CycloPraxis identifies the natural working preferences of employees according to the lifecycle stage of a business.
Much has been written about evolutionary stages of firms, disruptive technologies, new ventures, and high technology marketing, but it seems that large firms continue to experience difficulty in deploying the necessary new products and opening new markets necessary for tip line growth and employees continue to wind up with assignments for which they are poorly suited. CycloPraxis explains this behavior and prescribes novel approaches.
The classic match between worker and job is function: operations, manufacturing, marketing, finance, sales, development, etc. Certainly it is important to match job function to an individual's preferences. There is another equally important dimension to the fit between workers and their jobs: cyclopraxis.
And there's more to it, yet. The concepts of Praxis can be applied all across the board.
I came across this idea a few years ago, in Darwin Magazine. After digesting the CycloPraxis ideas and applying them to a number of different areas in life and the world where we are seeing a lot of conflict (the culture wars, religious differences, the clash between the creative class and other groups), I believe Mr. Johnson has hit upon something that is farther reaching than technology companies.
I find his theories work well in explaining the inherent conflicts all over the world and throughout cultures, right now, and they dovetail nicely with the concept of the Creative Class and Lawrence Lessig's work on intellectual property... not to mention all the brouhaha about emerging digital media licensing rights, who holds them, who doesn't, etc. The concepts he's laid out, when raised to a "meta" level, can offer us a whole lot of insight and depth about the challenges which we face as an increasingly creative society ... and an increasingly creative world.
It's quite brilliant. Take a look, when you can.
Comments
It’s also very astute of you to notice the conflicts that occur between stages. The notion of conflicts was identified in some of the very earliest scholarly writings on lifecycle. Conflict is grounded by to the changing nature of work during each lifecycle stage and amplified by the style differences that an author-builder-capitalizer-extender each apply in pursuit of their organizations’ goals. Each praxis perceives the other praxes as making less effective contribution – fertile grist for conflict. Business unit managers find the inter-praxis conflict of lifecycle transitions among the most difficult of callenges.
In our consulting work, we frequently apply the 4 primary CycloPraxis styles -- author, builder, capitalizer, and extender -- to situations other than a company's lifecycle. For instance we have found application in:
- university professors
- nurses & doctors
- the style with which people buy/sell real estate
- non-profits
- consulting engagements
Since a there is no obvious lifecycle, we call this phenomena optipraxis instead of cyclopraxis. We are always left wondering why the 4 fundamental praxes correlate so well. Here's a hypothesis...
A number of personality factors make a worker a better fit for one of the authoring-building-capitalizing-extending lifecycle stages [we leave the precise analysis for those schooled in psychology]. Those not in a business with identifiable lifecycle behavior also have the same personality factors, and therefore are best suited for work that is equivalent in nature to the work of one of the lifecycle stages. For instance, the rapid-fire, high-pressure problem solving work of an emergency room nurse has a number of abstract similarities to that of the definitive-action work in the building lifecycle stage. And the by-the-book, process-defined work of an operating room nurse has equivalent similarities to the rule-constrained productive tasks in the capitalizing lifecycle stage. And yes, the optipraxes don’t get along with one another either. Operating room nurses just don’t cut it in the emergency room – conflicts emerge.
What about outside our place of work….
So much of our lives are governed by our chosen employment, our 'work'. Think for a moment how quickly after we meet someone we ask, "what do you do?" The response is most often a profession, an employer, and a product or service as in "I'm a commercial loan officer at First National Bank". If our work is such a large part of our lives, then it is only natural that our work praxis shapes at least the non-play part of our non-work lifestyle. I call the non-play part our civic duty: we buy insurance, pay bills, renew drivers-licenses, visit family for holidays, have voicemail greetings, etc. The way we approach each of these civic duties has a lot to do with our cyclo/opti praxis. A dear friend once told me “you sure do bring home your work behavior”. Just for the record those words belonged to a stressed out ‘E’ who had seen enough of a ‘B’ dealing with a civic challenge.
I would be overreaching my reflections – and my credibility – if I were to continue this discussion to higher levels of behavior as might be found in play, politics, culture, and religion. Instead I leave this territory to psychologists and others who might understand the complexities and interactions of personality factors.
At the CycloPraxis Group we have become intrigued with optipraxis. The head of staffing at the local hospital was kind enough to share insights about nursing work styles and personality factors. These are captured at www.cyclopraxis.com.
We are near completion of a review of scholarly research on the various taxonomies of work, but have yet to find one that is all encompassing. Therefore we have developed our own preliminary organizing paradigm with the following labels:
- Inspirational Work
- Establishing Work
- Productive Work
- Assistive Work
- Managerial Work
Comments are welcome and encouraged.