From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question: Related to our discussion of Time Horizon. Submitted by David.

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?

Response:
There are indeed the additional elements of skill level and experience, but the complexity of the task itself does not change. A person’s experience and skill level does have a bearing on their ability to be successful, but the complexity of the task does not change whether the person is successful or not.

A person’s skill level and experience will have a bearing on a person’s current time horizon, but the important observation is of a person’s maximum time horizon. As a person’s skill level and experience increases, their current time horizon will increase, but never beyond the person’s maximum time horizon.

Tomorrow, we will look at typical time horizons to get a clear understanding of how this works and why it is an important concept for managers. -TF

Special thanks to David for the question.