When nothing is big enough to mention and it's adding up

What it says

Six boxes. Along the top: information, tools, and reasons to bother. Down the side: what the workplace hands you, and what you bring yourself. So the top row asks whether anybody told them what good looks like, whether they've got what the job needs, and whether doing it well changes anything at all. The bottom row asks whether they know how, whether they're able, and whether they want to. Gilbert's whole point is that the top row holds the big, cheap wins. It's also the row nobody checks.

Where it comes from

Thomas Gilbert, in Human Competence, 1978, out of a tradition that tried to fix the workplace rather than train the person standing in it. There's no instrument behind it and no trial — it's a lot of practitioner case work, organised well. So treat it as a way of searching rather than a measurement. Its real value is that it stops you arriving at the conclusion you'd already picked.

What to do with it

Go along the top row before you touch the bottom one. Has anybody actually told this person what good looks like, out loud, recently? Have they got what the job needs? Does doing it well make any difference to anything? If any one of those is a no, you've found something you can fix this week — and it isn't a conversation about them.

When it's the wrong lens

When you already know the cause, and have known for a while. Then it's a way of putting the conversation off while looking thorough.

What it says

Whether somebody tries at all depends on three beliefs holding at once: that effort will get the result, that the result will get the reward, and that the reward is worth having. They multiply rather than add, so any one of them hitting zero takes the whole thing to zero, however strong the other two are. Which narrows the question usefully. Not why is this person unmotivated — which of the three has gone.

Where it comes from

Victor Vroom set it out in 1964. The link above is the meta-analysis, which is the honest thing to cite, because what it found is mixed: the model predicts what people intend and prefer better than what they actually do. It also assumes somebody sitting down and weighing things up, and it has nothing at all to say about whether they can do the job. Pair it with the card above rather than using it alone.

What to do with it

Ask three questions and listen for which one gets the flat answer. Could you do this well if you tried? If you did it well, would anybody notice? And does it matter to you whether they do? The third is the one people won't answer honestly to somebody who has a say in their work. It's also the one most likely to be the real answer.

When it's the wrong lens

When somebody's trying hard and it still isn't working. All three beliefs can be perfectly intact and the person still be in the wrong job, or exhausted, or missing a skill nobody ever taught them.

What it says

Two different problems that look identical from outside. Capability is can't — the skill, the health, whatever is going on around them. Conduct is won't — a choice about effort or behaviour. Everything you do next hangs on which one it is, and Acas is explicit that something can look like conduct and actually be capability, including where somebody's owed an adjustment nobody has made.

Where it comes from

Acas, the UK's conciliation service — a public body that exists to stop these situations going badly wrong. It's guidance rather than theory, which is exactly why it's on this page: it tells you what to do, and it was written by people who see what happens when nobody did. The procedural half is shaped by UK employment law and doesn't travel. The distinction does.

What to do with it

Work out which one you've already assumed, then go looking for the evidence that you're wrong about it. Most of us land on won't, because it's the reading that asks nothing of us. Getting it backwards is expensive both ways round: treating can't as won't is unfair, and treating won't as can't buys months of support that was never the thing missing.

When it's the wrong lens

Early, before you've said anything at all. This is for working out what to do once the problem is established. Reach for it first and you've turned a conversation into a process.

The move

Raise the first one, as one small thing, in the week it happens. One sentence. No pattern, no history. "That went out without the numbers checked — can we make checking them a step?"

Why it works

One instance is answerable, and cheap to fix. The same thing raised four instances later is a claim about who somebody is — they'll defend it as one, and they'll also be right that nobody told them.

How it fails

Deciding it's too small to mention. It is. That's the point — it's going to be too small every single time, right up until the day it's suddenly too big.

The move

Before the conversation, write two or three sentences describing what you'd be seeing if this were going well. Concrete things, in a given week. Then check whether any of it has ever been said out loud.

Why it works

Often the writing is the finding. The standard turns out to have existed in one head and nowhere else — which makes this a problem with how the job was set up, not with how it's being done.

How it fails

Writing something nobody could measure. "More ownership" and "more proactive" can't be met, can't be disproved, and leave whoever has to act on them guessing.

The move

Ask it straight: "If this had to go well for the next month, what would have to be different?" Then stop talking. Including through the uncomfortable pause.

Why it works

People usually know. The answer names a missing tool, an unclear priority, something happening outside work, or nothing at all — and each of those is a different situation wanting a different thing from you. It also means the plan has both sets of fingerprints on it, which is most of whether it survives a bad week.

How it fails

Asking it when you've already decided. If you know how this goes, say that instead — a question you aren't going to act on does more damage than a straight answer.