The Three Dimensions of the Task
Marcel JB Tardif, MBA
CEO - PerformInfo Inc. Auteur, Conférencier, Coach de dirigeants 26 553 abonnés + 3 900 post 560 articles
Peter F. Drucker[1] defines the three dimensions of the task (understood in terms of the company's activity and business) as follows: “1) making the present task efficient; 2) identifying and realizing the current task's potential; 3) anticipating and performing a different task in the future”. I have defined such in my books as “capabilities”, “potentialities” and “opportunities”. In other words, the real resources of the post-modern company, as opposed to the financial, technological, and human resources of the conventional industrial enterprise.
“A capability is a device that a company, like a person or a group of people, has to facilitate the accomplishment of a task, a job, or a mandate. In short, it includes everything that, directly or indirectly, will enable the successful execution of a project, undertaken to serve the end pursued by the company concerned. It is expressed in quantitative rather than qualitative terms and relates more to the materials, tools, and other material factors required for the normal execution of the task entrusted. Capacity is measured before, during, and after work completion, and is allocated to a specific project based on the direct and indirect support it requires to be delivered economically, i.e. on time and within budget. Capacity is therefore a stock. It is depleted, just as it is renewed. It can be acquired, as well as transferred or sold, but it is never without use value within or outside the company. This means that it needs to be carefully exploited, since it contributes, in all its dimensions, to the company's performance. Capacity facilitates task performance, and should not be seen as a burden that weighs down workloads because it is not actualized. The actualization of a capacity refers to the principle of adjusting the very service of the capacity concerned, and therefore to its prospect of useful use when the time comes. There's no point in the company accumulating capacities that can't be put to immediate use, because they're out of phase with the response it needs to provide to the market, to fulfill its mission of satisfying the demand expressed by its customers. Capacities must facilitate work execution, to maintain their value as an executable asset within the company's core business. A constant balance must therefore be struck between their accumulation and their usefulness so that the flexibility they provide in response to the market enables the company to be sufficiently agile to remain competitive. Any administrative burden linked to the use of a company's capacities will inevitably weigh down on its work output, and hence on its bottom line. And capacity overload, and above all lack of capacity, can only affect the company's pace of adaptation to the demands of improving competitive conditions in the market.” [2]
“Potentialities are the ability of a company, a person or a group of people, or even an operating structure, to achieve objectives. A potentiality for action, about a task, is evaluated in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. It represents a reserve of mental energy, which the person in charge of carrying out a given task can draw on, at any time or almost any time. A potentiality is therefore a flow, which must be activated to be validated as the power to carry out a particular work project within the company. A potentiality can grow, as the activity progresses because the actor's task has given rise to better learning on his part. As such, potentialities are not transferable from one individual to another, either inside or outside the company, even if the person concerned can change the context in which he or she works. Work potentialities are as situational as they are functional, in that they depend on the conditions and context of employment, as well as on the attributes of the position held by the individual. However, by observing others, some people's skills can be enhanced, if additional knowledge, know-how, and interpersonal skills are acquired, adding to their ability to work. On the other hand, a potentiality may prove useless or almost useless, if it is not solicited or used for the assigned task to which it best corresponds. Potentialities are aptitudes that predispose a person to work, to achieve superior performance in the assigned activity if there is a match between the requirements of the task and the actionable knowledge of the person in charge of the work involved. Potentialities, because they are a flow, are only of real use if they’re used in the time and space of employment, where they will retain their contribution value to the result of the activity carried out in the company concerned. Because different work experiences will have been taken on by the same person, the latter's potentiality for new action may have grown. But the potentialities are not a self-replenishing charge at every moment of their reading. They are what they are, which implies that to have a higher work potentiality, the person will have to have accumulated additional task experience.” [3]
“An opportunity is, for the company, as well as for the person or group of people concerned, an occasion, fortuitous or foreseeable, which will arise to achieve a new objective. An opportunity is measured in terms of the number and value of additional contributions to the company's current earnings. An opportunity is neither a stock nor a flow in the strict sense, but a lever on the company's acquired knowledge, as well as that of the people it employs. An opportunity opens the door to an action that should serve to add value for those who seize it, manage it, and exploit it for its own sake. An opportunity, unlike an acquired knowledge or a known situation, cannot be the unaltered reissue of a thing, a situation or a market condition. Initiated by action, an opportunity can only be measured in importance in the light of the results of the activity, if the company or person who seized it has been able to exploit it in a useful way. The fact remains, however, that an opportunity can only be properly assessed in terms of its positive outcome once it has been included in the activity carried out. However, it is in the interest of those concerned to perceive the possible and probable spin-offs, before the activity has been completed. During operations, it will be easier to judge the useful contribution of a given opportunity to the company's business, which in turn will have to decide whether or not to take advantage of it. Logically, an opportunity is not transferable between two takers for a given activity. But it can be taken up by both at the same time, or at different times, and according to different ways and means of carrying out the task it will lighten, enrich, or make more profitable. There is no such thing as a negative opportunity, although there are opportunities that are missed because they are poorly managed by the company or the individual. The failure to take advantage of a given situation, without thinking of derogating from the applicable laws and regulations for all that, does not disguise an opportunity as a lack of business opportunity for the company or the individual.” [4]
?All three dimensions of the task must be optimally fulfilled, if the company's implicit utility-market mission is to be satisfied. This is not easy to achieve, and in any case, no company can achieve it completely and continuously. At a given stage of evolution, a company may no longer be able to manage itself to the full extent of its abilities, because market conditions have forced it to change beyond its level of competence (to apply the Peter Principle to the enterprise).
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[1] Drucker, P. F., (1964), Managing for Results, Harper & Row, p. 4.
[2] Tardif, M.JB., (2018), Mieux définir le management, Pour mieux comprendre l’entreprise, Amazon.ca , p. 199, 200.
[3] Idem, p. 205.
[4] Idem, p. 210, 211.
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