Transcript review

- I was interested in how organizations work and how they get an organization to succeed. It sounds like common sense now, but you just have to be interested in that. A lot of people think that's all they need to worry about and not the structure and how the organization gets work done.

- Recommendation I would make to any owner CEO of a small business is to value your employees. Also give them the structure, the rules, the roles and the guidance that allows them to do their best work. We are far more profitable today but there is still room to improve.

- If you've ever worked in a requisite organization, you will never want to work in a non requisite organization again. My business now is about aligning strategy, people and performance. The organization framework is that underpinning to allow an organization to link strategy, its people and its performance.
- For me, the most essential requirement for success is absolute clarity and absolute buy in at every level in the organization. ideally the sponsor is the business leader. If everybody is singing from the same song sheet, everyone is committed and everyone understands what the prize is. A more effective and more focused organization will deliver significantly better results.

- Requisite organization for Novus management system. As we've grown so much, training has become increasingly important training. Corporate governance and segregation of duties have become very important. We're looking now at trying to move the training into a different phase.

- In the 80s, CRA had completely restructured using Stratified systems theory as their basis across all of their companies. It gave me the opportunity for the first time to work from the top to the shop floor. There were major projects over a long period of time which was improving the quality of leadership.
- CRA started from what were the major systems that needed to be aligned and coherent with the culture. Change programs probably, and depending on the size of the organization, went on for five or six years. It's really thinking about very seriously the design of those systems and then thinking about what behaviors will that drive.

- David Alrick's work is seminal to HR profession. Understanding levels of work helped me understand that not all work in HR is indeed strategic. My advice is to a CEO that was looking at you need the skilled knowledge. It is as important as capability to do the work.
- There is a gaping hole in the education for HR professionals at level four. Requisite organization is incredibly powerful for the HR profession. There's definitely an opportunity to insert requisite organization into some of these educational program grants.

- Jerry Saltz: Elliot was the most decent, kind, concerned, and funny guy I'd ever met. He says Elliot came over when he was having hallucinations and changed his medication. Saltz says many people miss the essence of who Elliot is and what he has to offer.

- The capacity for self reflection is important within any stratum. But the kind of self reflection a level five does is very different than the self reflection of a level one or two. Our understanding of self in a variety of ways is always within the limits of the strata in which we live.

- One of the things that does concern me about the work is cultural. The values, understanding system symbols and behavior resonates very, very well across cultures. But the places where I have had difficulty with this material is Russia and Eastern European countries. People talk more about accountability than enact it.

- Greg Hess is president and CEO of Koreti Incorporated. Koreti is a masonry construction company located in central Pennsylvania and Maryland. Hess says he never had any formal training in business management. Eventually, the company developed processes and controls that could be replicated.

- That book and the spinoffs has been enormously influential but in ways of which we can perhaps discuss. What Elliot and Wilfred did was produce a wonderful set of tools whereby you could take an organization and strip it down to the minimum number of levels. I propose that we move away from time span and that we adopt a system of trying to identify the collection of distinctive activities.

- The training came about because we had several speakers over quite a period of time. Several of them want to have the deans back, either to come to their company for only their management team. Visage is now embarked on a program of a curriculum which is new. It's a good thing for our membership.

- In the medical profession, you have direct output at virtually level two through level five. The complexity of a department really was dramatically different. It was growing the next generation of hospital commanders. Now in the military, the doctors do command the hospitals.

- Otoranski: Elliot was a great inventor in terms of making use of research on cognitive development in organizations. He came to see what Elliot called capability in a broader perspective, namely something that links cognitive and what I call socially emotional. Otoranski would like more research about how these two lines of development link in executives.

- One of the most important part for a management system to be successful is to be endorsed and practiced by the people. Whether or not the senior management is real, if you walk the talk, it gives you a lot more credibility in the organization.
- This is in general now I'm making a point when we initiate new employee to talk about the novice management system. The manager is the real manager, not going around to find the real boss. Other one is the manager added value to the subordinate. Looking across that is the practice that the employer recognizes is important.
- Hiding why Novus is a beautiful place to be and how we are different from the others. There is passion and curiosity, which is contagious. Treat fairly the employee. Our vision is to feed the world affordable wholesome food.
- There is no censors and we are accepting any feedback and everybody needs to express himself. The legacy that we will leave is that we leave a place that is much better than the one we found. We need to have a more logical hierarchy and structure within the organization.

- We're probably the largest fully integrated cast parts producer. We can make a part very quickly from conception to finished part, sometimes within two or three weeks. We've been in business since 1906, and we've just celebrated our hundredth anniversary. Fourth generation of the family has taken over.

- Jerry Gray is the Dean Emeritus of the Astro School of Business at the University of Manitoba. He was exposed to the Glassier concept while spending the summer in England. He decided that he would make his life teaching what we now call requisite organization.

- It is wrong to imagine that if we have a series of one year objectives that that in itself adds up to a long term strategy. The best companies that I've worked for are orientated to the long term. Even the best run companies constantly revisit their longer term assumptions.
- The industries that I am most familiar with are mining, natural resources, and power generation. In all of them, you could actually look quite a long way ahead. One can look a longway ahead in economic problems.

- There was a realm of psychosocial reality. It's a realm which can be investigated, and it is distinct from the physical realm. The paradigm here was a person's level of capability and then the corresponding level of work in an organization. It was very powerful and just it took many, many long time for that to settle in.

- As a young man he got interested in management. Went to work for Glacier Metal as an internal consultant. Then went on to work in local authority social services departments. Later wrote a book on social analysis.

- My expectation is that we have a pretty good strategy. What we need to do is execute. Coaching, mentoring, training, executive development, talent development are kind of where I'm focused. Bringing that next generation along is really important for our future success.

- When you look at the healthcare challenge of America today, it's taking on the healthcare system. You're going to have to do it with some combination of public health and a number of different things. Some proposals seem to be at too low level in terms of our capability to address the system.

- I think in terms of using levels. Of complexity framework for designing organizations, is is as current today as it was 20 years ago. The challenge for us is to put things across in a. Way in a language that line managers understand.

- The book shows how to put the right people in the right places, doing the right jobs more quickly. If you can do that in any organization today, you're going to accelerate the process of running a successful organization. The book has provoked a lot of interesting conversation to this point.

- I think the basic rule applies as the same as level of work. You can't see it until you see it, and once you sees it, you can't not see it. But until you seeing it, it's unbelievably difficult.