Tag Archives: capability

Capability in the Team

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I was talking with Claude, a supervisor, about his team. “Those two over there, are the new guys, one has been here a month, the other just got out of orientation last week. They are learning, but it will take them a while to catch on to how we do things around here.”

“How often do you have to check up on them?” I asked.

“In the morning, we go over the work orders from the production schedules. A little huddle meeting. I check back in about 15 minutes to make sure they are moving in the right direction. Then, they’re good for a couple of hours. Right now, I am not as worried about their production output as much as doing the work correctly.”

“And the rest of your team?”

“The rest of the crew has been here at least a year, some, four or five years. They know what to do. For them, our morning huddle is as much social as it is to look at production for the day. I walk the floor a couple of times, morning and afternoon, just to see if they have questions, admire some of their handiwork.”

“When they run into a problem, how do they solve it?” I pressed.

“There are some things they can try, but if they can’t figure it out pretty quickly, they either come to Tony, or me?” Claude replied.

“Tony?”

“Tony is the team leader. Sharp kid. Only been here two years, great technician, twenty-eight years old.”

“So, how does Tony solve problems?” I was curious.

“Same as the other guys, but he is quick. If one solution doesn’t work, he has something else to try. If that doesn’t work, he tries something else. Boom, boom, boom, problem is usually solved. When I have to be out of the office, or on vacation, Tony is my assistant. I can leave him in charge, and not worry. But Tony won’t be with us much longer.”

“Why’s that?”

“I was talking with my manager. She has had her eye on Tony since the beginning, thinks he ready for supervisor training?”
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Orientation for our online program Hiring Talent kicks off tomorrow. Registration is now open. Follow this link for more information. Hiring Talent – 2013.

Not a Matter of Training

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“And that’s where he stops. He can keep one or two machines busy, but we have fifteen machines and plenty of work for all of them.”

“Who was the supervisor before Ryan got hired?”

“Oh, he was a good guy, kept the place humming. Got promoted to our other plant in Michigan,” Drew explained.

“And there was no one else on the production crew that could take over?”

“No, a good technician doesn’t necessarily make for a good supervisor. It’s one thing to push out today’s work. Totally different to make sure all the machines are scheduled for each shift for the next three weeks. Lots of moving parts.”

“Can’t you train someone?” I probed.

“It’s not a matter of training,” Drew shook his head. “Some people have it and some people don’t.”

“So, what is it, that some people have and others don’t?” I wanted to know.
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Orientation kicks off this Friday. Registration is now open for Hiring Talent – 2013. This is the only program that blends Elliot Jaques’ Levels of Work with the Behavioral Interview. This 6-week online program is practical, hands-on, coached by Tom Foster. Follow this link for more information and registration.

Why Can’t Ryan Handle It?

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Drew was beside himself. “I don’t know why Ryan can’t handle this job. We asked him all the questions in the interview. We were quite thorough. He knows the name of each piece of equipment. He can tell you exactly what it is used for, how it is used. We even have trained technicians for him to manage to run the equipment.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“All he has to do is keep the equipment busy. We have sales orders that come out of the front office. All he has to do is look at the sales orders, translate those into work orders, make sure we have the right materials in stock and schedule the work on each machine.”

“And?” I pressed.

“And that’s where he stops. He can keep one or two machines busy, but we have fifteen machines and plenty of work for all of them.”
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Registration is now open for Hiring Talent – 2013. This is the only program that blends Elliot Jaques’ Levels of Work with the Behavioral Interview. This 6-week online program is practical, hands-on, coached by Tom Foster. Follow this link for more information and pre-registration.

A Decision Based on Hope?

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Sylvia was perplexed. Difficulty trusting her judgment. “I have this gut feeling that Porter would make a good supervisor. But, he is our best technician. If I promote him and it doesn’t work out, I might lose my best technician.”

“Why do you feel Porter has the potential to be supervisor?” I asked.

