opinion and you turn around and say, I'm sorry, that's not within my role. But let's get something clear here, bret.
Speaker F Your role is going to change.
Speaker A Run this organization this way. I want to make cubes with seven corners.
Speaker C One of the most widespread assumptions in my experience of management consultancy is that in times of stress management, consultants are what used to be called axe men but we probably now would be called axe persons. And somebody goes, well, you know why.
Speaker E They went.
Speaker C Anyway, I mean, all I'm saying is you might want to do that kind of work. But ethically it must be upfront and recognize that it's a different let's say they really do understand the requirements for the job that's being assessed and the Joel and Mary are on the candidate. If they don't know enough how to evaluate those people. I feel your training, the training hasn't been done. You better go back and re educate them. They aren't ready to do that work yet and they want you to do work.
Speaker A There's also this issue of collusion in a large organization that is a complex social structure, even a little bit nonrequisite. Managers understand that one way to survive is to share the decision making, share the blame. And that president, someone probably got to be president because he was good at that and I've had that president a few times and survival. So there is this enormous pressure to share the decision making, share the money.
Speaker B But in fact, a very clear way to help without getting into any of these difficulties, I think, is when you come to exactly that point. The manager is wanting to, one way or another, get some advice from you or some guidance or recommendations or whatever it is, is actually to take the manager through the requirements of the job again, which is the training to help the person make the decision. Because the better the appointment to be made is understood? This is without commenting about the individuals at all. It does have to be done very convincingly physically. I mean, you're being looked at to see what you really think sort of thing. That's right. And over time that confidence that you're not commenting does actually grow up. I mean, it's quite realistic, it seems to me, given the culture that mainly prevails for Dan not to believe it even though he's got evidence until it's mounted to the point where he does believe it. But my experience is although you're tested again and again, provided you do stick to it, in the end, actually it becomes accepted that you don't comment on individuals and people do come to rely on this, but boy, do you get tested.
Speaker F Anything else under methodology?
Speaker A Yes.
Speaker B I don't know if we want perhaps we want to move on to some of the others because we've got to finish by five anyway if we want to go on that long. Indeed. What do you think?
Speaker A Do.
Speaker B You want to talk about language or move on to some of the issues of timescale, I don't know what it is about.
Speaker D Language isn't building on something about what.
Speaker C Ellie was talking about earlier in the.
Speaker E Week using the same.
Speaker B It's really the resistance to the use of precise language that well, it is simply that that if you begin to try and sort out with people what the confusions that they bring to you are and draw their attention to the need to be very much more clear about their use of language. In my experience, you do encounter quite a lot of resistance at times. I don't know if other people have had that problem.
Speaker A For me it comes out well, that's sort of jargon that doesn't really fit. But I believe that at some level.
Speaker C If there's a new jargon to be learned because it's the right jargon, we have an obligation to try to teach.
Speaker A That jargon, move through that resistance.
Speaker B Sure. Obviously one does one's best. I'm simply reporting that a lot of the experiences I've had, there's been particular difficulty about that one element that couldn't we go on using the term in a vague way?
Speaker A This conference. I was surprised to find that your community was so wide in its use of the words. I thought there would be more consistency as I heard it. I didn't realize that this was an.
Speaker C Issue coming here for the first time.
Speaker A And I support them. And I think if we could come to some agreements about that continually, even.
Speaker C Just the conversations we've had since your.
Speaker A Intervention about that we were kind of poking each other around using one word. We poke each other around using the.
Speaker B Correct word, if I'm not mistaken. It took quite a bit of energy and force in CRA to get to that point, did it not? None of the CRA people is here, but.
Speaker C Language there well, fighting over language, that's constructive. I mean, as Mark Braun has just pointed out, it has devilish difficulties in getting through to usable language. You find me, if you've got what you think is a fairly consistent definition, you find it won't do things rapidly shift out of your feet. The fights about language in CIA are now that kind of fight. That's a change from earlier kind of fight in which the criticism came up. That one's familiar with when you're bringing in concepts with terms if you happen to be a professor, you get called professor at that stage. And it's this notion of the rate of which is absorb systematic concepts and language. And that was a point of contention in the earlier stages. But the arguments now are all very special. All have to do with refining, refining, refining and developing additional mean. The CRA definition of manager is now changed and it's changed the definition that's in this book. I've got a new definition of manager to be an exhibition.
