The Three Levels of Work

A work in progress

Tweet

Koeze Company sets pay rates based on market surveys, and I review annually job descriptions and pay rates for dozens of jobs, from blue collar to corporate CEO. I've noticed, along with my human resources director, that responsibilities, functions, and pay rates seem to fall into three bands or clusters. We've speculated that, not withstanding the wide variety of different tasks that people are asked to do, there are different ways of working or of approaching work, and some underlying, common skills that are required in each band or cluster of job, regardless of the tasks.

Work at the basic level is built around tasks. The job, regardless of what it is, consists mostly of doing a pre-defined set of tasks in a pre-defined way. Performance consists of getting it done in the time frame allowed with a sufficient level of skill. This is a common element of most blue collar jobs (although, there are some white collar jobs that might be close).

At the next level, which is the beginning of management, and roughly where one moves from hourly wages to a salary, specific tasks are supplemented by another kind of consciousness, mode, or attitude about work. When in this mode, the "management mode," the focus is not on the task and getting it done, but on asking questions about the task. Questions such as: Why are we doing this task? Is there a better, cheaper, faster way of doing this task? Who should be doing this task? How does this task fit with other tasks? How important is this task or set of tasks compared to some others (Argyris calls these "double-loop" questions.)

Answering these questions calls new skills into play.: analysis, inquiry, research, systems thinking, communication, imagination, creativity, organization, prioritization. The llist of skills is long, and varies from job-to-job, but these are higher-order skills.

The jobs at the third level involve more a change of scope and emphasis than a change in nature. The double-loop questions are about bigger, more complicated issues. From "Should we re-organize this department?" to "Should we sell this company?" From "Should we add a person in the Cleveland office?" to "Should we build an organization in Europe?" From "How does this task fit with other tasks?" to "How does our organization fit our current societal or political priorities?"

Each reader will have their own experiences against which to test my description, but applying this notion to the world of professional football might clarify my argument, as well as provide some further comparisons as I consider the implications of this three-level look at jobs.

The player on the field represents the first level -- a person with well-defined tasks and fairly clear performance expectations. Such a player might be exceptionally good at what he does, but not be able to think and converse abstractly about his own performance, or that of other players.

People who can think and communicate effectively sometimes become coaches. At the professional level, there are often different levels of coaches for a team. There are coaches who work with players who play specific positions -- the quarterback coach, for example. These coaches often report to coaches who manage the activities of the offense -- the offensive coordinator -- and the defense -- the defensive coordinator. These in turn report to the head coach.

Players for the most part operate at the basic level and position coaches must cross over to the second level. Not knowing that much about football, I'm not sure where level three might begin, but there is certainly a difference between being a coach or manager of players and being a coach or manager of coaches, which is what I take the head coach to be.

And in pro football there is a job which seems to me to be obviously level three. Depending on the organizational structure that might be the General Manager or the team President. This person, in addition to overseeing the coaches and the players will, among other things, work with or manage the work of those who deal with the team owners, the players' agents, the players' families, the people who run the stadiums, the broadcast and print media, representatives of the city, the marketing of the team -- anyway, a lot of stuff. This calls for a range of ability beyond that required of coaches, though certainly less technical knowledge of football. (Put in Berlin's terms, the team general manager must be a fox; the quaterback coach a hedgehog.)

As one engages with the complex issues at level three, accomplishing specific tasks recedes almost entirely. Doing is delegated to the greatest extent possible. Time is taken up in conversations and in meetings, and, if one is to be truly effective, in reading and thinking as well. Simultaneously, issues of who dominate over issues of what or how. This is a point that Jim Collins perhaps over does a bit in Good to Great, but it is a valid one. The job is helping to pick and coordinate the team and setting some typically quite broad boundaries on what or how. All what a blue collar worker might call "real work." is handled by others. People and ideas utterly replace things and tasks. Communication, dialog, and conflict management become the active work. The rest is reading and reflection.

 1 | 2 | 3 | 4  NEXT