Reading Between the Lines
The Importance of Defining Relationships in Documentation
The best organizations have a clear vision of why they exist (Sinek). This answer to why an organization exists is clearly important but tends to sit isolated within documents set apart from documentation around the people and processes supporting the why. This disconnect makes it difficult to gain an understanding into how aligned an organization is to why it exists.
The German philosopher Hegel tells us that absolute truth or knowledge of a concept (Concept is used as a general idea or understanding of something, here it is primarily used as a term for a goal, process, role, or resource within an organization.) is a destination that is only reached through the construction of a hierarchy of smaller truths (Fox, page 112). Each smaller truth within the hierarchy is its own absolute truth destination with its own hierarchy. As the pursuit of knowledge progresses the concept at the top of the hierarchy will eventually be joined with other concepts to become the hierarchy to support a higher level concept. Using this definition of knowledge, we will focus our attention on human organizations.
By definition, an organization consists of multiple concepts (or else there would be no need to organize) and the process of organization is an act of building relationships between concepts. If an organization is to survive, the people involved need to share a common understanding of the organization and this common understanding is usually captured in written documents. This documentation tends to focus on defining one concept in isolation. The text and visuals are dedicated to answering the question of what defines the concept. But an organization is composed of multiple concepts with relationships between them so there are two other important questions not being answered by this documentation.
- Why does the concept exist?
- How is the concept supported?
These questions are important if we are to understand the absolute knowledge of both the organizational concept and the organization as a whole. Even if these two questions are answered within the documentation, the information usually only describes immediate, neighboring relationships of the concept. This leaves an incomplete picture of the hierarchy of knowledge that defines the organization. If you want to determine the path through the organization’s concepts to understand how that concept contributes to the core purpose or how it is supported by first principles (“First principles” within an organization are the inputs used to produce value.) you will need to find other documents, potentially in other systems if they exist at all. For purpose-driven organizations, the inability to understand the hierarchy of truth or knowledge that supports its mission can lead to several problems for its human members.
There are established methods for defining relationships between concepts. Process flow diagrams show ordinality and dependency between various steps within a process and data flow diagrams show how data moves within an information system. However, process and data diagrams describe a single process or resource which can operate as a single concept within the organization. Organizational charts show relationships between roles that go beyond immediate neighbors, but they only show relationships between roles and lack definitions for relationships between those roles and the processes or resources they are responsible for.
Alignment to the purpose of the organization is of vital importance for continued survival. If each concept works towards a different goal, the relationships between those concepts will grow more distant until they eventually break. After enough relationships are broken the organization will cease to exist. Some organizations do a good job of integrating their mission into their culture. Despite this, concepts can become siloed or the organization grows large enough that concepts are positioned so far away from the core purpose that it is difficult to understand how it contributes to the mission. This estrangement is becoming increasingly detrimental to organizations today as younger generations become more concerned with their work having purpose (Goleman).
Organizational alignment should be of particular concern for leaders within an organization. Leaders are tasked with ensuring their organization is both effective and efficient in achieving its purpose. Without a way to understand how all of the concepts within an organization relate to the mission there could be orphaned concepts. These concepts are often historical artefacts, explained away with phrases like “that’s always been there” or “we’ve always done it that way”. Orphaned concepts are inefficiencies within an organization. With an understanding of the relationship between concepts, orphaned concepts and concepts that support or depend on several other concepts can be identified and given more resources or observed in detail.
In order to achieve organizational alignment, concepts need to communicate with each other. Transactional communication flows naturally between neighboring concepts. Communication regarding the details of a particular concept is usually written down in documentation stored within an information system. Unfortunately this documentation is typically only read or sometimes only accessible to individuals who are responsible for the concept. Without communication from leaders of how each concept contributes to the organization’s purpose, individuals responsible for concepts within the organization that exist two or more levels down the knowledge hierarchy are left wondering if what they do even matters. Simultaneously, without communication from individuals responsible for concepts contributing to the organization’s purpose, leaders are left with an incomplete view of how the organization accomplishes its purpose. This is particularly problematic when planning changes for the organization. If you don’t know where you are, it’s hard to determine how to make changes and move to the next phase.
I have experienced the problems caused by a lack of communication about the relationships between organizational concepts. As an employee, I have received training for activities where the only explanation for why that activity should be performed was that “we have always done it this way” (orphaned concept). These activities left me wondering how my work was contributing to the organization’s purpose. I am also a leader at my church and have struggled with confidence in my decisions because I was unable to see the set of activities the church performed and how they contributed to the mission.
Organizations are a collection of concepts that work together towards a common goal. Despite the inherent relationships that exist within an organization, documentation often fails to communicate the nature of these relationships. Organizations could be more effective and efficient if they took the time to communicate the relationships between their concepts that form the hierarchy pointing to their purpose.
Bibliography
“How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” Performance by Simon Sinek, TED, TEDxPuget Sound, Sept. 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action. Accessed 31 Dec. 2021.
Goleman, Daniel. “Millennials: The Purpose Generation.” Korn Ferry, Korn Ferry, 2 Apr. 2021, https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/millennials-purpose-generation.
Fox, Michael Allen. The Accessible Hegel. Humanity Books, 2005.