Speaker A Share it. Share it now pre publication?
Speaker F No, but give it to us at 2030 tomorrow.
Speaker A Okay.
Speaker F Anything else on that? Shall we move to the next the time frame or intention for change included in that was.
Speaker B Really, I think, the realism of trying to change antirequisite organizations into requisite ones, given the I think there's a gradual agreement. I don't know. There certainly is among people I've been talking to that taking one bit without the other bits really doesn't work. I mean, that actually does drive you backwards. But given that you can't do anything about the structure without at the same time tackling the pay scales issue and the support systems issues and so on, that if you really want to do the thing properly. As far as I know, the CRA example is, I think, quite unique. I don't know what you'd say about Glacier Elliott, but if you haven't got the top individual really taking it with great determination and ability, it seems to me rather unlikely that one's going to be able to fight through. To that point with many organizations and that maybe we should at least think about that and consider the possibility that it may be better to start with new organizations that are starting from scratch and whether be a chance of building the thing requisite from the start. I'm just talking about the sheer practicability of making the changes that are actually required. Maybe I'm unduly pessimistic because of the peculiar and difficult situations that I'm working in, but I don't think that they're all that different from anybody else's.
Speaker F Just building on that. One of the things that we recently discovered is that in going into any potential client relationship in our minds, what we wanted to offer them was what we've been calling requisiteness. And we didn't usually state that. In fact, we never stated that, I can recall. But we had such a strong sense that if you buy one piece, you really need to go to do the rest. And certainly if you're going for restructuring, then that implies that all these other things have to go with it. And our reflective conclusion on the few years of existence of our practice, specifically in this area, is that it just ain't so that clients aren't buying requisiteness, they're buying some piece of something. And while I agree with what you said earlier that in going in we need to tell them what it is. We think the consequences of buying this piece are going to be on their hold that exists now and on where that may need to evolve over time. Mostly they don't care, and they don't care a hell of a lot about your theoretical basis. They're more interested in a kind of visceral connection that they make with you as a human being and sort of do they trust you to be able to help them to do what they need to get done or feel to need to get done? And then two, do you have some kind of a track record that helps them to have that trust.
Speaker D I have a question, and it's a problem that I am struggling with right at the moment. There's an organization which approached me to, over a period of about three years, better assistance theory come to their attention one way or another. And they looked at this and said, this would work for us. Come in and do it. And I would try to explain to the Chief Executive, well, there are consequences to this you really need to think about. And this Chief Executive, very able, very experienced. I don't believe he really does understand the consequences of what is going forward here. And so I was originally asked to do a pilot in a particular department organization and instead backed away from that, said, well, first we need to do some other work, attempting to teach the CEO, really the depth of consequences that he is confronting. And at what stage can you say, well, somebody knows enough that they get like, informed consent? This thing has a direct impact on one of the most important relationships people have over a lifetime, which is their working life, and it can't be taken lightly. And when you have someone who, for the right reasons, responsibly and that wishes to go forward but really does not yet see the consequences, how does one give informed consent? I mean, get information so they can make an informed decision? I don't have an answer.
Speaker A We'll talk about that one too. And this may be the point at which we will never, ever really do SST practice and not have it be, in a way, the development of knowledge. Because it is our experience that this is like feeling an ending and you take off the outside layer and you really see what's there. You really do feel that you know what it is. And with more experience, the layer comes off and it's deeper. And yet you think that's the final picture. There is no final picture. It's a continuous learning process.
Speaker C And the client is not shallow in.
Speaker A Saying they know it and they want it. It's just that we're further along and have discovered a few more layers under that layer. And in that sense it will always be social analysis. They are always learning more and more and more. And so to require that we be as rigid on that standard as we are on the non participation and discussion of incumbent may not be accurate.
