Intentional management 35: contextual management 13 and evolutionary and revolutionary change 8

This is my 35th installment in a series in which I discuss how management activity and responsibilities can be parsed and distributed through a business organization, so as to better meet operational and strategic goals and as a planned intentional process (see Business Strategy and Operations – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 472 and loosely following for Parts 1-34.) This is also my 13th installment within this series on an approach to business management that I have come to refer to as contextual management.

I began discussing a set of issues and questions of operational and strategic concern in Part 32:

1. The issues of what causality is in terms of facilitating or limiting, and directly causing or preventing specific ranges of outcomes (in Part 32 and Part 33), where I took a causal linkage map analysis approach.
2. The issues of “necessary” and “sufficient” in that context, where an input condition or factor leading into a causal node can be necessary but not sufficient, sufficient but not necessary, or both. (I began addressing this set of issues in Part 33 and continued its discussion in Part 34.)
3. With that, switching from a more immediately here-and-now perspective, addressing those first two sets of issues in a longer-term and evolutionary context too, distinguishing between random and non-trending change, and trending change there as I develop that line of discussion. (I just began discussing this point and its issues in Part 34.)
4. Then after that, I will explicitly consider stressors here, and as sources of both challenge and opportunity.

My goal for this posting is to more fully discuss the issues of point 3 of this list, as a continuation of this overall ongoing narrative. And I begin that by noting the way that I discussed necessary and sufficient, in Part 34, from both an immediate here-and-now perspective, and from a more evolutionary one.

• The causal relationship valance of a causal linkage map node and its associated processes (e.g. whether process input into a node facilitates, or inhibits or blocks further process activity leading out of it), can change as the business and its operational systems change and evolve.
• Necessary and sufficient parameters, governing the decision-making gate keeping of activity in these systems can and does change and evolve as the business they take place in does.
• And with time, the overall causal network pattern in place can and does change and evolve too, and that can happen both through same-pattern linear growth or through the introduction of new patterns of business processes and elimination of old ones.
• And all of these types of change are usually accompanied by corresponding supportive changes in the overall resource base that the business would need to maintain in order to effectively support all of this activity.
• That means material resources, which can prominently include capital expenditure resources as well as small item and disposables resources.
• And crucially here, that can and often does mean evolutionary change in the roster of personnel needed, and the skills and experience that they can bring to their work.
• And as least as importantly, this can mean shifts and change in how managers manage and with what levels of direct involvement on what issues, and how hands-on employees work and with what levels of autonomy, and on what issues and tasks.
• I have been discussing this in higher-level, abstract terms here, and cite the more specific working examples of Part 34 as at least a start to taking this out of the abstract, for how these principles are actually applied.

And this brings me to the issues of random and non-trending change, and trending change. And I begin with the former of these two possibilities and by noting that it covers a great deal of possibilities. After at least briefly delving into some of them and how they would be addressed, I will more explicitly consider trending change. And then, with that line of discussion in place, I will explicitly consider evolutionary and revolutionary change, and both as they visibly emerge and have to be responded to, and as they continue on in their impacts past that point. Then, as promised above, I will consider numbered point four, from above and system and process stressors. I am going to start addressing all of this in my next series installment.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Business Strategy and Operations – 4, and also at Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3 of that directory. Also see HR and Personnel and HR and Personnel – 2.