Summary of correct roles (one person often holds multiple roles):
Reporter: Provides facts and historical data. Works more on the “left side” (facts) of the correct prediction and decision-making process.
Adviser: Given some values (or assumed values), works out the correct choice/recommendation. By taking in facts and bounding CEPs, selecting models, and so on, an adviser works on the “right side” of the correct prediction and decision-making process.
Director: Reviews the recommendations of the advisers and then generates process specifications/instructions for work-doers, and/or sets the bounds for more detailed decision-makers/delegates.
Actual Work-Doer/Assigned Task Performer/Technical Staff: Physically realizes the recommendation by directly moving objects or generating/issuing/tweaking detailed instructions, which in turn realizes the recommendation.
MOEs:
For each of the following roles, the areas in which they are:
– Currently providing value (and to what volume/extent)
– Those in which they are capable of effective contribution
are sections individually contributing to value.
For example, the domain(s) which the reporter statuses/can status also matter: you can’t take the average cub local beat reporter and then ask them to summarize cutting-edge science reports. Nor can you take an average auto mechanic and immediately ask them to do low-level semiconductor work. Another example in this – an adviser who handles commercial and residential real estate: the adviser may be perfectly capable of doing either at higher volume and deeper insight, however as currently you measure the contribution based on the value of the split contribution, not the capability.
– A reporter examines various items in the processes and documents the measurements taken. Effectiveness is measured by the number and detail of measurements taken, and the accuracy of those measurements (usually verified by sampling).
– An adviser reviews the reports relating to the situation (who, what, when, where, why) and delivers at least a partial layout of the possible courses of action, along with their relative value and probability of success. (In a formal sense, produces the decision spreadsheet.) Effectiveness is measured by the completeness and accuracy of those layouts given decision resources, in particular whether the correct course of action was included and rated the highest of all.
– A good director (many times “authority/cognizant authority/decisionmaker”) completely (for the level of detail appropriate to her position in the organization) specifies the processes to execute, and the resources (humans, tools/equipment/facilities, money) to use in these processes. Since the form of this communication is the essence of the command, the director must also incorporate all decision-relevant inputs (reports, advice, pre-existing technical competence and knowledge) and assess the correct course of action, which will be formulated according to communications skill. The measure of effectiveness is the most difficult of all roles when the decision depends on unknown factors, since the “what-if” analysis, even if completely accurate, may have been known by the director, but the value of the selected course of action was highest without the knowledge of the unknown factors. Consequently the measure of effectiveness is the combination of:
— Given the resources available to the decisions, how were those resources allocated to each decision (assessment of expectation for each right/wrong decision) (this includes the assignment of monitoring resources to existing processes)
— How efficiently were the decision resources used/employed, to give the most valuable information according to the decisions’ expectation
— Did the decision process identify all feasible courses of action, and in particular the most correct of those courses of action
— To what extent did that decision process correctly quantify the expectation of each course of action
— Was the most optimal decision according to the risk/reward tolerance and unknown factors made
— Has the direction actually been given to the proper level
Assigned-task performance/competence and types of tasks:
– An incompetent is not capable of achieving the task within tolerances within an economically sensible bounded amount of time, with training and support.
– A layman is capable of achieving the task within tolerances within a bounded period of time, potentially with large amounts of training and support (hence you could consider the layman to be a (possibly partially) pre-trained individual).
– An entry-level worker often is capable of performing basic tasks in the subject area with no further training.
– A journeyman/mid-level worker usually is capable of performing tasks in the area reasonably well.
– A swingman has differing definitions of skill level, but always combines abilities to perform various different roles without much further training.
– A specialist is able to perform very advanced tasks in a given subject area in a reasonable amount of time, which even journeymen may not be able to perform reasonably well.
In regards to tasking individuals, here is a breakdown of job-relevant attributes:
Subverting/sabotage/negligence/malingering/not doing the job: typically people talk about “trustworthiness”, basic integrity, or other measures in this regard.
Assigned-task performance/competence: for a given task, how well does this person perform this task?
Types of tasks a person can perform within that system: important for swingmen or low-level managers, who have buckets of small but differing tasks.
Focus/dedication: how often the individual will actually be performing a given set of tasks, vs. goofing off or doing other things
Communication effectiveness: how well this person is able to accept/understand orders, give orders clearly, and provide required information
Initiative & awareness: sort of the opposite of focus. How often a person will identify needs to change or adapt the process, and then take action based on that assessment. This is not only based on work-related tasks, but also on studying and interactions outside of work.
Assessment accuracy: given a pile of processes and information, how well can this person identify suboptimalities, deviations, and the optimal set of processes to perform?
