Competence alone tells you nothing when the tank is empty. Capability demands capacity, yet most organisations ignore it, and the metrics they chase quietly bend behaviour.
We know what a lack of competence looks like. But what does it look like when the human operator's tank is running on empty?
We hear the word 'capability' a lot in high-performing organisations. Sometimes I wonder whether we mean competence.
As a military flying instructor, I regularly saw two students, side by side: similar assessed aptitude on entry, similar skills, similar determination to succeed. One passed, one failed. I became fascinated with the difference, and I felt sure it was something to do with access to skills under pressure.
We are asked to demonstrate competence at many tasks required of aviators and soldiers. We are competent with our weapons handling, at passing courses, at ticking currency and compliance boxes. As junior pilots, we are competent (or not competent!) at passing flights and flight tests. Competence tells us what someone could achieve in a specific moment, and it is only a proxy for capability.
It makes me ponder the 'Cobra effect'. This was an ill-fated policy introduced in Delhi during the British Raj, aimed at reducing the number of deadly cobras on the streets. The British government offered a bounty for every dead cobra, and initially the strategy was deemed a great success as the dead cobras piled up.
Soon, people realised that dead cobras were a great way to earn an income, and the breeding programs began, creating incomes for many. When the Raj realised the unintended consequence, they cancelled the scheme, and the breeders released their snakes, which led to an overall increase in the venomous snakes on Delhi's streets. While doubt has been cast on the anecdote's historical accuracy, history and literature offer plenty of examples of similarly fated schemes.
The one that immediately comes to mind is the 2002 opium poppy field buy-back scheme in Afghanistan, when British officials offered farmers $700 for every acre of poppy they destroyed. This led to a frenzy of poppy planting to earn the payout, and many farmers sold the sap before destroying their fields, resulting in double income and no positive outcome for the government.
Different centuries and different continents, but the same pattern. Someone picked a measure to stand in for what they actually wanted, fewer cobras or less opium, and people did the sensible thing and gave the measure exactly what it asked for. The number looked healthy while the outcome went the other way.
Which leads me to the phrase credited to Peter Drucker: "what gets measured gets managed". It is a useful rule, and it also means that whatever we measure shapes how people behave, whether or not that is what we intended.
We regularly measure competence.
Can you think of any unintended consequences of this, and how this plays out in your workplace?
This one came to mind for me, and it is a topic of conversation at intervals amongst the instructing staff. Our flying students know that they are being assessed every flight, particularly on flight tests. So when they feel stressed, exhausted, or underprepared, they may cancel the sortie.
Sometimes this is justified under the umbrella of fatigue management, and we must clearly state here that fatigue management is important in safety-critical work environments.
But consider this: It has the same shape as the cobras and the poppies. We measure competence, and the sensible response to that measure, on a low day, is to stay out of the measurement. The cost is that we lose sight of what we actually wanted to know: whether someone can still deliver capability when capacity is running low.
Here's where my thinking has landed.
Competence is what someone can do in a specific moment: the trained skill, the standard they were checked to.
Capacity is what they've got left to do it with.
Capacity is what is tested at the end of a 14-hour crew day, in high winds and low cloud base, sliding down the ILS at night with a junior crew.
Capability needs both competence and capacity, and from what I've seen, most organisations only measure one of these performance fundamentals.
Competence × Capacity = Capability
We are really good at measuring competence in our workplaces. I'm not so sure about the other side of the equation. What do you think?
I want to leave you with this thought. Capacity, alongside competence, is required to affect capability. We often know what a lack of competence looks like. But how does the 'capacity low' light show up for your operators?
We inspect airframes to identify cracks before they become failures.
Imagine having the same visibility on your people.
