Determining the complexity of a role: The Time-Span of Discretion interview

Speaker A So we've been talking about time span and just want to tell you what it is and what it isn't. And this will lead to a demonstration with Alita and then, depending on time, an exercise of your paper. So definition the intended length of the longest task in a row. Very straightforward. I think that that is.

Speaker B Sort of.

Speaker A A manifestation of what may be a deeper definition, which is the longest the employee can work marginally below the manager's standard before the manager would find out. And again, what I have in mind there is I've got a report to deliver to you in nine months. We have conversations along the way, and if two months into it, I hadn't started writing on a certain critical area, you'd say, Herb, if you don't get onto that right now, you're going to be in trouble. But not until the product is finished and is on your desk can you look at it and say, yes, this absolutely meets my standard. The reason why the length of the longest task comes in, the role comes in, is that that's how you find out at the end of that. No, sorry. Okay. All right. So that's the definition. I think it's very simple. I think it's very clear. The claim which is much less clear is time span. Gauges the complexity of work in a role. I believe the notion that generally as you move up the organization, the length of the longest task gets longer, people don't have a problem with that. To claim that this one factor measures complexity does not have intuitive appeal. And I can recall this is again in school board. I was given two assistants in the project. One was capable of four, the other was three or four. And I spent a couple of hours with them going through what time span is, and they're all nodding politely because I was going to interview the director and the director's immediate subordinates, the superintendents. And these people were going to carry the work on down from there. And they came with me to the interview with the director, and one or both of them was there when I was doing the superintendents. And they said, when you gave us that two hour instruction, we went and had a smoke break. And we were both kind of shaking our heads about who is our boss hired here? And it just didn't make sense to us. Now that we have been through these interviews that you've done, now we get it. So sometimes it just takes appeal for it. So the timespan interview is an objective way to determine the timespan of a role. By objective. The timestamp itself is set by the manager. The manager is the one who judges how long he or she is going to give the subordinate to complete a task. It cannot be calculated. It's done by the manager themselves. It's an act of judgment. But once they have judged that the claim is any competent person doing the time spanning interview will come up with the same results. It's very much like saying, I'm helping you place a picture on the wall, and you say, no, a little higher, a little to the left, a little lower.

Speaker B That's all your judgment.

Speaker A That can't be calculated. But once you say, yeah, put it there. Now we know, okay, it's 6ft two inches off the ground. That's an objective fact. So we're saying it's a factor judged by the manager, but once it's been judged, now it has a real objective status. So I've given you a very simple definition, and what I have learned is that doesn't do it because people will then say, oh, yeah, well, my typical task is maybe three, four months long. Go back to the definition. I'm not interested in your typical task. I want to know the length of the longest one, or, well, my most important thing that I really have to get done is in nine months.

Speaker C Sorry.

Speaker A Not I my subordinate. You interview the manager about the subordinate's role. So they'll say, well, the most important task she has is a nine month project. Okay, that's interesting. Now tell me, what's the length of the longest task? Because we want to know how long we've got to hold that judgment in their head that they are fully meeting your standard and also not how long things typically take that'll come up. Well, typically the longest task would be to do this sort of a project, and typically that's about five months. Interesting. But I want to know the length of the longest one, the intended length that you have. So the claim, again, is that it measures the complexity of work in a role, and then someone will say, oh, but she's got this really presentation to do in a week, and it's really complex. Yeah, that's the time target of a task. There are very short, complex tasks. That's not what we're talking about. We want to know the length of the longest task again, because that's how long the employee has to carry that ambiguity. I guess I'm a little confused by the last two on that time target versus time span. So time target of a role of a task. So you give me eight months to get this project done. Time target is a property of a task. Time span is a property of a role which derives from the time target of one particular task. Okay? So it's just how we use the language.

Speaker D We know about a time target of.

Speaker A The longest task, which gives you the time span of the roll. Okay. When we think about this stuff and this is sure, that the notion I got in all of the early training that we did in Toronto. The easiest one to think about is a project. You've got to change a system. How long does this use of warrior have to change the system? They've got to acquire a particular organization as a client. How long do you give them to do that? You've got to prepare your department for the SAP implementation. How long do you give the person to do that? That's one type of task. A second type, though, and in some roles, it's much more common than the project was, is rolling targets. Again, I'll go back to school board. In this school board, a teacher's longest task was getting their classroom to a certain point by the following June. That's a project. It's a one off. Elementary school principal would be held accountable by the superintendent for always working on where their school will be in 18 months. So right now, here's where I'd like your school to be in 18 months. By the way, a month from now, I'll be wanting you to not only keep on that, but work on where you want the school to be 18 months from then, where I want you to be. So rolling targets are very common as a longest task. Some roles are when you pull back at it and look at it, it really is that the job of the person in the role is to be someone in that role. In other words, the job of a receptionist. The longest task isn't how long does it take to greet somebody? And this is very common in scratch one. So if you hire a new receptionist at first week as you're walking by reception, you may kind of walk slowly to hear, how are they? On the phone. You're a little more attentive about asking people, did you get your messages correctly? For companies that still have receptions.

Speaker C As.

Speaker A You get more and more confidence in the person, you give them a longer and longer leash, as it were. The time span in those roles is defined by monitoring what was our training? It was in 91, wasn't it, when Elliot first came to Toronto and did a seven day training? We had five days of training, and then we were supposed to get some work and then come back in two or three months, and we'd have the final two days. And a colleague of mine got me some work with the Electrical Supply Commission in South Africa. And there I mean, I'm Canadian, but I'm American by birth, so I can do anything. So there I am, lecturing the HR Department of ESCOM, on how to do things recklessly, having had five days of training and two days of time span interviewing in a car dealership. And someone in the audience on the third day says, my next door neighbor is an airline pilot. He says his longest task is up, over, and down, like 5 hours at the most. Surely that's not a low, stratum one role. And somehow I tap danced through that. I don't know. I changed the topic. And then the next day, I think.

