The Three Layers of Work

As Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear state in their book Wiring the Winning Organization, all organizations are sociotechnical systems, people working with other people, engaging (sometimes complex) technology to accomplish what they are collaborating on. Regardless of domain, collaborative problem-solving occurs on three distinct layers, where people focus their attention and express their experience, training, and creativity.

In this article (originally published at ITRevolution.com and excerpted from the book Wiring the Winning Organization), we'll look more closely at what these three layers of work are.

Layer 1

Layer 1 contains the technical objects being worked on. These are the technical, scientific, and engineered objects that people are trying to study, create, or manipulate. These may be molecules in drug development, code in software development, physical parts in manufacturing, or patient injuries or illnesses in medical care.

For people in Layer 1, their expertise is around these technical objects (i.e., their structure and behavior), and their work is expressed through designing, analyzing, fabricating, fixing, repairing, transforming, creating, and so forth.

Layer 2

Layer 2 contains the tools and instrumentation. These are the scientific, technical, or engineered tools and instrumentation through which people work on Layer 1 objects. These may be the devices that synthesize medicinal compounds in drug development, the development tools and operational platforms in software development, technologies that transform materials in manufacturing, or the technologies to diagnose and treat patients' illnesses and injuries.

Layer 2 capabilities include the operation, maintenance, and improvement of these tools and instruments. These first two layers are the "technical" part of a sociotechnical system.

Layer 3

Layer 3 contains the social circuitry. This is the overlay of processes, procedures, norms, and routines, the means by which individual efforts are expressed and integrated through collaboration toward a common purpose. This is the "socio" part of a sociotechnical system.

Good vs Bad Social Circuitry

When leaders wire their Layer 3 (social circuitry) well, the people for whom they are responsible have what they need, when they need it, and in the format they need it. Problems have been redefined so that they are easier, safer, and faster to solve. As a result, people can invest their full creative energies and focus on solving their problems, either in Layer 1 (the work object) or Layer 2 (the tools or instruments to do their work). Their collective efforts flow together as a team, gracefully, as if precisely choreographed.

In contrast, consider when the wiring in Layer 3 is inadequate. People doing work are unable to do that work easily or well. They must spend their energy, effort, and cognitive capacity to get what they need, coping and compensating for Layer 3 problems. They are unable to generate and deliver value that others will appreciate. This is because Layer 3 was either overlooked or misaligned with the needs of people working in Layers 1 and 2.

In our next post, we'll look at how focusing on your organization's Layer 3 wiring (the social circuitry) can move you out of the danger zone and into the winning zone using the three mechanisms of slowification, simplification, and amplification.

Wiring the Winning Organization is written by Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear.

Gene Kim is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher, and multiple award-winning CTO. He has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999 and was the founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including The Unicorn Project, the Shingo Publication Award-winning Accelerate, The DevOps Handbook, and the bestselling The Phoenix Project. Since 2014, he has been the founder and organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations. He lives in Portland, OR, with his wife and family.

Dr. Steven J. Spear, DBA, MS, MS, is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and author of influential publications like The High-Velocity Edge, "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System," and "Fixing Healthcare from the Inside, Today." An advisor to corporate and governmental leaders across a range of fields, he is also the founder of See to Solve, a business process software company. Spear once worked in finance, at a Congressional agency, and at the University of Tokyo. He has a doctorate from Harvard, masters degrees in mechanical engineering and management from MIT, and a bachelor's degree in economics from Princeton. He and his wife, Miriam, an architect, live in Brookline MA, where they volunteer for several community organizations.