Speaker D I don't need to be rigid. I'm just very much concerned that I don't want to misbehave. Elliot's had experience with it. I was just wondering what other people have done and what someone might think you ought to do in this situation. How much is enough?
Speaker A I've never met some I've never encountered anybody in an academic or project or setting that really did understand it at the same way one year as they.
Speaker C Understood it a year later criterion I've used is this that you talked about a pilot, Katie, that you'll never answer that question. Obviously people know as much as they know at any given point in time and I do think it's incumbent on some, however, to provide conditions such that if things don't go they can be shut off. That seems to me to be a responsible thing to do that you're not sucking people in so deeply that it'd be difficult for them to get out. And I mean, that's working out appropriate steps at each stage. So that thing is always under the control of the client with regard to going further or what you did stomping at Structure fine and maybe be picked up again in due course. But along these lines, I just chucked something else I wrote Requisite organization. This is a personal thing not as a labor of love but as a feeling of obligation and probably suffers from that but the purpose was quite specific in my own mind and that is that you can't raise question why did nobody ever wants to take a look at organizations? A whole picture has never been presented for them even to consider and all they've ever heard are serial bits and I think this has to be discussed in terms of where we are now, where we were five years ago, where we are now I think the existence of Requisite organization qualitatively changes the field. The whole picture has now been presented it was written purposely in a way to make it accessible to managers and certainly bashed around from that point of view so it's possible for managers to get a whole picture. If one thinks of the possible impact of that in a year's time or a couple of years time it may well be that there are a fair number of senior executives around the place who had an opportunity to look at a whole picture. At least you can show them what a whole picture looks like. I think that changes the situation. It also throws more into the middle of the field the existence of a possible body of knowledge so that one gets that interplay. And that's where I pick up Jillian's point here that I think that's useful. But the downside is just want to check this into the discussion at this stage. The downside is the changing of knowledge and course of development which is what living knowledge and understanding ought to be about. Into dogma and mechanistic use. And that's going to be difficult. I think we're going to be asked for mechanistic application and implementation. I think those kinds of problems are likely to there's one thought that goes through my mind and it's research model. You establish partnership with client and hopefully minimize surprises by the way you share as much as you know and you also acknowledge that we haven't done it here yet and we're going to start together and we'll discover what's on the path together and make decisions. I don't know how else to that's to be commended as something to say to their senior executive, chief executive.
Speaker F And repeated.
Speaker A Because they will react with surprise.
Speaker F What do you mean you've never seen that before? Why am I paying?
Speaker A You never told me about that. And from their point of view, it is true. You've never really said that.
Speaker C I never heard that.
Speaker D Well, the other thing, too, is you get further down the track and people down the organization start learning something and start getting some proper structures in place, and then somebody wants to screw around with it, can't do it. The manager becomes limited in certain there are constraints in place because they fix it. They don't mess with it. And Dan can tell you about a thing where the vice president was about to make a particular change, and I guess virtually all of his immediate subordinates went in and told him he couldn't do it, and he didn't.
Speaker A What's interesting about that was he was going to put a person in place about whom there was very universal perception that they were not ready for straight before work. It was absolutely about a person, and that was real. We talked to him about that person, and he did not do that because it was clear that person would not be accepted among their peers. Which put me in a very awkward position if I'm not supposed to talk about. So it's good to have an outside person there. She paid for herself. Our phrase is you pay for yourself today, and she pays for a whole lot of today's, that day.
Speaker F Okay. Anything else on time frame that people wanted to raise? Another aspect, I think there seems to be general consensus among those doing the work that the time frame to move from nonrequisite to requisite, since nobody's gotten there yet, is clearly a long time.
Speaker C And it's a moving target.
Speaker F And it's a moving target. By the time you get there, it may have moved all. Okay. The last item was developing the field.
Speaker B Which I think related to feedback to these discussions. I'm just wondering, do we want to do that now or maybe leave that as part of the future of south tomorrow? I'm sensing people have maybe had enough for this afternoon.
Speaker F Great. Thank you.
Speaker A Just one last convenient note. We're going from cocktails 630. Is that right?
Speaker D We should be there.