Early in my corporate career in the mid-1990s, I encountered Stratified Systems Theory (SST) by Elliot Jaques, which informed organisational structure and human resources management using seven levels of complexity of work. The higher you went, the more cognitive ability you needed because the bigger the implications of your decisions on the timeframe, money and people.
In my then field of personnel assessment, SST was used to measure suitability to jobs and potential for career advancement, but I found it educational more than prescriptive, teaching me how to think rather than indicating a static ability to do so. That became a transformational insight: use tools to empower people rather than evaluate them. The two resulting cultures are worlds apart...
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