“Intuition,” Sylvia replied. “The only thing I am concerned about is his people skills. As a technician, he is a good producer, and whenever anyone has a question, he is the lead guy. Whenever anyone has a problem, they talk to Porter. When anyone has a decision to make, Porter gets consulted. He has a knack for knowing what needs to get done next. I can see his planning skills, always looking ahead. He knows when materials are supposed to arrive, when we need to order, even for the longer lead time stuff.”

“Then what is your hesitation?”

“Sometimes, his people skills are a little rough,” she explained. “I don’t want to promote him and then find out he is a dictator.”

“Rather than assume, or guess, or hope that Porter has the potential to be a supervisor, how could you find out? How could you find out before you promote him? How could you confirm that he is not a dictator?”

“I guess I could talk to him,” Sylvia searched.

“And, so, he tells you he is not a dictator. Is that enough? Is that enough evidence to make a firm decision to promote him?” I pressed.

“Well, no.”

“Then how? How can we create tangible evidence that he has the potential to work effectively with other people?”

“I guess I could give him something to do where he has to work with other people in the capacity of a leader?” Sylvia tested.

“Not a permanent role assignment, but project work. Give Porter a project where he is the project leader for a specific task that requires him to use the resources of other people on a project team. If he fails, you have a broken project, big deal, you can manage that risk. If he is successful, you will have tangible evidence on which to base your decision. Not a hope, a wing and a prayer, but tangible evidence.”

Discovering Potential Capability in an Interview

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Quick excerpt from a candidate interview –

“How are you given work assignments?” I asked.

“Well, I meet with the PMs on a weekly basis, just to catch up on progress completed the prior week, update them on logistics for this week. I have to coordinate with our manufacturing shop to make sure the manufactured cabinets and installation components are all coming out to staging at the right time to be installed. So, I really have to figure things out based on piecing together all these moving parts,” the candidate replied.

“How often are you given work assignments?” I pressed.

“Well, even though I recast everything on a weekly basis, I am really trying to run, believe it or not, one year ahead of schedule. In my role as project scheduler, I use a project management software to book out the jobs based on various schedules and the contracts. It’s not really my job to dissect everything, but I do it anyway, just to double-check, make sure no one is asking for the impossible. It’s only when I plan out a year, especially for some of our big jobs, that I can schedule in all the smaller jobs. Things get very fluid at times. It’s easy to get in the weeds.”

This candidate was currently in a Stratum II role. It was his job to publish details in a 60-day look forward production schedule. To do that, he had to accumulate data from several sources and coordinate people, materials and equipment. From one week to the next, there were significant changes to that schedule that required constant coordination and re-coordination. To be effective required solid S-II (Cumulative) processing.

The question on the table is potential. What is this candidate’s potential? Is it possible that the candidate has greater potential capability than is required by his current role?

I always examine the difference between prescribed duties and discretionary duties. Prescribed duties in this role required a 60-day look forward, a published schedule. As long as that 60-day schedule was published, no one had complaints.

But it’s in the world of discretionary judgment that effectiveness lives. “It’s only when I plan out a year, especially for some of our big jobs, that I can schedule in all the smaller jobs.”

“Oh, really. Tell me more,” I wondered.

“You can’t just schedule projects one after the other. Project schedules have their ups and downs. We have a committed crew on a large project, but we might get a project delay waiting for another trade to finish a segment. If that happens, I have a crew that I can temporarily shift to a smaller project. If I can do that, sometimes I can accelerate the schedule of the smaller project, knock it out and get ahead.”

As I listen to this description and ask more drill-down questions, it appears this candidate may be moving in transition from S-II (Cumulative) to S-III (Serial) applied capability. He is planning “what-if” scenarios, alternate paths to the goal, and truly working a 12-month schedule. I don’t make this judgment based on a hope and a prayer. I make this judgment based on real facts and behavior.

Potential does not live in the land of hypothetical. Potential lives in the land of discretion. How does this person make decisions? What is the Time Span of those decisions?

