Having the three principles of Difference, Relationship Agreement and Fusion in place, we’re ready to explore a fourth Relationship Performance principle and introduce a holistic architecture for work relationships…
Part 4: The Principle of Synthesis™ and The Universal Work Role Framework™ (UWRF™)
Overview: The reality of work relations is one of complexity, percolating from differences, contexts, variables and change. Because of the many “moving parts” there are significant benefits for everyone in the workplace if they share a common map for understanding and “assembling” work role relationships. A well designed work role serves to improve everyone’s thought, design, communications and choices. This can also provide a means for continuous improvements and knowledge management across time. This is the purpose of the Universal Work Role Framework™ (UWRF™).
This organizing principle brings all the parts together in synthesis to offer a universally applicable means for achieving desirable “Fusion”: •functional performance, •personal work satisfaction, •worker security and •relationship durability. As in all positive workplace realities, the Synthesis Principle recognizes and instructs that functional performance is a shared (or synthesis of) responsibility.
In UWRF, the qualified worker provides “capabilities” that the organization “utilizes” to gain optimal yields in work roles. The single-most important “capability” a person brings to a work role is the right combination of personal traits required for experiencing personal enjoyment and related life satisfaction when performing the functions of the role. The Universal Work Role Framework provides a guiding blueprint for forming and sustaining healthy, sustainable work role relationships. It can equally be a useful schematic for diagnosing and discovering remedies to prevailing work relationship problems.
1) Organizations have evolving definitions of needs for some form of personal performance. It is helpful to consider this as a person’s “role” in service to an organizational mission, agenda or business plan. Movies, plays and TV sitcoms are derived from screenplays having roles in which certain actors perform. Likewise, organizations have missions, agendas, initiatives, strategies and operations having roles within which workers perform. Hence the term: work role.
Work role is a powerful term. It often takes the passage of time and usage for its power to fully reveal itself. Using the term work role can bring about a better balance in addressing the differing needs of workers and organizations from their shared relationship. The work role construct provides a means to accurately comprehend, investigate and instruct workplace realities as to the extremely different organizational and personal needs. As we move forward into a complete framework below, it will also provide a standardized structure, common language and taxonomy for better communications and substantive agreement. A work role is expansive to encompass the Fusion Principle (... indeed, it has to be so to be of benefit!).
Organizations “own” the work role. People have and “own” their lives in which they perform many varied roles, including work roles. Work roles “connect” with people by a special relationship that is based upon mutual attraction and validated by agreement.
2) "Work role" is not a fancy word for “job.” The "job" term as conventionally applied fails as an information platform for strong, rewarding work relationships. It also fails in allocating responsibilities to both parties for successful, enjoyable work. It fails in synthesizing and encompassing the primary factors that are present within today’s good work.
The term job tends to be limited and lopsided to certain functions, competencies, personal responsibilities and related organizational demands. There’s no balance. There is no guidance to both parties as to how to form and sustain a productive relationship. There is no encouragement or requirement of agreement. There tends to be no foundation of relationship, the Principle of Fusion, or for that matter, the simple pursuit of good work for the good of all. Furthermore, look closely and you'll find the people at work are asked to do far more than just their "job."
It’s interesting to consider that even where there’s only limited job-oriented thinking, this does not mean the work role relationships don’t exist there. They do. Work roles and work role relationships are not dogma or fad, rather they are every workers’ and every organizations’ reality, whether they know and leverage knowledge of their reality or not. Such hidden or unacknowledged work role relationships may be strong and healthy or broken, flawed and weak, but they are always present between workers and their organizations. In this context, Relationship Performance is simply a refreshing wake up call for everyone in the workplace offering paths to improvements. For many, it’s time to move beyond the limitations of job-thinking so that good work can be commonplace.
3) The manner in which the work role is placed into a life defines the relationship between the parties. In RP this “successful coming together” is known as the work role relationship. The quality and nature of this relationship determines what each party will gain and the potential period of time and change the relationship may endure.
A) The gains, rewards or results each party seeks from a work role relationship is known as "performance." Ultimately performance that an organization seeks is maximum ROI in the form of yields. Ultimately the performance that workers seek is satisfaction from their work. It is true to say in work relationships that performance is the currency of performance™.
B) The combination of time period and change tolerance of a work role relationship is said to be its "durability." When only the time period is considered, this is known as a work role relationship’s “lifecycle.”
Once more, workers don’t have authority or “final say” over work roles, organizations do (though the worker certainly has influence and should have reasonable input). Organizations don’t possess authority or command over lives, people do. Work role relationships are where the organization and its work role meet and interact within a life. Unfortunately many work role relationships aren’t well-defined, designed or even well chosen and considered by either party.