Effects on other team members (hence effects on the process): anywhere from motivating, to depressing e.g. scowling at people, sexual harassment, etc.
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Evaluating Trustworthiness Of Personnel In Ambiguous, Trust-Compromising Situations
Obviously a person that isn’t likely to do the job, or reduces the quality and quantity of the overall work product, is “outside the box/system/design/bounds” and the situation should be corrected.
Another instance where a person is not likely to do the job is where they accept sinecures, bribes, and other compensation unrelated to actual work when they have viable alternatives (such as changing jobs while still being able to support a family). That indicates the person is fundamentally lazy and corrupt, so the person can’t be relied upon to perform in a role.
For lack of a better placement: note that a sinecure is not only an obvious show-up-and-no-work job; a sinecure also is created in situations such as:
– A worker attempting a task but making very little progress over a long period of time
– A worker assigned to create work products that have almost zero possibility of ever being used or zero value if they are used, outside of a situation where it’s a high-impact risk mitigation. So creating the abort functionality when the system hopefully should never reach that state is not a sinecure, but, (maybe outside of a training situation) a person working on the detailed planning of a very-low-value project when higher-value work will consume funds well beyond anything envisioned as feasible, is in a sinecure.
– A reporter or adviser whose advice never is heeded in any way, or whose advice clearly will be duplicative of previous reports and recommendations, where there is no significant likelihood that circumstances will change the decisive character of the reports and recommendations. Note that this is not the same as the reporter/adviser’s advice never resulting in a different decision: if the decision process is well-understood and documented, and the reports clearly are incorporated into that process, but the information contained in the report always is below the threshold that correctly would change a decision, then the job likely is not a sinecure. For example, if an auditor is the second man of a two-man-rule review, but never finds anything out of line because the finances and inventory are in order due to exceptional competence in the particular organization, that’s not a sinecure. However, if the auditor’s findings are being ignored, or if the amount of work required for review is grossly (say 80%) less than what the auditor is being paid for, then that would be a sinecure.
Hence, identifying the waste/sinecure is not just a question of basic integrity, but it also relies on a person’s knowledge of their job and organization, and the facts may change one way or the other over the course of a job in an organization or a career. That is, technical competence and wider knowledge is required for a fully ideal execution of honest and diligent behavior. Consequently the assessment of an individual’s trustworthiness has to bear in mind these different abilities and economic requirements (e.g. sufficient time and perceived importance relative to other factors in a person’s life) to act according the ideal.
The question of rulebreaking and to what extent it predicts ability to perform in a certain role (often but not always thought of in terms of trustworthiness) is unfortunately extremely context-dependent. This is due to a wide variety of imperfections in the direction given by humans in organizations, as well as deficiencies in the overall teaching of ideology and the way to live “the good life”:
– Managers place different and potentially contradictory authorities for task assignment, cost, schedule, safety/environmental concerns, documentation requirements/auditing, and so on
– The guidance itself could be wrong/outdated/inapplicable
– The most correct application of the guidances themselves may be ambiguous depending on the situation
– There often is no effective way to achieve a definitive reconciliation of these contradictory guidances because the directors can’t or won’t do their jobs, and in a normal civilian situation, you would not use violence to force the resolution
– The rulebooks can get very large, and individuals frequently can change roles or work processes, yet they are being asked to comply with all of them, sometimes without even being told or having any knowledge of what the training or rule sources are
– Multiple stacking of authorities within and between organizations with their own differing authority relationships, and this also never receives effective reconciliation
— Sometimes different people within an authority chain contradict the same guidance on the same points
– Oftentimes intended exceptions to the rules exist, and because there is no effective means to achieve reconciliation, it’s not clear whether a particular guidance is within exceptions to the rules, or is breaking the rules/beyond an individual’s authority
— For instance, “working to the rule” becomes a threat because directors and work-doers have been engaged in oftentimes explicit and condoned disregard of the official guidance
When higher authorities/directors such as the government place rules that are ignored or not enforced or not supported with the required funding, then individuals can be placed into situations where the performance of a job role within the economic constraints of the new situation requires the disregard of higher authority.
Normally in that case we would tend to think of “which is the higher good” as to whether an action should be taken. However now we come to the problem of an individual’s knowledge/competency to determine what that higher good is. Is it really safe to disregard a safety procedure? What will be the consequences? Is the money lost due to improper or missing documentation or potentially allocating resources improperly, better or worse than the money gained by ignoring those rules and pursuing the opportunity? Now we ask a question about individual skill, not about the basic integrity or trustworthiness, since the individual is in a no-win situation.