Ten Tiers of Management
The Tiering System Explained
Chapter in a Nutshell:
The Ten-Tier System is a model for a new global society. It’s an all-encompassing management framework designed to solve many of the world’s problems simultaneously, reconceptualising and innovating democracy, industry, finance, the economy, and other aspects of life.
At its core is a communications network, facilitating cooperation and understanding between all relevant areas of society. It standardises communications protocol globally so that information and responsibility are passed both up and down the chain appropriate to their areas of concern.
A standardisation of management divisions means fairer and more manageable delegation, which bodes well for democracy. For each management division, regular recorded council meetings broadcasted publicly upholds transparency, accountability, and proofs against corruption.
Key Ideas:
A two-way / all-way pyramidal communications structure for global management.
Delegation of responsibility and budget for land maintenance and area-specific issues.
Enforced transparency and accountability with decision-making and leadership.
Open lines of communication between the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ management tiers.
Standardising management divisions.
Post Sections:
Discussion
The Irregularity of the Current Structure
A Visualisation of The Ten Tiers
How it could work
Discussion:
Beyond the geopolitical theatrics and bickering, at the heart of our failures to synergise, it is a pervasive disunity that halts progress. The efficacy of global management is undermined by our inability to coordinate, our inability to trust, and our inability to integrate our most critical operations. This disunity is more than just a diplomatic inconvenience; it’s a potent force that directly threatens our survival. To solve pressing issues such as war, hunger, and environmental problems, we need to find a way that disarms the need to compete.
As separate individuals, separate countries, separate factions on every level, we see the real pitfalls of society. In our constant squabbling we are uncoordinated, we are inefficient, and above all we are distrusting. How can we solve these problems like global poverty and pollution when we are so divided?
“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
—Thomas Paine
Fundamentally, the Ten-Tier System works as a global management structure. First and foremost it seeks to find a way in which we can cooperate and organise ourselves effectively. As anyone should know from business, relationships, or even a family situation, the key to functionality is effective communication. What is our current global communications structure like? Can anyone fully explain the global communications protocol that coordinates international activity with the citizens of society? No? That’s because it doesn’t exist.
At best we have a privately owned media that’s reputationally guilty of crudely disseminating unimpartial half-truths, where the line between information and misinformation blurs and we the audience become the kings and queens of five-minute digestions. This is hardly the ideal way to create an informed populace, and it is surely insufficient if we seek some accountability in our citizens. After all, who exactly gets to pick the content? Who decides how much content? Who is crafting the delivery? This is a bastardisation of communication, a gossiping arbitrariness of funding and ratings. If we really, truly want both an informed public and a responsive management structure, we can surely do much better.
The pyramidisation of communication is a logical approach we see naturally emerging in business and the political world as it is today. But let us not conflate tiered management with top-down control. If I can speak on behalf of the presumed majority, we do not want bosses and slaves, and so at the very least there ought to be some democratic involvement from the public. While a true and complete democracy may sound ambitious when our public is not yet ready to take the reins, such an orchestration should be possible when our communications are in line, if not algamated, with our media. The generation and consumption of informative content should be as natural and intuitive as possible, and can play a consistent part in management. Still, official channels for direct managerial decision-making must be established with regard to democratic input: a democracy where the masses have the final say.
The Irregularity of the Current Structure
It’s not that we’re completely without a global management structure as we are, but it is poorly coordinated, irregular in its delegation, and really makes a mockery of democracy. We have several international bodies, with the most notable and most inclusive being the United Nations. The UN, while it includes most nations on Earth, does not operate on true principles of fair democracy even between sovereign nations. There are only five core countries of the United Nations’ Security Council (UK, USA, China, Russia, France, with other countries taking turns), from which the combined power of the UN is decided and directed. These permanent countries also have veto power, which has been used to throw off democratic decisions and instead vie for their own outcomes. The UN is heavily sponsored by the USA, decisions consequently tailored in their favour, meaning an open wallet for UN expenditure as long as Uncle Sam is kept happy.
Ex-leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, gave a powerful speech at the UN about the failures of this international body to uphold true planetary democracy. He vehemently argued in favour of equality between member states, protesting against the injustice enabled and often instigated by the Security Council that was instead meant to bring stability and peace. He was later assassinated by NATO forces.
The globe is already set up in a wonky pyramidal management structure, although it is neither democratic nor transparent. How are we meant to find resolution together when our most official international body stinks of corruption and inaction? How are we meant to effect meaningful change when it is still money and nuclear armament that rules the roost?