Speaker B It was the same guy says, well.

Speaker A You know, the neighbor on the other side, he's in the diamond business, and he's got diamond cutters, and it only takes two, three days to cut a diamond. So I get back to Toronto and I call Elliot and I say, I know these are rare things, but how would I go about even finding the length of the longest task of an airline pilot said, well, the last time I time spanned airline pilots were old. It was 18 months. And they keep assessing over the past 18 months, how has the pilot balanced getting there on time with getting there, not making the passengers nervous, and it just takes that long to observe the record, to find out where are the variations and where do things cross too much. I said, okay, so then tell me, how would I go about a diamond cutter? Well, the last time I it was six months, and at that point, it had to do with customer relations. So the question even at some of those roles, the longest task isn't get up over and down. The longest task is be a pilot, be a diamond cutter. And it happened. It was the last time he had assessed an air traffic controller. It was six months. Because you know the boundaries. If you land the plane 15 minutes late, the power manager knows. If you put two planes at the same place at the same time, they don't like that, and they find that out really quickly. But are you marginally too slow, marginally too fast? It takes six months to accumulate the information, so you need to be clear on all three of those are possibilities.

Speaker D What I hear you say, we discussed this earlier. If I could find a time horizon for the key performance indicators, that could really serve as a good indicator of.

Speaker A The time span, if that belongs fast. Because I think if I asked it.

Speaker D That way to a lot of executives, I might get a more concrete and succinct answer than asking it.

Speaker A Here's the thing. Depending on what you mean by the indicators and so forth, they tend to experience I think we all tend to experience these things as continuous. I was saying an interview, I'm interviewing the manager about a role that it's got to be strategy, and they're not coming up with any projects more than six months. Is there anything else they need to do? Oh, yeah. Well, they're always improving quality, but there's no timing. It always and now I go back and say, do you want them to work on where their quality will be in ten years? Well, no, that's impossible. Do you just want them to work on where it'll be in a week? No. And you start sandwiching down and then you find out, I want them always working on where it'll be in 18 months. So the things that experienced as continuous, and they don't know that until you ask them a question. But it's inside of them.

Speaker E Integrated reliability in relation to that.

Speaker F Because what you're describing to me sounds to be quite subjective around the skill set of the individual because he's really relying on only one criteria. How much work has that been done on interrative reliability in relation to success and determining outcome?

Speaker A Actually, that's a good question. Do you know interrater reliability has there.

Speaker D Is research ken Crattic, you may have.

Speaker A A comment on that as well.

Speaker D But interrelated reliability in terms of time.

Speaker G Span, there's quite a bit of research.

Speaker D On this, and it's quite high.

Speaker F Is the assumption made that it comes.

Speaker E Intuitively or is there trained?

Speaker A But once they're trained.

Speaker B Interrader reliability factor.

Speaker F And it's just based on time span, it's not based on anything else.

Speaker A No, but is it time span or is it complexity of the role? Because there's a time span. Time span tells you the stratum exactly as a measure of the complexity of the role. But I mean, when you measure interrator reliability, are you measuring interrator reliability connection with what the raider has found out about the time spent or directly to complexity because they will have different approaches. No, it would be about the time span. It would mean I introduce Steve and I get an 18 month time span for one of his subordinates roles, and Carlos interviews him and gets 18 months.

Speaker F But you articulated, even in the information you provided us those examples, you articulated.

Speaker E Complexity of the role yes.

Speaker F As a way of leading the person to giving more information about time span, because we get you because you sort of said, they're talking about six months. They're talking about and then they say, oh, yes, but this job really focuses on processing systems, and that's about complexity, not around time span. And then you've interpreted that to say, okay, well, tell me what time span is associated with that piece of job.

Speaker A No, I don't. I'm saying that's assigned to me. I have to probe, probe more. I see this role I've seen in other companies. I see how it works here. I don't know how it could be functioning as that role. We're in strategy. But I'm probing now to say maybe this is an exception. Again, I want to say two things. One, if you have doubts about this, it's because you're paying attention. It is not intuitively obvious and it's not intuitively obvious to managers. And I also want to say, and I'll say this again later for those of you who are new to requisite, this is your way into it. This is the way for you to find out about it, because any of you can find five managers and do ten or 20 time span interviews, and you will start learning about this.

Speaker H Just going back to the airline pilot example, right? I have an argument whether there's stratum one or stratum two, but there's still a leveling going on within the stratum, right?

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker H So one thing I haven't seen what I've read about Ro yet is how do you deal with leveling within a strategy? You're only going to trust to fly short distances versus the experienced pilot you're going to trust to fly internationally versus.

Speaker A The super experienced one. You're going to trust a teacher or.

Speaker H They'Re all stratum two or whatever.

Speaker F It's just experience.

Speaker A It's not just experience, right? We're talking here judgment capability, but the issue here isn't going to be the length of the flight. The issue is how finely do you monitor this person's work, how much do you trust their ability to deal with.

Speaker H The calamities that can happen over the ocean versus, oh, there's an airport 30 minutes away.

Speaker A And what we find in this stuff is that if this is a more complex flight and a more complex airplane, they will intuitively put someone in that role who they will now give a longer leash.

Speaker B Know the chief pilot at WestJet is the role. It's a high level four role and that's really run the program. Their senior pilot roles are low level four roles, and that has largely to do with developing the copilot. Their solid pilots are a range of level three roles, and the complexity there is balancing on time delivery, most efficient use of fuel over a period of time, and their junior pilots are high level two roles. If you dig in long enough, you can get the time span. Defining accountability, it just takes time, all.

Speaker H Right, but it's more specific to that role. You can't take that and apply that and say that they could be a level four in some other role. It's just that as a pilot, they can't be okay.

