This case study is based on the situation of a client of the Covenant Group. The name and critical details have been changed to preserve client privacy.



As soon as I walked into the boardroom, I knew this was going to be a difficult session.

The tension was palpable. Marc Lafontaine, a 20-year veteran of the business, had brought his entire support team of five with him to participate in our one-day advanced practice development platform. The program called for us to spend the next eight to 10 hours in “creative reconstruction” of Marc’s business. It was to be an intervention-type exercise because Marc was extremely stressed by what he described as “a business totally out of control.”

Marc was a big producer with a Type A personality and a bit of an ego. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, Marc’s business had grown to where it was as a result of his energy, drive and strong desire to be a leader. But something clearly wasn’t right.

A few weeks earlier, Marc had told me he was burning out: “I work 60 hours a week, haven’t had a real vacation for years and seem to be constantly in a state of panic. Despite my long hours and hard work, business has stalled at the same revenue for the past three years. I have to hire one or two additional staff so I can spend more time on client development, but I shudder at the thought of managing seven people when I have so much trouble managing the five I have.

“I am hoping that you can get us organized so I feel less stress and can break though to the next level.”

In preparation for the day, Marc completed our self-evaluation questionnaire. When asked: “Where do you feel the greatest pain in your practice?” he had replied: “I have a great vision of where this business could go, but if I want the things we need to do to get there done right, I pretty much have to do them myself. No one else seems to get it.”

That response alone gave me a clue about one obstacle to growth that Marc was facing.

During our “get-acquainted” exercise, each participant talked about his or her job and experience working in the practice. Marc kept interjecting when he felt someone was not adequately describing his or her role or the office environment, to the point at which I had to say, “Marc, let people describe in their own words.” It was difficult, but eventually he relented and let people speak for themselves. A pattern began to emerge.

There was clearly frustration all around the table. Mary, the most senior support person, summed it up for everyone when she said: “I am not able to do my job to the level I know I can, due to interruptions and distractions. As a consequence, I am dissatisfied with my performance and ability to contribute.”

“What do you think about Mary’s comments, Marc?” I asked.

“That is actually funny, because I feel exactly the same way about my role. I am not able to do what I do best because I am always being dragged into administrative things,” Marc replied.

At that statement, the table erupted. It was clear that previously the staff had not had much opportunity to express their frustration. A barrage of comments followed.

“We don’t ‘drag’ you into anything, Marc. You inject yourself.”

“That’s right. I can’t describe how often you have slowed me down.”

“Sometimes I have to do things over after you’ve messed them up.”

“You’re always changing the way we do things — it’s exasperating.”

“Don’t you trust us to do our jobs?”

Prompted by that last question, I called a halt, partly to protect Marc from further abuse but also because I was getting another clue as to the problem. To confirm my guess, I jumped ahead in the agenda to “the stratum exercise.”

“Stratum capability,” I explained, “is a field of study by the Canadian behavioural scientist, the late Elliot Jacques. His theory holds that people have varying levels of ‘mental horsepower’ that is demonstrated by their ability to handle complex information. No surprises there — we all know some people are smarter than others.

Jacques’ work, however, connected our intuitive sense of intelligence with the length of time it takes to complete a task. In other words, the longer the time horizon, the more complex a task is likely to be and the more mental capacity we need to do it well.

@page_break@“Someone whose job calls for them to visualize, plan and execute a strategy over, say, one to three years should have more capability than someone whose job requires them look out only three months. This is not to suggest that anyone whose job has a short time horizon isn’t smart — just that their jobs are probably less complex.

“Furthermore, 90% of the population functions best within a time span of 12 months or less. Only 2% can capably manage the complexity of tasks two to five years out, and at five to 10 years, the number drops to a mere 1%.

“But here is the problem: if people are working too far above or below their stratum capability, they can become either overwhelmed or bored. Similarly, if there is too large a gap between, for example, a manager and his staff, they frequently have difficulty understanding and valuing each other’s jobs.

“Everyone — including you, Marc — take a few minutes to think about your job. Then write down what you feel is the length of your longest responsibility — that is, how far into the future do you have to plan to do your job effectively? I am not asking for the most important task or even the one that takes up most of your time — just the one that stretches out the farthest. It could be a week, a month, six months, one year, 10 years.…”

Not surprising, the staff identified time frames from one to 18 months, while Marc, the visionary, said he was always looking out “at least five years, perhaps 10.”

Next, I asked: “Marc, now you list the names of everyone on your team and beside each name, indicate the length of the longest task you would feel comfortable assigning to that person. Could you give them total responsibility for something that takes a week, a month, six months, a year, and so on, and not be concerned that it wouldn’t be done to your satisfaction?

“That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have them report in periodically, but you are essentially giving them responsibility for completing that assignment. In other words, how far out do you ‘trust’ them to do a job?”

When Marc had completed his list, we compared what he had written with what the others had recorded for themselves. In every instance except one, Marc’s time span estimate was shorter than the employee’s.

Thus, two conclusions jumped out. First, the gap between Marc’s time horizon and his team’s was large, and justified why Marc felt that the others just didn’t “get it” — they didn’t have the same insight into the long-term big picture that he did.

It also explained why the staff was frustrated: Marc was always interrupting them because he didn’t have the confidence they could carry out their responsibilities. He was also irritated because he felt he was always being “pulled down” to do lower-level tasks because no one else could do them the way he wanted them done.

Armed with this information, we created an organizational chart for the practice, based on the functions that had to be performed and assigned a “stratum capability” requirement for each job according to the estimated time span for the role. Then we plotted the current staff members against the requirements and found that two people had to be shifted in their positions, one up and one down, which made them both happier because they were more closely matched to their own sense of capability.

The big issue was the overall gap between Marc’s five- to 10-year perspective and the next closest among the existing staff, at 18 months. The decision was made to use the money Marc was planning to spend on two additional support staff to hire a more senior office manager with stratum capability to manage tasks with a time span of two to three years. He or she would bridge the gap between Marc and the staff, freeing Marc to work at the highest level of his capability.

Forty-five days later, I followed up with Marc and found a very different person. He had found a great office manager who “got it.” The staff now looked forward to their work and Marc had increased his business development time by a full day per week. He expected to eventually increase it by that amount again within the next 45 days.

Marc is still a little cocky, but now he has good reason to be. His business is back on the growth trajectory he had established three years earlier. IE



George Hartman is a coach and facilitator with the Covenant Group in Toronto. He can be reached at george@covenantgroup.com.