Interviewing for Potential

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Many proponents of Requisite Organization claim that a person needs to have work commensurate with their potential capability to be engaged and fulfilled at work. They claim that being required to work at a level of work that is below one’s potential capability can lead to high levels of stress and negatively affect a person’s health. Assuming this is true, how do you assess a person’s potential capability in an interview? If you ask questions about their past experience to assess the level of work they have done before this may not reflect their potential capability (because they may not have had the opportunity to do work commensurate with their potential capability before). Doesn’t this approach entail the risk of hiring someone who will be frustrated, stressed or bored by the level of work in the position?

Response:
You make it sound like working below one’s potential capability is devastating. Everyone works on Time Span task assignments all over the place. What is necessary is that a significant portion of one’s work be fully challenging. And understand that this is ALWAYS a moving target. People constantly grow and mature, we are constantly changing, our Time Span capability constantly increasing. Matching the Level of Work with capability is, as Elliott puts it, always a “work in progress.” So, we do the best we can. As managers, we do the best we can to make this match.

Conducting a candidate interview is likely the most difficult assessment challenge we face, as managers. In most managerial situations, we can observe behavior and output, we can have managerial conversations with our team members, we can ask very direct questions about problems that have to be solved and decisions that have to be made. It’s a walk in the park compared to the candidate interview.

Hiring Talent always carries risk. Making the wrong hire is expensive. It costs dollars, time, energy, morale. I will only make hiring decisions based on evidence of work output based on past experience. I will not speculate, I will not hope, I will not assume. I will only hire on evidence. This means I will restrict my questions to real situations that can be observed and verified.

Does that mean I might miss potential? Perhaps. But I don’t use the interview to assess potential capability. I use the interview to assess applied capability. I am not a clinical psychologist, I am not a soothsayer, I am not a fortune teller. I am a practitioner.

And, as a practitioner, here is one method to get an accurate picture of the prospective candidate.

I take the resume and work it chronologically. This means, I start at the back and work forward, because resumes are typically presented in reverse chronology. I have difficulty seeing patterns and progress in reverse, so I start young and work forward. This simple chronological method reveals natural progress of increasing capability as someone moves through their career. Gets me really close to their highest level of current applied capability.

I have some other thoughts about interviewing for potential capability, so let’s pick that up tomorrow.

Can’t Put a Schedule Together

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Morgan was complaining. “You have been talking about checklists and schedules as the core tools for Project Managers and Supervisors. It just doesn’t seem that hard. Why doesn’t my lead technician get it? I have showed him how to create a schedule a dozen times.”

“Morgan, it’s not just a matter of training. Supervising and Project Management are clearly Strata II roles. A lead technician role is more likely Stratum I.” I could see Morgan was struggling with this.

“But, if I take my lead technician, why can’t he seem to put a schedule together?” Morgan was pushing back.

“Morgan, a lead technician likely has experience, best machine operator you have, yet may only be capable of running his machine in an expert way. You are asking him to think about coordinating other people.

“The time span required for a supervisor is longer. And the story doesn’t end with just scheduling. Scheduling responsibilities may only require a two or three week time span, but there’s more. Supervisors must also think about building bench strength, recruiting technicians, training technicians, testing technical competence, cross-training. For a supervisor to be successful, I usually look for a minimum three month time span. The supervisor needs to be able to work into the future, without direction, using their own discretionary judgment, on tasks that may take three months or more to complete.”

Divining the Number

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I would like to welcome our new subscribers from the workshop in Denver, yesterday.

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
How does a manager determine a candidate’s Time Span capability?

Response:
Don’t over complicate this. Some managers think if they could just divine the number (Stratum I-II-III-IV) life would be good. What decisions would that impact?

  • Which candidate should I hire?
  • Which team member should I delegate this task to?
  • Which person should I promote?

All legitimate decisions.

So here is your answer. Your candidate has Stratum III capability. Just kidding 🙂 But let’s say I’m not kidding 😐 Your candidate has Stratum III capability. Where does that get you in the decision? My guess, nowhere.