[United Nations post coming soon.]
Any way you look at it, the communications and management structures are irregular. There is very little consistency and very much complication in how the world as a whole works. So I ask: is there a way we can hammer things into a better shape? Can our decisions and decision-makers by law stay in the light, and by law be answerable to the votes of the majority? Can we both simplify and facilitate our decision-making by making it streamlined and transparent?
To analogise: the imperial measurement system works by a similar irregular fitting. Twelve inches to a foot; three feet to a yard; 1760 yards to a mile. While there’s a certain natural order to the imperial system, a conversion to the metric system has allowed some consistency and comprehensibility to prevail. Could we do the same with our politics? Can we standardise our management and communications?
A 10-base system means simpler scaling, making clear the jurisdiction between divisions and supporting the notion of equality worldwide. While perfect alotments may not be practical or even possible, we can find a logical way to segment the population into manageable divisions. High-tier councils can be comprised of representatives of lower-tier councils in a linked chain between local and international management, so that the highest-placed mouthpieces of our world’s organisational structure are elected, visible, accountable, and derived directly from grassroot values.
The ten tiers of the Ten-Tier System are really an arbitrary number that happen to fit the model. Complemented with a touch of alliteration, we have at our fingertips a scaled, staggered way to distribute responsibility and budget, which means we have a world accountable. No room for secret management structures or sly corruption; the system proofs against it. Leadership and decision-making will stay in the light. Discussion and resulting directives will be ensured to stay visible, trackable, intervenable, and in some ways predictable. In this way, we can clearly understand who is making what changes, when, why, how, and where.
So let’s break down these ten tiers. This may not be the perfect, final model, but it is at least the offering of how this kind of structure may exist in practice.
A Visualisation of The Ten Tiers:
Each of the ten tiers in the Ten-Tier System refers to a level of broadness of management. At one end of the scale (Tier 1) we have local, even home-specific management, while at the other end (Tier 10) it broadens to planetary government. You, the citizen, belong to a specific community in each tier—1 through 10. Everyone belongs to the same global Tier 10 community.
Given we are talking about a global democracy, each citizen has a right to contribute to the decisions and discussions of your community in each tier—even international policy. Representatives and leaders are elected as the default decision-makers when the People have not contributed their say, although the role of these leaders is to be a servant, a voice of that community, a representative and mouthpiece of public opinion. It is ultimately the People who make the decisions and rules for each ‘level’ of society, though this does not have to be either bottom-up or top-down management, but rather distribution of power that is appropriate by context.
The segmenting and duly prescribed responsibilities below are just an example of how this could be done:
Tier 1 is the household. T1 councils are made from the groups of individuals in a shared living space or block of land. They govern the maintenance and developments of what might be considered ‘private land and property’.
Tier 2 is the neighbourhood. T2 neighbourhood councils are made from local household representatives. They may be responsible for the security and beautification of their local area.
Tier 3 is the suburb. T3 suburb councils are made from local neighbourhood representatives. Their duty may be overseeing the consistency of the surrounding area, civil infrastructure (roads, lights, etc.), and local event coordination.
Tier 4 is the town or city sector. T4 councils are made from suburb representatives. These councils may guard utility management, broader crime watch, and consistency in aesthetics and commercialisation.
Tier 5 is the greater city or smaller region. T5 councils are made from the town or local area representatives. Broader issues may be resolved here and city-wide project planning discussed.
Tier 6 may be the region or state. The T6 council comprises of city mayors or small-region representatives. This tier would likely drive regional policy and law, with a focus on environmental issues and upkeep.
Tier 7 would be the nation. The national T7 council is made up of state senators or regional representatives. This would be the equivalent of country-wide government, where national identity and culture would be assessed, including law, immigration, punishment or rehabilitiation protocol, and broader transport infrastructure.
Tier 8 could be subcontinents, grouped or like-countries (e.g. Southeast Asia), or larger countries with high population (example of divisions below). The T8 councils would be made up of T7 representatives. This grouping of countries could work to align and facilitate regional business, travel, transport, and cooperation on environmental challenges.
Tier 9 may represent a unified continent. T9 councils would comprise of T8 representatives. Likely the arena for settling grander disputes and ensuring alignment and cooperation between nations of a region. If an area or collective is suffering from disease, poverty, hunger, resource issues, conflict, or some form of great inequality, this could be the board to transmute this ‘weak point’ into a collaborative effort.
