“Well, that makes sense,” Jonas replied. “My team member has been a valuable supervisor, but this leap to manager is a big leap. The responsibilities are bigger.”

“How big?” I asked.

“Really big. I need someone with more than a Post-It Note mentality.”

“How can you measure that?” I pressed.

“I’m not really sure,” Jonas paused, searching his bag of mental metrics.

“What are the goals attached to this managerial role you are thinking about?”

“Oh, there are goals. We have a complete role description for this position.”

“Good. I would expect that. But when you look at the goals, you know, the what, by when, how long are the by-whens of each of the goals, longer or shorter than the goals in his current role, as a supervisor?”

“Longer,” Jonas snapped, instinctively. “I guess that’s what makes them more complicated. The goals in this new role, as a manager, take longer to complete. More things can go wrong. The manager has to think ahead, create contingency plans, recognize when things are going off track, take corrective action. It takes more mental horsepower.”

“Did you know that you can measure that mental horsepower by measuring the Time Span embedded in each of the goals?”