“I never thought of it that way,” said Marge. “But I am not sure exactly what you mean.” We had been talking about how measuring time span was a valuable indicator of the complexity of a job.
“Time span is the length of time that a person can work into the future, without direction, using their own independent discretionary judgment,” I explained. Marge turned her head with a quizzical look.
“Let’s take a task. Let’s say I want to delegate a task to you. So we have a delegation meeting and I explain all about it. You get some questions answered and we adjourn the meeting. From that moment, you begin to work without further direction from me, using your own discretionary judgment.
“When you complete the task, you come back to me and say, -that’s it, I am finished, what’s next?
“The time that you were working independently, measures the time span for that task. On the shipping dock, you have people doing things with different time spans. Packing a box may only have a time span of 15 minutes. Working a rolling freight schedule, checking inventories, supplies and personnel on the loading dock may have a time span of two weeks. Two totally different roles, each with its own time span.
“Time span becomes an accurate measurement for the complexity of any given task.” -TF
But, doesn’t the individual’s ability or skill level play a role in measuring the complexity of a task? If I give the same task to two different people, inevitably they will complete it at different rates based on their skill level and/or familiarity of the task. Doesn’t that skew the measurement?
David,
Thank you for your comment. You bring up a very important distinction between three elements: skill, experience and time horizon. Each can be used to measure a person’s ability. I will talk about this more as we continue this discussion of time horizon.