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TOTAL SYSTEM POWER
Developers, Fixers, Integrators, and Validators
What each of us can do in our multiple roles as Tops,
Middles, Bottoms, and Customers to create a system
with outstanding capacity to survive and develop.
By Barry Oshry
Page 4 of 4
A Framework for Total System Empowerment
Each of us, regardless of our position in the
organization, needs to:
- see ourself as constantly shifting in and out of Top, Bottom, Middle,
and Customer conditions,
- know that in each condition we have the system power potential for
strengthening the system’s ability to survive and develop, to cope with the
dangers in its environment and to prospect among its opportunities,
- recognize that when we’re in the Top condition, our system power
potential is to function as Developers, in the
Bottom condition as
Fixers, in the Middle condition as
Integrators, and in the Customer condition as
Validators,
- and, in order to achieve the system power of these conditions, avoid the
reflex responses: sucking up responsibility when we’re Top, holding
higher-ups responsible when we’re Bottom, losing our connectivity when we’re
Middle; and holding delivery systems responsible for delivery when we’re
Customers.
These forms of system power enhance one another and together create Total System
Power.
For more reading:
Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational
Life (2nd edition),
Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2007.
In the Middle, Power + Systems, Inc., Boston,
1994.
For the experience:
The Organization Workshop on Creating Partnership.
www.powerandsystems.com
The author encourages distribution of this article.
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