Tag Archives: direct action

Assessing Capability

Leave a reply

“Your turn,” I said. “Step me through these four levels of work and tell me where you think Jason is struggling.”

Elisa started slowly.

  • Direct action – Jason began as a project manager. We started him on simple projects, things (variables) came at him slowly enough where he had the time to immediately respond, and in that, he was very effective.”
  • Diagnostic Accumulation – Jason did so well on a single project, that we gave him two simultaneous projects. The just reward for hard work is more hard work. With two projects, he did the second project the way he did the first project. He was able to effectively put things together, recognize similarities, connect the dots.
  • Serial Thinking – is where Jason begins to struggle. We asked him to work over the shoulder of junior project managers, up to twenty simultaneous projects. We thought the project management software would handle all the detail, but the sheer volume of decisions and problem solving required Jason to think ahead, anticipate. He had to play “What if?” He had to look at twenty projects and see all the things that were the same, simultaneously understanding the nuanced differences between each project. He had to put a system together and that’s where he struggled.
  • Interactive Systems Thinking – is way beyond Jason. Project management sits inside our organization next to estimating, procurement, logistics, workforce and finance. Most of that is outside of Jason’s scope.

“And, so, where would you peg Jason’s level of capability?” I asked.

“Now, it’s very easy,” Elisa nodded her head. “Jason is on the upper end of Diagnostic Accumulation, but struggles with Serial Thinking.”

“Understanding this framework, can you now, as Jason’s manager, more accurately determine what project assignments, how many, how complex that Jason can effectively handle?”

Four Levels of Work, Four Levels of Capability

3 Replies

“Okay, okay,” Elisa replied. “You are right, easy to see the number of variables in a single project multiplied by twenty projects.”

“This will help us understand the complexity of what we are asking Jason to do and Jason’s capability to actually do it. When we look at levels of work, identifying the level of work in a project, we have to look at the variables. More variables, the more complex the variables, the more difficult the task, more difficult problems, more difficult decisions,” I began to lay the groundwork.

“We understand projects and we understand variables,” I continued. “Let’s look at Jason’s capability* to effectively respond.

  • Direct Action – are variables we can deal with one at a time, that come at us at a pace where we can see it arriving and deal with it.
  • Cumulative Action – are variables that arrive together, where the pace of incoming is faster. We are required to diagnose things together (diagnostic accumulation). We can solve problems that look alike the same way, but only if we are able to see those similarities quickly enough.
  • Alternative Serial Thinking – are variables that arrive in groups, the pace of incoming groups is so fast that to effectively deal with the problems and decisions, we have to anticipate. That is why this level of work requires as much thinking (ahead) as it does action.
    We have to think of each group as a system, with internal cause-and-effect elements.
  • Mutually Interactive Groups – are groups of variables that, as they arrive, begin to impact other groups of variables. If we can see each group as a system, we have incoming systems that impact other systems, systems thinking.

“Our ability to think and act effectively is an accurate way to understand an individual’s capability. You can also see the progression in variables as we move from five simultaneous projects to twenty simultaneous projects.”
——-
*Four levels of mental processing. Elliott Jaques. Requisite Organization