From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Love it – the four levels of thinking directly related to the flow of inputs, manner and tempo. This helps so much in understanding an additional vector of complexity, in addition to future ambiguity (as measured by timespan).

Is there a measure that is commonly used and can be attributed to positions in a Requisite Organization design? Can we measure the amount of activity needed in each/any of the four levels to know what type of sophistication a) the org needs at that level and b) that a candidate has? Or is it intuitive only (we sense it and we know it when we see it)?

Can you use this to help bring clarity to the org chart?

Response:
Some would say that identifying capability is an art form, know it when we see it. My take is that it’s more detective work, assembling clues within a framework. The brilliant insight in the question is the focus. Typically, in an attempt to identify capability, we focus on the person. More brilliant, in the question, the focus is on the work, flow of inputs, manner and tempo.

I don’t judge people, I’m not very good at it. But, I DO judge the work. My calibration of level of work always ends with timespan, but at first blush, timespan might mislead, I need other clues, and then timespan falls in place. If all projects are one-week projects and we have twenty of them, it might seem the timespan is one week. But, to handle twenty simultaneous projects, the start time and the stop time begins much earlier and ends much later than the one-week project.

Before the projects start, we have to examine, in all the projects, what is the same? Can we apply the same solution to identical problems? In all the projects, what is different that requires a unique solution? What is our capacity to handle twenty simultaneous projects? Do we need two project managers or four project managers? If we only have two PMs and need four, where will we find two more? What steps in the project can be started immediately? What steps can be done at the same time? What steps must be done sequentially? When we start to answer those questions, we find the timespan is much more than one week?

Laying out the org chart, I generally use a pre-cursor document (spreadsheet) that has columns for each function on a team, or columns for each team in a department, or columns for each department in the organization. The rows in the spreadsheet designate level of work. If you would like a copy, just drop me an email. I use this spreadsheet to clearly identify the level of work before I translate the structure into an org chart.