“What is the difference between you and your team members, related to the role you play as their manager?” I asked.
“Well, I’m their boss. I provide direction, guidance, coaching. I delegate task activities,” Joan replied.
“Why you? Why doesn’t the team provide its own direction?”
“Well, they weren’t invited to the monthly meeting where the company sets that direction,” Joan smartly observed.
“But, this is the age of Zoom, why weren’t they invited to attend that meeting?” I pressed.
“But, it’s a highly interactive meeting. We can’t have ten more people asking questions. We would never get anything done in the meeting. Believe me, I know my team.”
“And, doesn’t the content of the meeting concern them? Are decisions made that will impact what they do day to day?”
“Yes, it impacts what they do, day to day, but in that company meeting we make adjustments to the overall goals and objectives for the year. It’s important to be flexible, agile. My team may have specific ideas (and questions) about technical issues day to day, but in that meeting, it’s not about technical issues, it’s about a new competitor that’s eating our market share, a new office across the state we are thinking about, a new product that our customers have been asking about.”
“So, the context discussion in that meeting is different than the context your team works in?”
“Yes, that’s it,” Joan agreed.
“So the difference between you and your team members, related to the role you play as their manager, is the context in which you work, meaning the context in which you make decisions and solve problems?” I prodded. “Your decisions impact their decisions, but the difference is the timespan of your decisions vs the timespan of their decisions.”
Joan continued to nod her head. “And, the difference between me and my manager is the same,” she replied. “My manager makes decisions that impact me, but the timespan of my manager’s context is even further in the future than mine.”
“And, so, we begin to see the structure of layers in an organization,” I said, “based on distinct levels of decision making, measured in timespan.”