Features of the Taxonomy
THEE’s Value
To manage our creativity and recognize the human element in everything we do.
THEE, the Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour, is a unified, comprehensive, dynamic, ordered account of the many human factors in endeavour. In other words, it systematized and codifies personal functioning.
The Taxonomy reveals the spontaneous operation of our minds or selves during endeavours of all sorts. It naturally accounts for group life and social institutions, because these are ultimately expressions of members' functioning, especially their thoughts and intentions. That is why the field is called «psychosocial».
For practical purposes, think of THEE as a system of frameworks for understanding endeavour as a whole and for working with its principal components like purpose, decision, change, inquiry.
Distinctive Features
● Essence of Humanity
THEE maps psychosocial reality i.e. what is human in a human being: human as distinct from animal-biological or chemical-physical or alien-impersonal.
● Structure of Experience
The essential discovery is that there is a structure in what we take to be intangible, fluid and multi-faceted: the imagination, personal experience, inter-personal interaction and social life.
● Continuous Unconscious Operation
Whether we are aware of it or not, we all operate through and with this structure, which takes different guises depending on circumstances. Put another way: we structure the psychosocial world using the structure which structures us.
● Source of All Social Design
THEE codifies the natural operation of our minds as well as the social arrangements and institutions that we deliberately create as expressions of our own or our group's thoughts and intentions.
● Release of Creative Energy
THEE elements are awareness-tools that help us apply reason and imagination to our current purposes. They build on existing experience, knowledge and intuitions. In this way, the tools enable the orderly release of power and creative potential.
● In-built Reflexivity
Taxonomic elements are accessed by reflective self-awareness. The Taxonomy necessarily contains within itself all the structures and processes involved in its discovery, development, exposition and application. Just as we cannot stand outside the physical universe, it is not possible to take up a position outside the Taxonomy: as we study it, we are using it.
Apart from the taxonomic terminology, THEE contains no (or very few) new ideas. As Yogi Berra said: "You can observe a lot by watching." THEE adds a logical structure and a completeness to disparate observations and ideas that people keep discovering for themselves.
Unusual Features
As with all taxonomies, THEE has been developed to be comprehensive and unified. However, there are unexpected features too.
● Atheoretical
The Taxonomy requires no theoretical commitment for its use because it is based on shareable, self-evident observations. Unusually, it contains theories and paradigms that are conflicting or contradictory. Over-investment in a theory may distort appreciation or block acceptance of the Taxonomy.
● Identity-sensitive
The Taxonomy reveals differences amongst people that are crucial to being effective, to accepting limitations, to working with others and to being happy in yourself. In much current practice and writing, identity is invisible, sketchily perceived or rendered unidimensional.
● Dilemma-sensitive
While the Taxonomy reveals that many conventional opposites are misleading or mistaken, it also identifies perennial dialectics and dualities. For constructive outcomes, both poles are relevant. This approach contrasts with common models such as X (=bad) v Y (=good), or New (=big idea) v Old (=straw man), or the conceptually muddled pendulum metaphor (= the correct answer is supposedly in the middle).
● Ethics-sensitive
The Taxonomy dissects and explicitly articulates issues of positivity and negativity, good and evil, constructive and destructive conduct. It specifies «what is» and «what ought to be» without being prescriptive or detracting from each person's autonomy or responsibility.
● Frame-of-reference dependent
Taxonomic elements are defined by personal function. So identification of any element depends on the context or frame of reference for the person involved. The same observable phenomenon (e.g. a raised hand) can function differently for different people in different situations.
Originally posted: May 2010; Last updated: 7-Nov-2026