Speaker B I have great empathy for Tina and the question she's raising. Elliot used a wonderful analogy. I remember when Ron and I were in boot camp with him. He said that in the mid 16 hundreds, someone invented a thermometer, took a capillary tube, put some liquid in it, and found that if things felt hotter or colder, the length of column would change. Took 50 years before anyone believed it, because what could the length of column have anything to do with how hot or cold this felt? And it took 300 years for the loss of thermodynamics to account for it.

Speaker E Just happened to measure it.

Speaker F That's true, but the assumption is that this thermometer is measuring the same as this thermometer. I have no question around the concept of a thermometer measuring, absolutely. But for example, if this one is filled with mercury and this one is filled with something else that isn't mercury, and it actually measures at a different pace, then actually it isn't the same. So the concept of the thermometer is the same, but the outcome, the output is different because of the nature of the different approach.

Speaker B The problem I would have with interrater reliability about timespan is once the first interviewer has gotten a timestamp out of a manager you've already made explicit in the manager's mind what was implicit. As Kirk said, normally managers think about you're accountable for doing things as opposed to accountable for getting something done.

Speaker F Well, that might be true.

Speaker A We're not going to settle this one. Okay. Those of you who are in doubt, I honor the doubt, but do it. Do the interviews. See what that gets you. You got to test this one.

Speaker E Can I ask a quick question? It's not that subject, necessarily. If you have determined that the longest task is one that is much longer than all of the other ones and it represents not again, knowing that it's not about typical and the most common, but it's like a 1% like this hardly ever happens, could this be a sign that maybe is assigned to the wrong job? I'm curious as to how job design comes into that. Maybe that job was that job design.

Speaker A It could be. The other thing, by the way, about longest tasks is that all of those other little thoughts or things they're doing is time taken away from the longer task. So the question is, how do you manage those 18 months while you're doing those other things? It could be a sign of that, and it might not be.

Speaker E And then how does a person I assume they can paint that too. Again, it's going to job design. Like, how much does a job end up being designed because of someone's personal capabilities and painting maybe what the real level of the job should be. So I have someone that is awesome.

Speaker A Under me, and it's a question you need to ask at the end. Is this at this level because it's where the strategy requires it or because of their capability? Absolutely. Because a Stratum two capable person in a Stratum Three role will pull the work down. They can't do the Stratum three. A Stratum Three capable person in a stratum I did one once. Interviewed the manager about a subordinate length of longest past 18 months. Interview the subordinate about their subordinates, but first about their own role. Okay. What's the length of your longest task? I've got a three year project I'm working on. Go back to the manager. You said it was 18 months. He says it's three years. Says, yeah, I know he's working on it, which he didn't. It's not part of his job. So you'll get that kind of stuff.

Speaker E Question what happened, for example, with specialist role, the nature of the role is forecasting and forecasting within 18 months and not necessarily higher than so the question.

Speaker A Is, what am I accountable for? Is it the accuracy of the forecast or did I do the forecast around the method, the appropriate method? That's the question there. I don't know if that's what you're asking. So you may assign the task for me of forecasting where things will be in 18 months. Okay, boss, how long do you give me to do that two months. I give it to you in two months. You look at that forecast and you say, does that make sense? Have I done it according to spec, according to right method? Yes or no?

Speaker E The right answer is, will be like the forecast if it's done in two months. That's right. But the critical thinking and the analytical thinking that inside the cognitive complexity will be for more than 18 months, never mind the complexity of the road before that's. More than 18 months, for example.

Speaker A It could be or it may not be. There are methods, there are strategy methods for doing 18 month forecast. It's a challenging buddy, yeah, I want.

Speaker G To get through this because I'd like.

Speaker A Us to have some lunch. And here we are. If the task is a plan, the issue isn't whether it's a two year plan or a five year plan. The issue is how long do you give me to do it? Now, the output is the plan. Now, if in most cases you wouldn't want to give five year planning to someone who isn't capable of five year tasks, look at things where there aren't interactions. Things are somewhat linear, and you could have someone at Stratum two, even Stratum One, come up with a five year plan for something that's very basic, right, where there are not a lot of interdependencies and not that much complexity. So if the longest task is to meet a one year plan, and what you do in this when you're doing the interview, you take the role of the employee and you talk to the manager, as always, your manager. So I'd say, is there nothing that will take longer than a year that you would want me to work on? You've got to, because plans will throw you off of that. So is there nothing longer than a year you'd want me to work on? Is it okay if I miss projections up to the 11th month, as long as I meet the twelve month? Because what's called a twelve month plan that I have to reach the end of may really mean over the course of the year, each month, you better meet your targets or else you're in trouble. Two very different things. Do you expect me to work on the twelve months goal from the beginning? If not, when do I start working on it? These are things that get obfuscated in normal conversation. And this is why you're going to be asking that manager things they have never thought about. That's why this is an intervention, not just a measurement. They've got to think about, is it really twelve months? Or is it twelve one month tasks? And they don't think about that stuff typically, is it an 18 month or am I doing 18? He needs to double his revenue in four years. Do you mean that in each year he has to increase his revenue by 20%, or do you mean that, oh, he's got to change his marketing, he's got to change his sales, the product development. It's going to take four, but in four years it should be double. These are the things you need to probe in doing a time span interview. Phases. This is a four year project. Okay. Are there phases in it? Yes. What's the length of the longest phase? If there are phases, but the monkey's on my back for four years and our conversations are simply you're making sure that I'm not wildly off, then it's a four year task. If I'm doing phase one and we talk about it and now that's done, now I start phase two and we talk about it and I work on it when it's done, then each phase is a separate task. The whole project is yours. Is that clear?

Speaker C I'm not sure if that your voice dropped.

Speaker A Say again?

Speaker E Your voice dropped on the last sentence.

Speaker A Okay. Right. If you, as my manager, are asked me to do each phase, and at the end of each phase, that's when I start the next phase. That it's your project, it's not mine. You're the one holding it together.

Speaker D Time boxing, which is very popular today, so we're getting shorter deliverables so I can demonstrate value and I look at one time box at a time, typically say six months, which is good. That gives me a shorter time horizon.

