“So, I have a candidate that I hope is up to the job. But what I really want to know is, whether he has Stratum I, Stratum II or Stratum III capability. Can you conduct an interview and tell me?” Ellen asked.

“Not likely,” I replied. “But let’s suppose I could. What would that tell you?”

“Well, if he had Stratum III capability, that would be better than Stratum II?” she guessed.

“Would it?” I pressed.

Ellen’s brow furrowed, wondering if I had forgotten all my math skills. “Three is higher than two.”

“What does that matter?” I asked again. I waited, and then some. “In the end, does it matter whether this person is successful in the role?”

“Well, yes.” Ellen was a bit exasperated with me.

“When you define the role, is it important to define the level of work?”

“That’s what I have been trying to get to, the capability of the person to do the level of work, the level of work required by the role.”

“So, have you defined the level of work?”

“Yes, in the Role Description, we describe the activity and what this person will be responsible for.”

“But have you defined the level of work? What is the complexity of problems that must be solved, the decisions that must be made and the Time Span of the goals in the role?”

Ellen ran through the Role Description in her head. “Not specifically. The job title is Manager and this person will be responsible for everything that goes on in that department. But, we haven’t thought about specifically defining the level of work.”

“If you can do that, define the level of work, the complexity of problems to be solved and the decisions to be made, then, interview for that, you will be ahead of the game. And you will also be in a better position to judge the capability of the person related to the work. It’s all about the work.”

From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
In yesterday’s blog, you mentioned a Post-It Note mentality. What’s a Post-It Note mentality?

Response:
When Elliott Jaques described the four states of mental processing, he was describing the way our brains perceive the world. This perception is used in problem solving and making decisions. I found this picture of a Post-It Note way of seeing the world. Below the picture I have clipped in the descriptions of Jaques four states. You tell me.

• Stratum I – Declarative Processing – the ability to focus on single task, direct output, solving problems through trial and error. Logic consists mostly of opinion without evidence to support.
• Stratum II – Cumulative Processing – the ability to piece together separate elements of a problem, pattern detecting, solving problems through past experience, documented in SOPs, best practices.
• Stratum III – Serial Processing – the ability, not only to see patterns, but cause and effect relationships between elements. Problem solving through comparative analysis, root cause analysis. The ability to sequence discrete elements into an efficient system.
• Stratum IV – Parallel Processing – the ability to handle multiple serial processes simultaneously. Not multi-tasking, but seeing the interdependency, contingency and bottlenecks that exist between multiple systems and sub-systems. Problem solving through systems analysis.

Post-It Note mentality. Which is it?

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
How do you distinguish between Ten years experience and One year experience ten times?

Response:
I love analogies. When we attempt to describe capability, we most often fall into analogies.

• This person has a Post-It Note mentality.
• We need more band-width in this role.
• We have to get more horsepower on this project.

When I press for articulation, most often the explanation is another analogy. But when I look around the room, everyone knows intuitively what is meant by Post-It Notes, band-width and horsepower.

So, what’s the difference between Ten years experience and One year experience ten times?

Elliott Jaques (Requisite Organization) most clearly depicted these different states of thinking and corresponding levels of work –

• Stratum I – Declarative Processing – the ability to focus on single task, direct output, solving problems through trial and error. Logic consists mostly of opinion without evidence to support.
• Stratum II – Cumulative Processing – the ability to piece together separate elements of a problem, pattern detecting, solving problems through past experience, documented in SOPs, best practices.
• Stratum III – Serial Processing – the ability, not only to see patterns, but cause and effect relationships between elements. Problem solving through comparative analysis, root cause analysis. The ability to sequence discrete elements into an efficient system.
• Stratum IV – Parallel Processing – the ability to handle multiple serial processes simultaneously. Not multi-tasking, but seeing the interdependency, contingency and bottlenecks that exist between multiple systems and sub-systems. Problem solving through systems analysis.

So, now you tell me. What’s the difference between Ten years experience and One year experience ten times?

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
As I look at Elliott Jaques model organization, I notice that it is a hierarchy. Over the years, I have heard, or been taught, or read articles about how it is important to flatten out the hierarchy, drive decision-making down to the front lines, closer to the customer. It makes sense to me, but Jaques seems to ignore these new flat organizational models.

Response:
Your observations about Elliott Jaques’ high regard for hierarchy is correct. And these new organizational models really aren’t new. The flat organization, for all its well intentioned “new-ness” is the way things were before there was hierarchy.

Most people see organizational layers as reporting relationships. Who reports to whom? Who is a direct report? An indirect report? A dotted line report? This view lends itself to command and control and the push-back is predictable in today’s business environment. The central question is NOT, who reports to who, but which manager can be held accountable for the output of the team member?

Elliott saw things differently. Elliott was a scientist who spent his time observing both functional and dysfunctional organizations. He didn’t make up warm and fuzzy theories, he observed, in a scientific way. He gathered data, documented his findings and arrived at principles he found helpful.

Elliott observed, in functional organizations, that each layer had a Time Span orientation distinct from the next and that, if you drew a picture of those layers, from the longest Time Span goals at the top to the shortest Time Span goals at the bottom, you ended up with a picture of hierarchy. If his findings had been a circle, he would have reported it to be a circle, but his findings supported hierarchy.

As he examined each layer, he found that problems were solved differently. And the way problems were solved was directly related to the Time Span of the goals each layer was working on.

The value he found, in this hierarchy, was the capability of each successive layer to assist the next layer down with their problem solving. This capability created a value stream for problem solving and decision making throughout the organization.

Where we get screwed up with all this push-back on hierarchy is that we see hierarchy as a reporting structure. The real power of hierarchy comes from its value stream. Here is the way Elliott saw it:

Every employee is entitled to have a competent manager with the Time Span capability to bring VALUE to their problem solving and their decision making.