Capacity comes before capability

The least technical person in the room#

Someone I worked with once called themselves the least technical person in the room. Later, they were the one everybody asked.

They had been given a reason to learn and enough room to do it.

What happens at the edge#

Without that room, a new thing lands as a threat. When something pushes past the edge of what somebody knows how to hold, people drop into survival mode, where very little learning or invention happens.

So a lot of what gets read as resistance is a capacity problem. The person is at the edge of what they can carry this week, where one more unfamiliar thing tips them under.

Growth and overload look identical from the outside#

Growth and overload both look like somebody taking on something new, and the difference is whether they had room to begin with. A stretch assignment expands what somebody with slack can hold. Given to someone already at the edge, it tends to produce a quiet withdrawal that gets filed as attitude.

So before I ask a team to absorb something, I try to find out what they’re already carrying. Their current load decides whether my request is possible at all.

Expanding what a team can hold#

The most useful thing I’ve found is structured teaching. Sitting people in front of a new tool and hoping produces a few enthusiasts and a lot of quiet avoidance. Teaching the theory first gives everyone the same vocabulary, which is what lets a team say no to the right things.

At one company that meant building the product discipline from scratch, through training in product theory and strategy. It was slower than issuing a process document, but it was still how the team worked a quarter later.

What I check for#

• Do people have room before I ask for more?
• Does a new tool or process arrive with the vocabulary to understand it, or only with access?
• Is somebody who’s struggling being read as unwilling?
• Is the person who took the risk visibly better off for having taken it?

One person at a time#

Capacity is individual, so a team grows as particular people grow, and its ceiling moves with them.

The least technical person in the room is how that looks up close. One person got a reason and room, and the team’s ceiling moved with them.

Sources

• Kathy Sierra, Building the Minimum Badass User
• Nielsen, Fresh vs. Familiar