4) Technical points about the term - work role ...
A) One person may have more than one work role within an organization and in fact, often does, just as people sometimes have more than one role in a play. On the other hand, by definition, a work role cannot exist that exceeds the capabilities for one qualified person to perform the sum total of its functions.
B) A work role’s purpose is to produce organizational yields. Yields are produced by a function or set of functions a worker performs.
C) Thus a work role encompasses the function, or set of functions, performed by a single worker.
D) It is normal for these functions to change or evolve with the passage of time, thus the importance of durability in a relationship for both parties' adaptability and tolerance of applicable changes across time.
5) The Principle of Synthesis lead us to a framework universally applicable for all work roles in all industries and institutions of all types and sizes whenever people and organizations affiliate and interact, having reasonable degrees of free will and discretion to gain mutual rewards. This framework is known as the Universal Work Role Framework™ (UWRF™).
Since this framework must become dependable, universal and an all-inclusive map of the "big picture" of work, ... and since this encompasses all the major components and dynamics of a well designed work role relationship, ... it can be a lot to digest without a review of where we are. Therefore, I think it would be good if you first reviewed my informal "whiteboard" that I used for thinking about what this framework would need to be. You'll notice that I attempted to place everything of importance into a correct arrangement to define the major parts, and show they relate to one another (as well as causes and effects dynamics). So now take a few minutes to explore my "thinking workbench" ... perhaps it will be become a thinking workbench for you as well. (By the way, you can click on the graphic to make it bigger, or you can download the PDF then expand or print)
Ok, I'll move forward on the basis that you have carefully reviewed the whiteboard. Now that you comprehend what the framework must include, let's now begin reviewing the actual UWRF that emerged and evolved from the above whiteboard.
By the way, if a greater level of detail and understanding isn't of present interest to you, you can stop reading now, for you've got the "elementary view" of the Synthesis Principle and UWRF at this point. But I hope you'll keep reading and most importantly, thinking.
Since at the moment we are only addressing the basics of Relationship Performance, herein we’ll presently consider only the basic UWRF graphic representation which displays the elementary aspects of this rich, standardized, universal, and extensible framework. In this graphic you'll recognize some symbols, and others will be new. (These are designed for those who are more advanced practitioners of RP, or as that is known, Work Role Yields Management™ - aka: WRYM™).
Immediately you should notice that UWRF reflects the same arrangement and dynamics that were on our whiteboard.
The next thing you might want to do is review a 15-minute webcast that I informally produced for those who desire that type of orientation to UWRF. Simply go to this link and enter the information (below), on page 1, choose "webcast" at top, then on page 2, select "Universal Work Role Framework." Note: like all RP content, this is for licensed, personal usage only, so please do not distribute or use for purposes other than your own work role benefit. Your user name is: licensed Your password is: 4myuseonly
Let's elevate your understanding and consider a few basic specifics about UWRF's application and techniques that you may have interest and relevance to you, and provoke better thinking ...
A) As the name indicates, this is a structure for a single work role. This framework should always be used for a single, specific work role only. Every work role is unique and there is risk and lost opportunity if one does not consider each work role including the nature of its optimal relationships with specificity.
B) A work role exists to produce a yield or yields to benefit the organization’s needs. Thus you will notice in the framework that Yields are shown as the final output of a work role from an organizational perspective. You will know that the symbol for yields is the Organizational Triangle placed within the Personal Triangle (aka: a role within a life). Appropriate, right?
C) A function is a specific mental, physical or behavioral task or attribute defined so as to produce a prescribed yield.
D) There should never be more functions within a work role than are required to produce the prescribed yields. This is known as “Rule of Minimums™.”
E) The performance of each and every function is the shared responsibility of the worker and the organization. This synthesis or integrated accountability is simply the reality of work (though in the past, this distribution of accountability for performance often was not well-articulated and considered within conventions such as “performance reviews”).
F) Function(s)... if well-considered and designed, functions demand a distinct and separate consideration as to the organizational and personal responsibilities, traits and characteristics. Thus, synthesis is achieved by dividing function into two primary categories or domains:
- Capabilities... All applicable personal responsibilities, qualities, attributes, traits and other factors related to the performance of a function are known as “Capabilities” (note location and symbol).