Tier 10 represents the whole globe. Everyone on Earth is part of the same single T10 community, as everyone belongs to the same planet. The T10 council, however, would be a small international committee, something like the United Nations or ‘council of continents’, made up of T9 representatives. Here is where we would decide together our global policies, our common principles, values, promises and goals. Issues that cannot be resolved by any of the divisions of the world can be brought to the highest manifestation of global democracy.
How it could work:
Each council would meet regularly, and apart from council members of Tier 1 (everyday citizens), each committee member would be in at least two adjacent-tier councils. This means some consistency and broached communication between tiers, so that these tiers are bridged by actual people.
Each tier council may differ in size and regularity of meeting depending on circumstance. While some ‘meetings’ would be impractical to have in person regularly, in-person councils may be made compulsory periodically. To insure against corruption and to allow full documentation, analysis, public intervention, and even to use as learning resources, all meetings above Tier 1 would be recorded and broadcasted.
As each tier community and committee may differ in size, the nuances of the system’s balancing and budgeting would be something that would see further development in its uptake and implementation. The exactness of how populations and areas would be defined by tier may seek to use the divisions already in place, or seek to create a more standardised distribution based on land area, population, wealth/resources, political governance, culture, or language. It’s possible and probably smart that all of these are accounted for in tiering the management.
To exemplify, both Brunei and China are independent countries, although Brunei has a population of about half a million people while China has a population of about 1.5 billion. Brunei’s GDP is around $15 billion while China’s GDP is close to $20 trillion. By population, landmass, and industry these countries are leagues apart, yet they are still both soveriegn nations with their own unique cultures and languages. Should these two populations and areas be governed and represented by equal authority, or should larger countries be divided and smaller countries merged to fit into the tiering model?
Such things need not be decided in these early stages; it is the broader concept that is most important here. Still, we might see both challenges and opportunities in this kind of transition. The challenges would lie in the change of power structure, where currently empowered leaders and parties may be reluctant to relinquish their grips on a society they have control over and whose values and identity they might cherish (if they fear democratic input will change them). However, when we’re considering the greater good that would come from democratic input, we can seek to preserve such things in a global constitution. It's unlikely there would be outright destruction of culture and identity by wilful means, although it’s hard to see all ends when discussing the divisions and mergings that come with these alterations.
One potential benefit in this is that nationalism may become less rigid. One of the reluctances in lowering one’s weapon (military, economic competition, intellectual property and tech secrets…) is because our perceived divisions are set by culture and region, where you have to keep your guard up against ‘the other’. Through the TTS, this tense nationalism might be relieved by not having such strict divisions between countries.
As someone who loves to travel and explore the unique cultures of different countries, it’s certainly not an intention or will of mine to completely dissolve borders and homogenise language and methods, as variety is a huge merit and source of beauty in this world. Still, we can already see that countries that are physically large will naturally result in variations of culture between different parts of the country. China, India, Brazil, the USA, even much smaller nations, contain within them different dialects or ways of speaking, different regional foods and customs, different laws, often with borders dividing their respective states. We are already fragmented by territory; can we reassimilate those fragments in a way that is fruitful and agreeable?
Let’s first get one thing clear here: unified or aligned management does not have to mean a homogenised culture. The idea of management in this sense would surely involve discussion and policy-setting when it comes to law, industry, and use of technology among other things, but the structure does not mean a top-down imposition of protocol on all levels. International policy, for example, may dictate the outlawing of human trafficking and unapproved nuclear facilities, although it would likely not dictate the laws around abortion or drug usage, as positions tend to be based on cultural beliefs and positions. Such policies would be the decision of a lower, more local/national tier.
If we can even vaguely quantify our collective resources and affordabilities (e.g. what we can reap from the environment sustainably), we should be able to delegate budget to each tier community—every single division—so that most activity and resource use worldwide is accounted for, and we can support global developments and management in ways that are responsible and pragmatic. Operations would then be acting from a united pool of resources, where people are essentially paid to improve their lot, rather than wasting additional resources competing and fighting.
There are certainly some exciting possibilities for how we can reimagine society. The pyramid, for one, is both iconic and practical, and it so suitably fits this intuitively human approach to governance. An equal staging of democratic input not only feels instinctively familiar, but also empowers us to respond swiftly and delegate effectively for whatever problems or projects we put our collective minds to. Whatever the model we adopt, placing honest communication and cooperation at the heart of our intent will pave the way for a vibrant and efficient democracy to flourish.