Speaker B Because I tend not to really start.

Speaker D Getting engaged in that second deliverable after.

Speaker A The first one is completed, which kind.

Speaker D Of suggests that I'm a lower level.

Speaker B When I'm really not because of complexity.

Speaker D And looking at the potential longer term.

Speaker A Setup, I'm not sure if I follow your scenario here. Okay.

Speaker D Time boxing basically said, we talked about it. What we're trying to do today is rather than deliver big multi year projects, break them down into smaller chunks, we're.

Speaker A Talking to Abbot about so this is.

Speaker G Stuff we've been talking to Abbot about over the year in terms of smaller tasks in Agile and the west.

Speaker A Well, and if it really is now, you're giving me six month projects and I'm not working on phase four until I finish phase one, I'm going to start feeling underused. I'm going to start feeling like this stuff is not stretching. I'm not abusing versus you give me that whole project to do and it's mine. We're checking. We're going along as we go along.

Speaker B More typically, this is where we're migrating our cell phone over the next three years, but we have to release one every four months or every six months. So the one you're going to release six months from now has to be on a migration path to where we need to end up four years from now. So you still own the four years, but you do have a deliverable in six months.

Speaker D So somebody's looking at the bigger, longer term picture, higher level, but delivering just that one time box, lower level and.

Speaker B He'S going to be delegating to his subordinates, the smaller pieces within these constraints.

Speaker A All right. Another thing that I often find we're going through all this stuff, and again, I'm not getting a task that seems reasonably long for where I think this role probably is. And often managers don't think about managerial tasks as part of the real thing. And very frequently, a question I'll always ask a manager of a subordinate manager is, where are you about your subordinate working on the managerial tasks? Do you want this person always working on where their team's capabilities will be in 18 months, in two years, in four years? And the issue there is, yes, I always want her working on where her team will be in 18 months, because if she doesn't start now, 18 months from now, she won't get there. That's the key question I always pose and so forth. All right, so again, the beginning of it is the framing of it is that I am Alicia's subordinate, new subordinate, and I'm trying to understand what the role is. That's kind of a brain.

Speaker B So.

Speaker A Yeah, I'm not curious. You told me some things, but I got some questions.

Speaker C Okay.

Speaker A Before we get into the role proper, what role are you talking about?

Speaker E Oh, my goodness.

Speaker A Recruiter. Okay. All right. Thank you. So, boss, I'm trying to get into my new role as recruiter. What are the sorts of things you want me to do in this role?

Speaker E I want you to partner with the leadership across the business and work with them on their talent.

Speaker A So sorry, when I say things to do, what are the sorts of things you want me to accomplish?

Speaker E Okay.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker E Okay. I want you to facilitate the process of getting vetted talent in as efficiently as possible, meet a leader's needs. So, for example, our development team has a little bit higher turnover, so you're probably going to spend a lot of time with them. So I want you to partner with our operations director there, and she is going to have some different specialties. And I know that you come to us with some background in recruiting and a little bit of software development, recruiting, a lot of the practices. Hopefully you are our first full time recruiter. So I would like you to establish some best practices from your experience.

Speaker A I wasn't clear in this. I guess what I'm getting is it's not that you are going to say to me, herb, we have this role that needs to be filled, but rather you're saying to me, it's my job to go out and anyone who.

Speaker E Needs.

Speaker A Roles filled will contact me or I'll be in developmental conversations with you.

Speaker E Yes, that'd be my preference.

Speaker A That's your preference.

Speaker E But I partner with you if you are having a tough time getting to understand the business, getting to understand the culture. Since you're new to the business, we want to do some more onboarding.

Speaker F So you get.

Speaker E A sense for what the narrative is here, how you communicate, what sorts of things are important to you. Of course, you went through a recruiting process so you are familiar with.

Speaker A Yeah. So, again, it's not one off recruit this, recruit that, but it's keep this department staffed almost. And then the second thing is best practices.

Speaker E Establishing best practices. Yeah. Please do keep me involved.

Speaker A Is there a specific now, a specific task that you would want me to do? Give me an example of a specific thing you'd say, Herb, I need you to accomplish this.

Speaker E You would ask that because you're looking for guidance for me.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker E I want to know clarity right now.

Speaker A Yeah. I'd like an example of how we're going to work together and so forth.

Speaker E Okay, well, let's put together and take a look at our current orientation chart. And we can focus on leaders that tend to have a little bit more hiring than those that are hiring right now. And I can give you some how autonomously they have historically done recruiting, because what we are doing now, being our first centralized recruiting role, a lot of folks have handled things pretty much.

Speaker A That'S a conversation you want you and me to have in terms of something I need to accomplish, what might be an example.

Speaker E Okay, so what does success look like in the role?

Speaker A Yeah. Or specific? Yeah. You might call it quantity, quality, Time, and Resources. Yeah. Make an acronym.

Speaker E We certainly could have it within six months. I would like to have a process in place with these best practices, which of course will iterate over time. I would like to see the result of improving the quality of our hires with Pizza Bill and satisfaction from the different leaders that I'm getting the challenge, which I will discern through conversations.

Speaker A So one is in six months, you want a specified process?

Speaker E I want a specified process. I want to see something that says, this is how we do recruiting. This is the part that needs to be centralized. This is the part that each leader has some flexibility to handle in their own way. And if there are any system changes that we need to make I mean, currently we use an tracking system called resumer, and it doesn't have the capability. I'm sure you have experienced recruiter. You've used bunches of them.

Speaker A Actually, I developed that.

Speaker E Then you must be wealthy. Just not apart.

Speaker A So six months to develop that process. Sorry, process. Anything longer than that, that could give me more than six months.

Speaker E Well, we're growing business, so we're at 130 employees now. We're going to be doing some aggressive recruiting. A lot of our contractors, internal roles, and also our development team is going to increase in size over the coming years. So our expectation is that we'll be at 100 and 5200 employers. And I would like you to monitor whether we ought to have an internal recruiting staffing approach or and when we should outsource.