Capabilities include all aspects of a person’s life and personal qualities, characteristics and traits pertaining to personal responsibilities for the performance of a function. Therefore capabilities extend far beyond only education, experience and skills/competencies. For example, capabilities encompass everything within the “Are” of the Flow framework and include values, ethics, motivations, networks, intellect, life and thinking preferences and aversions, interests, disinterest and personal aspirations.
- Utilization... All applicable Organizational responsibilities, characteristics, attributes, qualities, offerings, conditions, considerations and other factors related to the performance of a function are known as “Utilization” (note location and symbol).
Utilization includes all aspects of organizational responsibilities for the performance of a function. This too is typically extensive, encompassing training and development, coaching, general talent stewardship, facilitating ample information exchange, a means and platform for relationship agreement, tools, safety, equipment, facilities, environment, social factors (including the careful selection of co-workers and supervisors), community dynamics, financial and benefits aspects of compensation, leadership, purpose, culture, mission, financial stability, advancement or succession paths and opportunities, image, brand and all other factors that may be directly or indirectly related to the performance of a given function.
Hint: A simple way to think of this - for each function desired, an organization must do what it must to utilize personal capability. Also you might want to refer back to the "whiteboard."
G) There may be many different ways or designs to accomplish the sharing of responsibility for a specific function. In other words, there are normally many possibilities in the balancing or distributing of Utilization and Capabilities factors or elements to arrive at an optimal design for relationship. As you utilize this framework and become more familiar with its potentials, you will discover an interesting interplay between Utilization and Capabilities. Each distinct arrangement of the two is known as a “function model.”
Whenever you're serious about arriving at the best work role design or work role relationship, it’s often a good thing to create and consider a number of different models before converging or compromising on what you determine to be the best option for a final work role design. It is always advantageous to consider the negative space of information equally with the positive space. In other words, what is not present, unacceptable, non-negotiable, undesirable or not tolerable, aversions, and so forth should be considered as well as what will be present, desirable etc.
It is normal that in exploring the balancing of Utilization and Capabilities factors, other related work roles in the organization may need to also be considered, especially when multiple work roles are part of a process or procedure. UWRF offers many advantages to the techniques of both process and organizational design.
H) PERFS ... The single-most important Capabilities a person can possess for any work role are those qualities, traits, attributes and characteristics which indicate that they would be happy performing the applicable work role with the Utilization factors as designed in place. Thus, this is why PERFS is seen in the UWRF as “informing” Capabilities (note location and symbol).
You will note that it is the combination or synthesis of Capabilities and Utilization that causes, suppresses or prevents PERFS. Just as functional performance is both parties’ shared responsibility, so is PERFS both parties’ shared responsibility. Thus it’s critical that Utilization and Capabilities be designed, and resolved by Agreement, so that PERFS will be highly predictable.
Think about this ...
a symbiotic relationship + a synthesis of accountabilities = we
In other words:
Good work is always a "we thing!"
I) UWRF should ultimately be resolved and maintained by Agreement that is clear and explicit to each other regarding all functions and all related areas of required Utilization and Capabilities accountabilities of each of the parties. Each party should strive to prevent assumptions or misunderstandings. All expectations and accountabilities should be explicit, documented and agreed by both parties. Remember …
Not agreed?
Don’t expect!
6) UWRF may seem overly complicated or confusing at first but it simply describes work reality. UWRF is also the map you can use to navigate to better results from work. I encourage you to reflect on positive and negative situations at work, and as a learning exercise, apply them to this framework to gain greater practical understanding.
It is the choice of the organization and the individual as to how seriously and specifically to apply this framework. Like most things, the more you invest the greater your rewards. This framework can be applied in very simple and incremental ways for thought, discussion and agreement. In fact, you can elect to only approach improving one factor or one function at a time, then from that point, continue forward on a step-by-step path to betterment.
Like other RP frameworks UWRF can be used for diagnostics, innovations, solutions and remedies. The more you use it, the more comfortable you will be with it. Keep in mind, this is more than just a structure and taxonomy, it is also a philosophy and operating model for better work, better workplaces and better lives.
7) As you might imagine, this framework is designed to be extensible and expandable for usage in extremely complex circumstances and sophisticated practices. Advanced applied practice by an organization of the principles of Relationship Performance is known as Work Role Yields Management™ (WRYM™).
WRYM typically encompasses powerful methods, processes, including work role relationship lifecycle analytics, work role knowledge management and continuous improvement for the benefit of everyone. Materials, training and certification are available for those seeking to elevate their practice of Relationship Performance.
A software tool is optionally available to the practitioner for designing and managing knowledge related to UWRF, known as rpSlates and Composers™ (RPSC™).
04-12-11 PMe
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