Ginger Shafer's wheel shape is probably a better model of an organization
to build, use and present to people. I feel very comfortable and
unthreatened talking about the wheel and it's spokes.
However, William J Hobler's web analogy is probably a more realistic model
for understanding an organization. There are always alliances, projects,
friendships and outside influences that will be attached to the various
points on the wheel. Some of these are structured, but many are not. If
we link the two analogies together, we get:
The wheel -- here's the formal structure of the organization, the
policies, procedures and flow of control for the business. The various
responsiblities and how the organization fits together can be very easily
visualized and explained.
In a third dimension are the webs that tie people to others, or
even to other wheels (companies) This is where it can get very abstract
and messy. In even the best organizations.
Gary Scherling
Helping people help themselves
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/GScherling_GMS_TPN
-- GSCHERL@fed.ism.ca (GSCHERL)Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>