Speaker A How long would you be able to do that? 18 months. How is that different from the process that you want to?

Speaker E I would say 18 months because the speed of hiring is going to be an important variable for you to be able to come up with a solution or some guidelines for how much we send your position. I guess right now, as I talk, I'm second guessing whether this is the position I wanted to because now I'm thinking there's actually somebody I do want to hire.

Speaker A Which way do you want to yeah, let's change it.

Speaker E I would like to hire you as our employee relations director.

Speaker A Right. And what sorts of value, what sorts of accomplishments, what sorts of tasks, what sorts of things would you want to accomplish in this?

Speaker C Okay, so one of the biggest upfront.

Speaker E Key things we need to do is walk through our PEO exit strategy. So we are currently on a PEO, a professional employer organization, and we get a lot of compliance insights from them in this single vendor model for a lot of what human resources does. So compliance, shared liability, payroll.

Speaker A So what am I doing with those things?

Speaker E I'm just describing what a PEO does.

Speaker A I really want to be clear that.

Speaker E But we are currently with a PEO, which is a really value for cost, is really worthwhile for a smaller business. But we are at a size where we need to think about exiting. But it's not a simple process. As you know. It means increasing the number of different vendors we might be looking at. Thinking about what we bring in house and you coming in house is actually a part of that.

Speaker A Sure. And what did you want me to accomplish in regard to the PEO?

Speaker E Okay, so with regard to the PEO, we need to first create a plan. So a plan meaning that what are all the different things that the PEO is doing for us right now? What are the alternatives? What are the pros and cons of the different alternatives? Really thinking through the valuable cost and the different steps, we don't want to exit and then oh no, all of a sudden we don't have a lot of spaces covered. So I want to be able to see so that we can then define a time that we'll actually flip the switch. I do have some ideas about when that received.

Speaker A But you're saying you want to plan sort of a PEO exit or continuation, if that's it, but you want to plan from me, we will exit.

Speaker E It's just a question of when. It may be in a year and a half or maybe two and a half years from now. My sense is that it won't be longer. However, I do know that if we're able to get some clear cost numbers that gives us some upgrades with PDOs, we may extend or stay with them. We can improve the cost.

Speaker A So is what you want from your plan?

Speaker E I want a plan as a first step, yes.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker E And then to project manage execution of that plan.

Speaker A And how long would you give me for the plan?

Speaker E How long would it take for you? Would I expect it to take you to develop the plan? Three to six months. And then somewhere more like six months.

Speaker A One of the things I'm grappling with here, and this is very common you hear a lot of gerunds. I want you to be thinking about, I want you to be working with and what I'm driving for always is an output. What do you want me to accomplish? So it's a kind of struggle very common in time span interviews. So with six months and then you wanted me to sort of start implementing it?

Speaker E I want you to project, lead that entire process.

Speaker A And accomplish what?

Speaker E And accomplish what? At the end, we will no longer be in the PEO, and we will have a number of different vendors providing the services and the support that we need, whether through internal resources or external resources. And we have done it with an ipod cost and matching the level of service and the value that we're looking for with the needs.

Speaker A Okay, so I'm accountable to get us from here to there?

Speaker E Yes.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker E Please.

Speaker A In how long?

Speaker E Like an 18 month.

Speaker A 18 months. Okay. And I take it that six months for the plan end now. 18 months. Okay, but it's four months for the plan, and then am I working on that implementation before the plan is finished?

Speaker E You are collecting input on what steps you need to take. And by the way, you also have our resource.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker E Yes. You have our administrator. She must payroll. She's the one that works most closely with ADP and another set of answers.

Speaker A Okay, but when you say 18 months to get us from here to there, that's starting at the end of the here's the plan, or is it starting before?

Speaker E Ask that again.

Speaker A Is it four months from we'll have talks, I'm sure, as we go along. But four months from now, I'll give you a plan and you maybe work through it and you approve it, and now I start implementing it. Or do you want me to start is there anything I need to do in the implementation before you've got the plan finalized?

Speaker E I would like it if you were able to identify certain things that don't necessarily work that are obvious and will need to be started, or if you identify something that you see that this is actually going to take a little bit longer than 18 months from the end of time to plan. Do we need to start this process.

Speaker A So it may end up being plan? Let's see. I'm planning, and then before I'm finished with the plan, I'd say, hey, Alicia, here are some things I start on. And then I'm working 18 months from then.

Speaker E 18 months is actually sort of to the date where I would see actually flipping the switch. But now that I think more about it, it's probably a longer kind of thing than that because implementation is for several months afterwards. And then I would want you to partner with your peer in working through internal communications.

Speaker A But what I'm sort of getting is four months for the plan, maybe somewhere in there starting an 18 month journey to flip the switch and then it's going to be ongoing work after that.

Speaker E Work probably first before the end. There's some overlapping.

Speaker A Yeah. Okay. I'm now down to really down to question four, I would say, is there anything longer than 18 months? Anything you would give me more than 18 months to accomplish? 18 to 24 months? What would be is there 2024 months?

Speaker E I think if I look at the entire whole process that we're talking about with this as an example, CEO exit from beginning to end.

Speaker A Okay, so your sense is that you might give me a two year task.

Speaker E I think what it is, I know you're organization, so I don't want to give you the full leash yet. I know you're capable of more.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker B All of this is real.

Speaker A This is very real. This stuff happens. Right. So what you're hoping then is that how about this?

Speaker E Okay, so my hope is over the little bit longer run you going through this project management process is really going to integrate into the business. You're really going to give them where we are. But over the longer term, where I see a role going, it is really owning a large portion of human resources function. So really being that compliance expert, so managers have questions about what do I do in this situation?

Speaker A Do?

Speaker E I terminate. What do I do? You're kind of that lead expert there that takes that off my plate so that I can focus on other things.

