“We’ve grown,” explained Edgar. “We have developed systems to make sure our product is consistently made. But we keep running into delivery problems, running behind, backorders, line shutdowns. There always seems to be a problem making sure things get done.”

“Which one person has that responsibility?” I asked.

“Well, that should be the manager,” Edgar replied. “But I wonder sometimes. Have you ever seen someone in the weeds?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the weeds. Like in a restaurant, where the waiter has too many tables. He can go as fast as he wants, but never catches up and every customer stays upset.”

“So, describe your manager’s role? What do you expect from him?”

Edgar paused, “He’s the manager, he’s in charge of everything that goes on out there. It’s quite a big job. We have several assembly lines, lots of machines, each a little different. We have raw material and finished goods inventories.”

“Where does the breakdown occur?” I pressed.

“There are two kinds of problems I see my manager facing. Sometimes he seems to fix the same problem over and over, one band-aid after the another. Other times, he can tweak our system to fix the problem once and prevent it from happening again. I call it a system fix.”

“And?”

“Sometimes, there is too much going on and he can’t study a problem long enough to make a system fix, so he is back to band-aids. And that’s when we get behind.”

“If I have been making these judgments about capability all along, using my intuition,” Brent wondered, “then why is delegation is so difficult? I mean, picking the right person for an assignment? Why am I disappointed so often?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?” I replied.

Brent’s eyes went to the corner of the ceiling before settling back to the conversation. “I think,” he started, “I think that sometimes I don’t think things through. I mean, I know when a task should be completed. And I know the Time Span capability of my team members. I guess I don’t think about matching those up. In fact, it’s only now, after doing that ranking exercise, that I understand, my team members are truly different.”

“Really?” I smiled.

“No, for some reason, I always thought everyone on my team should be able to see the task, see the problem, see the solution and just handle it. Now I see, clearly, some people on my team just don’t get it.”

“But you knew that all along.”

“Yes, I did. But instead of making a decision based on capability, I just picked somebody, anybody and then complained about them when they failed.”

“And, so, the reason for the failure?”

“I picked the wrong person. As the manager, I am accountable for the failure. To be more effective, I have to make better matches between Time Span requirements and Time Span capability.”

Brent took his time creating the list. Seven people he ranked, longest Time Span capability at the top of the list, down to the shortest Time Span capability. It took him about 45 seconds. His decisions were deliberate, twice, he changed his mind, pushing someone ahead of another. He looked up, with a question on his face.

“What do you think?” I asked. “You did that pretty quickly.”

“I thought it would be hard,” he replied. “But, it really wasn’t that difficult.”

“Look at your list,” I directed. “What do you think? How accurate do you think you are, in your ranking?”

Brent took another look, moving his eyes from top to bottom. His head nodded to the left, then looked up. “I’m good. I think this pretty well says it, don’t think I would make a change. This is the way I see it.”

“Excellent. But why are you so confident that your assessment of your team is accurate. We have only been talking about Time Span for a short while, and you spent less than a minute ranking your team. Why, so confident?”

“It wasn’t really that hard. I don’t know. When I was thinking about this person or that person, it’s like I already knew, didn’t have to think about it all that much.”

“The reason you are so confident, and the reason it took you less than a minute to rank this list, is that you have been thinking about this exercise ever since you became a manager. Every manager constantly keeps a running assessment of the Time Span capability of each team member from their very first task assignment. You just didn’t have a language to talk about it, or a way to measure it. Until now.”

Brent pondered. “So, it’s up to me to determine the Time Span of the project. How do I match that with the Time Span capability of the team member that I select for the project? I have several people to pick from. How do I make that decision?”

“How many people on your team?” I asked.

“Seven,” Brent replied.

“Make a quick list,” I instructed. “Just of quick list, first names are fine.”

Brent hesitated, but followed the instruction. “Okay, now what?”

“Now, rank them. Make another list, but in Time Span order. The person at the top of the list should be the person with the longest Time Span. Then the next longest Time Span, all the way to the bottom of the list. A question I ask myself is, ‘How long can I leave this person alone with a task assignment, and when I come back, they are still engaged on the assignment?’ You know some people, you can assign a six month project and they will complete it, without your assistance, using their own best judgment to solve problems and make decisions. Others can work for a while, but break down, require direction, get distracted, don’t finish, miss deadlines. And for some, you have to check every ten minutes, just to see if they are still working. Make the list, rank your team. Longest Time Span to shortest Time Span.”

“So, if I am looking for a match, to match the Time Span of the project with the Time Span of the team member, I get to decide the Time Span of the project?” Brent asked.

“It’s not that you get to decide. It’s that, as a manager, you have discretionary judgment to determine the Time Span of the project. You will rely on your judgment, based on your experience, based on the target completion time specified by the customer, based on your understanding of risk elements, failure elements, prototyping, testing, contingencies, availability of talent, availability of resources, priority of this project among other projects. It’s not that you get to decide. Part of your role, as a manager, is to determine the Time Span of the project, using your discretionary judgment.”

“How do you measure the Time Span of a task?” asked Brent. “You say it’s important to match the Time Span of the task with the Time Span capability of the person. So, how do you measure the Time Span of the task?”

“Here’s a trick question for you,” I replied. “How long is a three month project?”

Brent looked puzzled, looking for the trick. “I’ll bite. Three months.”

“Exactly, how did you know?”

“Because it takes three months to complete a three month project?” Brent tested.

“You are correct. And who decided that the project would take three months?”

Brent shrugged his shoulders. He was having trouble playing the game. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just arbitrary. Maybe the project time frame just got pulled out of a hat.”

“I hardly think so. Think about the Phoenix project that your team is working on. How long will it take to complete that project?”

Brent chortled. “Well, three months. It’s complicated, lots of things could go wrong, but we should complete it in three months.”

“Who decided that?” I pressed.

“I did. I have been doing this kind of work for ten years, now. Based on the scope of the project, it should take three months.”

“So, in your discretionary judgment, as a manager, you have determined that the Time Span of the Phoenix project is three months?”

Brent nodded.

“Your question was, how do you measure the Time Span of the task? The Time Span of the task is largely determined by the best judgment of the manager. For every goal set by a manager, there is a ‘by when.’ It is the ‘by when’ that best describes the Time Span of the goal.”

From a Comment posted last week on Time Span Shoes, GH writes:

Question:
That post was completely opaque. What did you mean by “the time span of the team member”? Experience, availability, something else?

If you don’t mind a piece of advice, when you’re blogging in the middle of the night, don’t post right away. Wait until the next morning so that you can reread and correct your post with a clear head. -GH

Response:
Time Span is a recurring theme in this blog. For those unfamiliar with the concept, you can access the Time Span Category on our site where we have 190 other posts about Time Span.

Time Span isn’t experience or availability. Time Span refers to a team member’s capability and is based on the research of Elliott Jaques. Elliott discovered that each person is born with an ability to handle a certain amount of complexity in their world. This ability (capability) is measurable. The metric is Time Span.

Time Span is the length of time that a person can work into the future, without direction, using their own discretionary judgment to achieve a specific goal. It is an objective measure of capability and a cornerstone for delegation.