Prologue: Overcoming System Blindness
Top, Middle, Bottom, and Customer: Positions and Conditions
Throughout this book, we will be talking about Tops, Middles, Bottoms, and Customers. Given the complexity of organizations, this may appear to be a gross simplification of organizational life as the reader has experienced it. At times, as in “A Familiar Story” (which follows), we will treat these as positions: you are either a Top or a Middle or a Bottom or a Customer. At other times we will treat these as conditions all of us face in whatever position we occupy. In certain interactions we are Top, having overall responsibility for some piece ...
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