“Tell me more about Time Span. I think I understand, but I’m not sure,” Audrey was curious.

“Do you ever wonder about how to judge the complexity of a job, ever wonder how to describe its mental difficulty?” I asked.

“Well, yeah. Sometimes when I delegate something, I don’t know who to choose. Or I don’t know if the person can complete the task without a lot of my help.”

“Exactly,” I said. “We use different words, like, it’s going to be a big job. Or it’s going to be a tough assignment. Well, just exactly how big is a big job, and just exactly how tough is a tough assignment. Would you like to have a measuring stick that describes precisely how big, big is?”

Audrey leaned forward. Her eyes grew wide. “Yes,” she replied.

“The answer is Time Span. Think about the complexity of task related to how long it takes to complete it.”

“Give me an example,” she said.

“Okay, tell me the time span for this task? Please move all the junk away from the loading bay so we can get this stack of product loaded on a truck that arrives here in :45 minutes.”

“That’s easy,” she said, “Forty-five minutes.”

“Okay, tell me the Time Span for this task? Please arrange the loading bay and create a policy for material flow to accommodate all the different products that we load on all the different vehicles and shipping containers?

“It looks like a similar task, but it requires a totally different Time Span. What do you say?” -TF