Growing and Shrinking

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Organizations will not stay the same size, so if  you are going to have a hierarchical structure and vertical mobility you have to figure out how to script responses to growing and shrinking so that they don't break the structure or create chaos.

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Each sector council has the power to fission, or bifurcate, an immediately subordinate sector into two sectors under certain conditions. 

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This could have been handled any of many ways, but simplicity is best.  A higher council can order an immediately subordinate council to split into two if that subordinate council is large enough.  That simple mechanism provides a way for growth to be something that can be accommodated.  This is as simple and undisruptive as it can get and it can do anything that needs to be done.  The superior council must make the decision because that way it will know which new members it will have.  

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A council can only fission a sector which has 10 or more immediate subordinates, and can fission it only into two new sectors of at least 5 immediate subordinates each. 

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5-10 members or so is really best for a council.   3 or 4 is too few for good functioning and 11 to 15 is too many for it, but they are acceptable ranges in necessity.  Outside of those ranges things are really out of hand.    Group dynamics get skewed and meetings are less able to work.  How do I know this?  Just guessing.  

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The council ordering the fission decides which subordinates of the bifurcating sector will go into which of the new sectors, but it may not otherwise break up the immediate subordinates of the bifurcating sector. 

 

Minimum complexity, minimum disruption.     The company commander can split up a platoon into two new platoons by distributing its many squads among the two, but the commander can't split those squads up, sending individual soldiers to different platoons.  That just raises all kinds of problems that would have to be solved.  

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When a sector undergoes fission, members of the sector councils originally retain the same seniority scores in the new sector councils that they had on the original council. 

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Simple as this system is, it still creates disruption and a need for housekeeping tasks.  Starting everybody at zero in the new councils would be unfair and create new problems.    So existing seniority scores get cloned.  

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Following a fission event, both new sectors resulting from the fission (and their sector councils) will get new leaders, based on which participant of the new sector has the highest seniority score on the sector council at the time of the fission, and those leaders will serve out the remainder of the year. 

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You'll be a creating a new interim leader anyway, so you might as well do them both like that.   Also this is an excellent mechanism for getting rid of really troublesome leaders who have no seniority because of all the demerits but are still serving a term.  Recruit them away: expand the sector until you can fission it and then you can put the senior most in charge.  I mean, as long as we're here, lets provide that.  No waste.  

 

When a sector has fewer than the minimum number of immediate subordinates it is automatically disbanded and unless the sector is an entire order all its participants are expelled from the order (though they may then be re-inducted into basic councils in the remaining parts of the order). 

 

No paper tigers.  And the simplest way to deal with a decline requiring restructuring is to get rid of failing branches of the hierarchy.  It's harsh dropping everybody back to zero seniority and making them come back in somewhere else at the bottom, but maybe they should have kept  up numbers.    The simplicity and flexibility is radical compared with possible alternatives.  

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Usually the minimum number of immediate subordinates is five, but the exceptions are that an order can have as few as three departments and basic councils can have as few as three members. 

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The special provisions for there to be 3 member councils at the very top and bottom of an order are special and even there 5 or more should be sought as quickly as possible.  Note, a basic council can't be bifurcated with just 6 members to make two new councils of 3.  This reflects that preference for 5 or more. The 3 is for the purpose of allowing declining basic councils to hang on rather than cause a cascade of disbanded councils.    The 3 member high council is for the purpose of allowing levels to be added without having to have 25 departments.  15 is a stretch as it is.  In between it has to be 5 by 5 all the way.  

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When an order itself dissolves, the remaining departments become independent orders (unless the entire order was just a basic council), and the former deputies become presidents of those orders, to serve until the next leap day. 

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This is the simplest way to handle this.  

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This may be scheduled irrevocably by the high council.

 

This allows time for dividing up property by resolution so guidelines don't have to be provided here.  

 

When an order has 15 departments the president may add a level to the order by just dividing the 15 or more top level sectors into 3 groups, which will be the new departments. 

 

This way the whole hierarchy stays intact except some new grouping at the top that most won't even notice.  This is what orders do instead of bifurcating.  

 

Seniority on the former high council is cloned and retained on both the new high council and the new department councils. 

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Returning people to zero will disrupt and anything else will be more complex, so cloning seniority is the way to go.  

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The most senior member of each new department will be the deputy and leader of the new department and department council for the remainder of the year. 

 

Interim leaders will be necessary exactly as with bifurcation and for the same reason.    By distributing elements among the new departments the high council decides who the new leaders will be.  

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An order which consists of just a high council may add a level when it has just 9 or more participants, by using a resolution to divide up into 3 or more basic councils (whose members will inherit seniority scores cloned from their scores on the former order council) and appoint new leaders for them who will make up the new high council. 

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Very small orders need special permission for this one special exception because otherwise initial growth will be overly complicated.  The new leaders are appointed by the resolution rather than based on seniority because at really  low levels like that seniority doesn't reflect a lot of track record.  Something more democratic tells more about the common perception of the individual.  

 

A president may eliminate a level from the order by just eliminating the top level.  Thereafter, members on the new high council will include not the former deputies but all their former immediate subordinates.  

From such a level reduction, the former department sectors simply cease to exist and their former immediately subordinate sectors come to be immediately subordinate to the president and the high council instead. 

 

As with adding levels at the top, this simply disrupts the least.  

 

After a level reduction, all high council participants start on the new high council with seniority scores of zero.

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If there's been a level reduction the former high council wasn't doing too well.  They should be junior peers of their former subordinates.  

 

By resolution of the high councils of both orders, a larger order may adopt a smaller order of the right size (one fewer levels) to be taken on as an additional department. 

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There are many possible ways to design merging of orders, but this is the simplest and can do everything you need.  

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