Assessing a candidate’s capability can be a futile exercise. It’s like a sucker punch, attracting the manager in the wrong direction. The only thing I care about is the candidate’s capability related to the work. The sucker punch leads me to make a judgment about the candidate (their innate capability), that I am not qualified to make (I am not a forensic psychologist).

Yet, I am an expert about the work. Focus on the work. Focus on the Level of Work. What are the problems to be solved? What are the decisions to be made? Now, I can answer this central question –

Has the candidate demonstrated evidence of effectiveness in this Level of Work, in these tasks and activities, solving these problems and making these decisions?

Most managers make defective hiring decisions because they have not clearly defined the Level of Work in the role. Without this definition, the interviewer asks the wrong questions and bases the hiring decision on some mistaken understanding of experience and skill.

Focus first on the Level of Work, then on the evidence of the candidate’s effectiveness in that work.

Full Speed Off the Cliff

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
I just joined the HR team here, working on a project to identify the complexity of mental processing of our team members. I just wanted to know, is there any effective tool/test available to identify the 4 types of mental processes. Can you please suggest other techniques apart from interviews to identify the 4 processes. I would be required to use this for recruiting and to assess the (CMP) of current employees.

Response:
STOP! You are headed in the wrong direction off a cliff.

I know you think you want to get inside the heads of your employees and have some support for a number (1-4) that you think will be helpful in selecting talent. DON’T PLAY AMATEUR PSYCHOLOGIST! You didn’t take courses in psychology, you don’t have a degree, much less an advanced degree in psychology, you are not certified by your state to practice psychoanalysis. Don’t play amateur psychologist.

Play to your strengths as a manager.

The four states of mental processing (Declarative, Cumulative, Serial, Parallel) can easily be used to determine the Level of Work. That focus will put you on solid ground. What’s the Level of Work? Look at your Role Description. In each Key Result Area (KRA), what’s the Level of Work? What are the decisions to be made in the role? What are the problems to be solved in the role? What are the accountabilities in each KRA? Write those elements into your Role Description.

With the Role Description in hand, create a bank of written interview questions, ten questions for each KRA that will reveal the candidates real experience making those decisions and solving those problems. I know this looks like work, it is. This is managerial work. Don’t play amateur psychologist, play to your strengths, as a manager. It’s all about the work. It’s all about the Levels of Work.

Stay Stuck or Scale?

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

This is Part 4 of 5 in a series. This post is in response to a question by Herb Koplowitz, contributing editor to Global Organization Design Society. It is based on a discussion about Collins’ organizational model.

Question:
I didn’t read Collins’ levels as layers, but as personality fit to being a good manager. (He actually describes behaviors and then ascribes them to the manager as though ones manager has nothing to do with ones behavior.) Please explain how you see Collins’ levels as relating to Jaques’ strata. What is Stratum I about being a capable individual, what is Stratum II about being a contributing team member?

Response:
Last Friday, we looked at Collins’ Level 3. Today, Level 4.

Level 4 – Collins – Effective Leader. Decisions inside Stratum IV (Requisite Organization) roles consider issues of pace and quality related to organizational systems. Stratum IV organizations are typically populated by multiple systems, each competing for budget and managerial attention. Peter Senge (Fifth Discipline) describes this system friction as reinforcing systems and balancing systems. The impact of this friction modulates total organizational output, the capacity of one system throttling the pace of its sister system. The organization can either stay stuck or scale depending on the effectiveness of roles at Stratum IV, to integrate those competing systems (departments, silos) into a whole system, optimized for growth and profitability. Stratum IV roles require parallel processing, seeing system inter-dependencies, contingencies, bottlenecks and constraints. Longest Time Span tasks range from 2-5 years.
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Our next Orientation of Hiring Talent begins today, April 23, 2012. First Session begins next Monday, April 30. For more informaton follow this link – Hiring Talent.