Speaker A You've identified an 18 month task with that other stuff. Is there 24 24 month task?

Speaker E The best I can define is that establishing yourself as that qualified go to expert and trusted resource for leadership. That'll take some time. I think that should take less than two years.

Speaker A Yeah. How long would you get a year?

Speaker E Okay, well, I mean, if you're 90% of the way there after a year then sums up right, so you want.

Speaker A Me to get there?

Speaker E Yeah, I want to see indications of.

Speaker A Progress hit for a year. Ten minutes. Ten minutes.

Speaker E Ten minutes.

Speaker A So I've got a year for that. But am I also always working on getting to being 100% there always. Okay, so how long do you give me to get 100% there?

Speaker E Is anybody ever at 100%?

Speaker A You're the one who sets the standards, boss.

Speaker E Oh.

Speaker A I want to be able to say, yeah, boss, here it is. And it's just what you want. It's iterative.

Speaker E Certainly 18 months from now, I want to be able to look back. And you've got it?

Speaker A I've got it. Okay, so I'm getting 18 months. That's the longest task. So are there any that could be longer? Is this my task or yours? I think we've gone through that. That 18 months. It's not like I'm first sort of entering things and you're going to say, yes, you've done that well. Now let's see, start up the next my sense is you're saying 18 months from now. That's what I want you to do. Okay, yes. And then in terms of other things, you said you talked about getting a procedure and all of that that's long before who do I need to thought partner with? Do you have any sense of the stratum of role that people yeah, that.

Speaker E Would be amazing if I'm coming.

Speaker A Three and four. Okay, that's good. And I don't know if you can do this, but there's some roles where in order to get to here, I have to do this, build a preparation that leads to this, that leads to that. There are other roles where those series interact with each other and they're interdependent. Can you say which of those.

Speaker E A preference? Is that because you are supporting entire organization, different functions, and basically those are.

Speaker A Systems that interact with each other.

Speaker E If you have a good understanding of that, that would be really helpful.

Speaker A But would it work out? So this question I'm going to now is question eight about who do I interact with is because if I'm going to be a thought partner with these people, it really helps if they're within a sprattom of me. Any guesses right now where the role is, by the way? What's three? I think you think it's three, but I think they could be phasing in.

Speaker G The but what I think there could.

Speaker A Be phasing in the project. At three? No, at two I think there's ambiguity. I think her role is three and your role is two. Okay, so if it's three and I've got to be interacting with these people at three and four, that works. That's very good. At two, I wouldn't be able to do that. What does partnering mean? It means you're not just giving me an order, but that I can make some comments on the quality of your inferences. How do you know her assessments of the stratum in the organization? The stratum main? Yeah, that I don't know.

Speaker E I can get biohysd very experienced. Three, then four would be.

Speaker A And you say that based on.

Speaker E If it's a four, that means that somebody who has a trajectory, who's actually doing the entire wallet.

Speaker A So the reason I'm asking about the processes is because stratum three is where you're able to do serial processing. A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D. Stratum four is where you have to get the system inside your head and the interdependencies among the series of something that you have to manage. What I'm hearing from you is if I I'm inferring this okay. And I maybe go beyond is if I can handle each department with series where there are interdependencies, I can depend on you to pick up on that.

Speaker E Yes.

Speaker A Okay. You'd rather not have to, but I can't. But you can. Yes. Okay. So I'm getting serial processing will suffice.

Speaker E Some of the leaders you're working with are going to be poor and that they will rely on heavily under expertise.

Speaker A Okay. Level of compensation? How would you guys ask that? Because I don't give I don't ask.

Speaker C It, I collect it from okay.

Speaker A And even to say in this quote, what would be appropriate compensation for the.

Speaker E Role we're talking about?

Speaker A Yeah, I guess I would ask that if I knew what the range was within the company. Yeah.

Speaker E You get hired.

Speaker A You would know. What your conversation there's just a point.

Speaker C I'd like to make here though, about you were saying I would really love to have a four in that role, but I could get by with a three.

Speaker E Yeah.

Speaker C You also have to think about the implications of the total compensation for that role at Fork. And it's your manager who decides, generally speaking, whether you could have that level of compensation for someone reporting subordinate to you.

Speaker E Theoretically, yes.

Speaker A Direction of I mean, I'm talking about.

Speaker C Because we'd all like people a higher level than probably what we could get by with, but there's a financial implication for the organization and what's the value of the work of the role?

Speaker E Yeah. I think in the next few years I'm thinking ahead and presuming that our group continue in that case.

Speaker B My question is what is the opportunity cost of your having to do the level four work of the role that you would like to have that prevents you from doing the level five work that you need to do? And the opportunity of cost may be greater than the cost of a bigger salary. That's what goes into the whole equation.

Speaker E Yeah.

Speaker A What I'm hearing is the requirement is that I be able to handle an 18 month task at minimum, but if I do that, you're happy. And at minimum, I need to be able to do serial processing. And if I can't, you know, we're not going to go is it roll up more than serial parallel? Yeah. Okay. I have to see around corners. I have to get from A to B to C, but how I do that and getting from alpha to beta to gamma to delta over here. Don't worry about anything else. Yeah. And that's other comments from here. I'm getting mid three out of this.

Speaker C The only thing I would say is that the time span interviews are typically done between the consultant, whether it's an internal or external, and a manager. And I have found that if there's anybody else in the room besides the manager, and that consultant, it is very difficult to get accurate information. And also it's a little hard to have the next consultant who might try to get it, depending on the length of time, get the time span, because the manager may have changed in their own mind the length of time of the longest task. So just a couple of general comments.

Speaker A Yes. Her question.

Speaker D What I heard you guys describing was.

Speaker A Sort of two phases. One was a transition phase where we need to get to a new state that you wanted to get to, and.

Speaker D The other was to continue managing that.

Speaker A New refined state with these new competencies for the organization that they haven't had in the past.

