As all employees worked under near identical conditions nothing differed except their perception of the number of obstacles to exemplary performance facing them. The differences seemed to be more perceptual than real. This lead the consultant to the hypothesis that in this client's organization the performance difference might be related to the employee's perceptions about his or her own power to remove the roadblocks to higher level performance. Further testing proved him right. In addition, the consultant observed that employee perceptions fell into four sets or categories that could be generalized and applied to other cases.
Some roadblocks are truly unalterable.
These are all factors which affect employee performance but are well beyond individual or collective control. The individual employee might make some degree of progress in overcoming this particular inhibitor to performance. Often a small group of employees can make even more progress collectively. And, most importantly, this type of roadblock can be managed in large part or totally, if supervision or management got involved. This type of roadblock is characterized as a partition, since a partition, if pushed from the bottom, might move slightly, but if pushed from a higher level will often topple.