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.

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
Can you expand on the “Time Span” “compensation banding” approach? I am not familiar with this concept and do not fully understand what is meant by either term.

Response:
Time Span is a recurring theme in this blog and in our leadership program (Working Leadership Online). Time Span is the cornerstone of the management research conducted by Elliott Jaques from the early 1950’s until his death in 2003. This research is documented in 26 books written during his lifetime and remains the most coherent and potent foundation for organizational design on the planet.

If you can see a goal, as a “what, by when,” then you can understand Time Span. Time Span is the time element in any goal statement. All behavior is goal-directed behavior, so Time Span touches everything we do. Most importantly, for managers, Time Span helps us understand the complexity of any goal. The longer the Time Span of the goal, the higher its complexity. The shorter the Time Span of the goal, less complexity.

We can also understand the complexity of any role in the organization by examination of their longest Time Span tasks (goals). The Time Span of the longest tasks in a role are a direct indicator of the complexity of the role. By calibrating the Time Span of the tasks in the roles inside your organization, you will be able to accurately identify and rank those roles according to complexity.

Pay banding looks at the those Time Spans and recognizes fair compensation. The longer the Time Span of the tasks (goals) in a role, the higher the compensation. Pay banding is a straightforward correlation of fair compensation for increasingly longer Time Span roles. Once you have determined fair compensation based on Time Span, discussions related to the value of roles can be put to rest and we can get back to work.

An in-depth explanation, along with defined pay bands can be found in Social Power and the CEO, on pages 55-56. If you have more questions, Ask Tom.

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
I learned today that my salary, as a manager of a department, is less than the people on my department team. My boss told me that adjustments will be made during my review. What is the best way to deal with this without feeling betrayed by my employer? I have been with the company fewer years, but promoted twice and my skills far exceed those on my team.

Response:
Your situation is not unusual. Most companies have only an intuitive idea about appropriate compensation and much less of an idea when asked to explain their compensation structure. Curing a compensation structure that is out of whack is quite difficult.

This is complicated by the fact that compensation gets wrapped up in the self concept of a person’s value. Not the case. Compensation must be based on the contribution of the role. The person may have higher capability and the potential to play a higher role, but it is the role that commands the compensation, not the person.

Elliott Jaques was quite specific and clear on the subject of compensation. He offers a simple basis for compensation banding with Time Span as the metric. Compensation, in Jaques model, is directly tied to the effective Time Span responsibilities in the role. And in your case, as a manager, your task assignments (goals) would necessarily have longer Time Spans associated. This would command a higher pay band than those on your team.

Your employer gets the benefit of the doubt on this one, acknowledging that an adjustment is appropriate. And it is likely to take some time to fix this systemic misunderstanding. And an even longer time for your boss to understand why.