Speaker D Again, I'm bringing the data bias into.

Speaker A This, but when we're doing data engineering, the worst thing you can do is.

Speaker D To combine one thing with a not like thing.

Speaker G How does Ro address that?

Speaker A That may be an offline conversation.

Speaker D I would look at this and say.

Speaker A Don'T you really want to hire two people, one, that's really good at transitioning the organization to the new state, and.

Speaker D Then have somebody else who would be.

Speaker A Able to run that new state?

Speaker G Because those are pretty different skill sets.

Speaker A That you're looking for.

Speaker E That's the exact same thought that I had that they might be I mean, maybe someone might be capable of doing both. That sounds like different skill sets.

Speaker A It's a good probe, but I think.

Speaker G If you change that role play around to this was a consultant asking about a role and you got that kind of information, then I think that's diagnostic information that you've got, that you take back and you start thinking about when you go back to the proposition, you might be saying to this manager from all the data, I think there might be an opportunity here for you to think about needing a role to do this and a role to do that. And that might be one option that you would provide in a proposition to them around how to structure the organization differently.

Speaker A Herb I understand the context, and this is a role play to demonstrate something. But there's a bigger issue inside the record is that there's a notion that the manager is responsible for describing the work with what we call an accountability map. Right. So my question is a simple one. Let's say Alicia is the manager.

Speaker H In this case.

Speaker A We would hold Alicia accountable for writing a full job description or accountability map and handing it to you. I'd like to hear from each of the panel. What do you think about having to be an iterative process so that it's not just waiting for Alicia to do manager's work, but we go back and forth like this conversation so that in the end, Alicia is accountable for writing it, but you have a back and forth to help clarify what the role is. Do you understand my question?

Speaker B I think so.

Speaker G One thing we do very strongly is we don't let managers advocate from defining a role they can't just hand off, say, well, here's this role. Why don't you just go, michael, why don't you just go and write the role description?

Speaker A Bring it to me. That's not what I say.

Speaker G So we say that at a minimum, you need to think it through and provide someone mentioned earlier a purpose for the role. Like, why do you have this role? Why does it exist?

Speaker A Why is he on?

Speaker G And then what would be the six or seven or eight outputs you're looking from this role? What does it got to produce? Because roles fundamentally exist. To produce outputs can be soft, like advice or hard like wisdom. So what do you want from this role then? In the process of redesigning an organization, it comes more for us in implementation is then we put the incumbents in the role and then put the manager and the incumbents on that team all in the same room together. And it's essentially it's a conversation between the boss and the subordinate because the subordinate takes away that rough description and then using a more full blown accountability map, fleshes that out from the perspective of now I'm going to own this thing that the boss wants. I'm going to put some interpretation to it in terms of what I think I need to be doing in this role. Flesh that or share that back with my manager in the group setting so that everybody's hearing it at the same.

Speaker A Time on the team.

Speaker G And the team can also be inputting to, but what about this and what about that? Would it be better if it were looked like that? And then they have a very clarifying conversation where not only do individuals get clear on their outputs, but the team members of an intact team are also very clear across the team around what each of the team is doing in their various roles.

Speaker A That's a great idea. That was worth the price of admission because I'm in a situation where typically we're waiting for Godot for the manager to write five accountability maps. And it's like I'm advocating it has to be 60% correct to start because the manager needs to start, but nonetheless has to be iterative. And I love your idea about having to be a group conversation with the relevant people. That's really nice. Well, the reason if you look at.

Speaker G Collateral, if you look at the principle of collateral accountability absolutely.

Speaker A That's where it gets sticky. And if you have the lateral relationships there, you can have it beforehand because too often it becomes just a document. I'm not sure what that means. Thank you.

Speaker C What I have found is level four managers and above don't have too much trouble doing this. Level three managers have more trouble and more difficulty articulating the assignments. And so what I have found is what I would do if she had been a level three manager and this was the first time she'd ever done this is I'd pull it all out just the way he did. I'd have the scribe write it out and give it back to her and say correct this, add to it, whatever. And then I have found that that manager at two and three typically want to say why did I go to all this trouble? But by the time they do the first appraisal the next time it's easy for them and they believe it. So there's a gap of time, but they also need help in getting it scribed. I don't know what other people's experience are that way, but they always have to check it. I mean, it goes right back to them. It's to save that time. Otherwise you're waiting forever because they're busy.

Speaker D When we go into an organization to do an assessment, what we're most interested in is what is what is may not be right. So when we come in and do an assessment, we'll look at timespan we'll get compensation information so we'll have what we call a compensation span. And then we'll also ask managers what they think their task with the longest target completion is. And we compare that with their boss.

Speaker A Which is the time span.

Speaker D Call that a self span, get some measured delegation. So we've actually got some converging data in terms of what that is that goes into an assessment to present that and then in a cascading Iterative implementation process, like Paul said, natural teams work on those things to further develop them. And part of the further development is developing position descriptions and matching people to positions and so on and so forth.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker H So if you had experience doing as like a two step process where the first step is rather than it's going to be an in person thing, everybody is filling out an online survey monkey. You're collecting a bunch of data from people and using that to prepare in advance for the questions you want to ask that become more qualitative so that you can focus on the trends that you're seeing about what really needs to get asked versus having every interview kind of starting over.

Speaker A But I mean, did you see how much probing it took? Yeah, but I'm saying you might be able to get past a lot of.

Speaker H That probing with some pre work and using a survey monkey.

Speaker A And then my experience is that what would come straight off from the manager isn't something I want to typically be working managers aren't used to answering these kinds of questions.

Speaker I Can I ask a question at the risk of turning the whole thing upside down? If you are wanting to understand the requisite levels in an organization, surely you can also design for a requisite environment that you design a job or you design a role. Have a conversation with the manager to gain an understanding of the content of this role as it has been designed based on requisite principles. Make changes that is needed. Clarify, measure some targets. And those kinds of ideas that I'm not using might be using the wrong language from requisite perspective. But there surely must be some consistency in how certain types of positions links back to generic roles in the Holistic organization, because otherwise I'm going to have other problems down the line with things like succession and talents and those kinds of things. So if I'm interviewing individual managers, I get a language version from the context of that individual. As I'm looking at these language sets across the organization, I'm not necessarily going to get a homogeneous language set. Something that we have been playing with is saying isn't it better to develop statements that are typically associated with outcomes at levels? And having conversations with managers about profiles that are typically written at a level where they pick? And choose and have discussions around them so they don't have to read a bit of language, but they start associating with similar language statements and in so forth, getting a more homogeneous way in.

Speaker A Terms of I'm missing something in this. Because what we're trying to do is find out what is the current structure?

Speaker I But there was reference to a positional profile. But I'm not talking about a positional profile, I'm talking about a generic job.

Speaker A Profile, which is very different from a position. Meaning like branch manager. Yeah, okay, but again, I'd want to know what's the stratum of this branch manager? What's the stratum of that role, what's the stratum of that branch?

Speaker I Yeah, but what's interesting now, if I'm sitting in a bank, okay, and I've got 4000 branches, and my 4000 branches, some are categorized as medium, small and large. I would ideally think that all the managers in my medium type branches are working as a similar problem.

Speaker A But that's what the extent chart? The extent chart will show you that.

Speaker I Yeah, but how many of them do you have to interview to get to that information?

Speaker A Small, medium and one inch, or three or four?

Speaker I And what do you do to the rest? Do you take them through a profile to get that? Because you are certainly not going to interview eight, 4000 managers.

Speaker D We haven't done a bank with 4000, we've done a bank with 1000. And if you look at bank branches that they can be stratum two, three or four. So they're different levels. What we find going into an organization is that position titles are not very helpful and position descriptions are not very helpful. What we try to do is, as part of the implementation process, and this is a little further down the road, find out what is generic. So on a position description, we would have some role specific stuff and we'd also have some generic stuff. But what we find is that there's a lot of differences within positions that appear to be the same.

Speaker A You've.

Speaker D Got differences in terms of low, medium, and high within a stratum. You've got differences in terms of the type of clientele and therefore the requirements of that. Even within a particular size. I would be reluctant to start more generic. I think going through a process and ending up with the generic pieces that can be generic is useful. So, for example, if there's managerial accountabilities that go across to the extent everyone has it, that helps with managerial accountability and it also helps with managerial development. So those can be helpful pieces. But I would be disinclined to start there. The question around how many interviews you need to do is an interesting one. Often, if the positions have the same title and look the same, we may do some sampling. So ideally, we would interview a full set of managers to get a full set of data on all employees in the company. Yes, that would be an ideal, but if there were so many, then we would look at some process of sampling. But by the way, if you look at Peter, you know this in terms of your stats. If you look at the sample sizes you need, they're a hell of a lot higher than you might think they are if you're going to have a representative sample of that population. So don't get lulled into thinking that if you take one or two, you've got a sufficient sample that you can generalize to that population.

Speaker A One of the things we're going to do tomorrow, end of the day, is talk about follow up support and how can we support your learning. You got to start doing time span interviews, right? I think if you're going to learn requisite, it's a really important exercise. And I want to talk about ways tomorrow of supporting you in that. Because I think what's important is go out and do three, four, five of them. See what questions you have. Let's get some forum for you to get your questions answered. I'm looking forward to following up with.

Speaker D Oto on this because what I heard you asking was prescriptive versus re engineering. Did I get that? So can we use Ro to develop.

Speaker A Things as they should be and then try to set them that way? That's a very vague question, but you see what I'm trying to get at to some extent. Okay.

Speaker I Because we must certainly work off that premise already. If we work in an 18,000 organization or 100,000 organization, we work on on that that theory already, that we have.

Speaker A To be able to work like that.

Speaker I Otherwise we are not going to get an organization that works together effectively as a total organization.

Speaker A What I demonstrated was a diagnostic.

Speaker B Yeah. I just add one other thing. For me, the issue is if there.

Speaker E Are multiple roles that have similar titles.

Speaker B And the work is similar, that my feeling is you need to get enough of them so that when you get the managers together to say, okay, these are eight benchmark roles or another 50. Let's use our understanding of how the work of these roles are different to then calibrate the other 50. That's really where the importance is. Managers don't give a hoot about time span, but they do start to care about what is the work. And so you need enough so that they can look at all of those level two and level three roles, understand the difference, why that's mid, that's low. Once they get that, then they can do the work for the rest of them. You don't need to time span all of them.

Speaker G But I would like to support her in the sense that maybe I'll be bold and say, if you haven't cut your teeth doing at least a reasonable number of time span interviews, you've never done our own bold and say that it is the core of Elliot's work. And there's been ken can crack and agree that there's been many, many PhD dissertations. I get in debates. It's in a sense, with clients around, we're all agreeing that there's some levels of difference. What we're often arguing about is the.

Speaker A Way we measure that.

Speaker G And so this is an important piece in the sense that in this work.

Speaker A It is the measurement tool of relative.

Speaker G Role complexity in a hierarchical organization. And so if you haven't really cut your teeth on a few of those to really understand what that's all about, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, actually, at what you can find is that if you're willing to be a little patient with it and work with some of your interviewees around it, it's quite sort of amazing. On one hand, once they get it, a manager can generally say, I want that output. In fact, I need to have that output correct. I can't negotiate that time frame, but.

Speaker A I can live with a they can be very specific.

Speaker I Can I just clarify why I'm asking this question? Two layers behind this question is how we put this data into SAP and Oracle and workday as integrated ERP sets and run reliable reports from it. And that's a big challenge. Organization in order to do let's hold.

Speaker A That too auto, because I think that's.

Speaker G We'Re going to talk about that in terms of implementation issues.

Speaker A Yeah, tomorrow.