Managing Competence Gaps

On the importance of empathetic communication

Have you ever participated in a conversation where you could not understand a word the other person was saying, despite you both speaking the same language? A textbook example is talking to a computer geek. The unfamiliarity of the subject, the complexity of the topic, and the abundance of jargon makes it impossible for the listener to understand the speaker, even though the latter often has no clue that their words are not making it home.

That’s an example of the competence gap, the inability of one person to transfer their idea or knowledge to another due to major differences in their education, skills (hard or soft), culture, or other personal characteristics. The competence gap is like talking in different languages, except that it’s the subject, not the language, that the communicators have very little common ground about.

Competence gaps may be narrower or wider, depending on the roles and skills of the people at the either side of the communication link. Businesses developed special linking roles to shrink the most distinctive gaps, with the project manager’s role of informal interpreter between the business and delivery layers being a widely known example. Less straightforward gaps, however, often go unnoticed: unlike project managers, who are aware of the differences of the mindsets of the two functions they are looking to make work together, other roles may be completely oblivious of such differences. Unawareness of competence gaps is a major issue in business environments and one of the primary reasons for mistakes and omissions in the products. 

Consider an architect, let’s call him Ashley, who is designing a certain part of the product. The solution Ashley creates builds on his extensive knowledge of materials, industry standards, safety requirements, best practices, experience with suppliers, and other deeply specialized facts. The final blueprints that he generates embody all of those little pieces of knowledge, but do so without naming them: the blueprints state the what and how, but not the why. 

The engineer, Eric, however, only sees the blueprints. He can’t see all the little pieces of knowledge that Ashley considered when deciding on the shape, size, or material to be used for the part. Looking to cut costs or simplify the production process, Eric may be tempted to optimize out what looks like an optional detail to him, but which in fact carries an important strengthening purpose. Unless Ashley had anticipated this urge and elaborated on the importance of the detail in the blueprint, there’s a risk that Eric’s initiative unwillingly results in a flawed product. It is not uncommon for weaknesses like that to slip into production and stay unnoticed long after the delivery. 

That’s the first, direct manifestation of the competence gap.

If Eric decides to go ahead with the miscalculated optimization, thus letting the error slip into the product, and that one day leads to a calamitous outcome, there’s often an urge to process it as a straightforward engineering error. All in all, it’s Eric who did not comply with the blueprint and removed the important detail. The cause appears to be clear as day; Eric is punished, the detail is reinstated, and the incident is recorded as ‘human error’ and closed. 

That’s the second, covert manifestation of the competence gap. If it happens to you, stop and do your best to suppress that urge. By jumping to conclusions, you are risking punishing the innocent and losing important insight about a flaw in your business. 

‘Human error’ is the least meaningful reason that can ever be given about incidents that originate from an operator’s mistake. Every human being is prone to errors if pushed beyond their reasonable level of abilities. Only a fraction of ‘human errors’ stem from genuine vices such as negligence, malpractice, or unquestionable incompetence of the operator. A lot are just a cumulative deliverable of a series of operator-independent factors; the loose bolt that pops out and releases the steam; the last and often weakest link in the chain of events that makes the already developing problem inevitable. It’s not where the investigation ends; it’s where it should begin.

Human knowledge has its limitations, and there’s only so much you can expect from a person with a certain scope of competence. When your seven-year-old becomes interested in cooking, you start with simple dishes that do not involve the use of sharp knives, ovens, or hobs until she gets confident with the basics. As your child gains experience, you gradually introduce more sophisticated pieces of cooking equipment. Throughout the learning curve, you keep bringing her attention to the dangers of hot temperatures, sharp objects, and undercooked food. If it’s the first time she embarks on cooking chicken, you would probably supervise her closely to make sure the meat gets cooked through – even if she is already an expert in grilling cheese and burger patties. 

This is reflected in the Empathy principle. Empathy acknowledges that there’s a certain limit to liability a human should bear for mistakes or oversight that happen because of natural limitations or unreasonable expectations of their abilities. Omissions and lapses that are committed due to excessive complexity of the matter, a significantly higher than usual workload level, or non-typical working conditions can’t be blamed solely on the operator. Punishing a software developer for poor performance on a sales call or sacking a van driver for crashing a forklift will raise a few brows, yet the less obvious competence gap situations, like the one with Eric’s lapse, are, in fact, no different. They are about someone given an assignment they have no competence or capacity to deal with. Punishing the operator targets the effect instead of the cause.

Empathy acknowledges that there’s a certain limit to liability a human should bear for mistakes or oversight that happen because of natural limitations or unreasonable expectations of their abilities.

Natural disasters, major equipment failures, unfortunate accumulation of rare circumstances can put operators under immense pressure, strain them of time, and force them into making suboptimal decisions. We accept human errors committed in those scenarios as inherently forgivable. We understand that the human stands no chance in front of dramatic power of the force majeure, however competent in their role they are. 

Unlike force majeures that are ‘acts of God’, incidents that happen due to competence gaps have clear man-made origins. Yet if we look closer into the chemistry of these two kinds of errors, we will find that they stand quite close to each other. In each case the reasonably competent operator faces a challenge that is way above the level of their competence and capabilities – because of ambiguity, lack of information, high workload, pure stress, or other “too much” factor. The nature of the problem is the same in both cases – loss of situational awareness of a reasonably qualified person – and it’s only the respective root causes, natural or man-made, but both being outside of control of that person, that differ.

Problems that stem from competence gaps always involve two human actors: the one that assigns the job and the one that executes it. People are known to be remarkably bad at judging their own competence, so the operator cannot be expected to self-assess as a poor performer for the job. At the same time, the person that assigns the task almost always knows more about it, either by having higher competence, wider knowledge, or clearer picture of what needs to be done. As such, they also carry their share of responsibility for the ultimate deliverable, which comes up to defining the task in such way that it matches the assignee’s competences and qualities. Getting back to poor Eric’s case, it would have been reasonable to expect that Ashley scrutinizes the task, identifies the risk of Eric not getting the idea of the ill-fated part fully, and elaborates on that in the notes to the task.

Assigning the blame solely to the operator where there is a suspicion that a competence gap is at play not only is unfair to the operator, but is also strategically damaging to the business. In many instances, the genuine root of a competence gap-induced problem is about a poorly defined and communicated assignment. By attributing the problem to the operator, we hurt loyalty of a competent employee, but what’s worse, we sweep the presence of a faulty communication channel under the rug instead of investigating and eliminating it – keeping it open for the next unexpected setback. 

Note that communicating an assignment assumes a much broader interaction than just dropping a work email. It is packaging it in such way that the operator is 100% clear on what needs to be done, with all the grey areas covered and all the risks safeguarded. It is double checking that any obscure points are made visible and understood by the operator. It is getting back now and again to verify that any non-trivial or unusual pieces are get done right. It is checking that the chicken is well-cooked.

As such, communication failures that expose competence gaps can happen for a variety of intricate reasons:

• A plan that fails to attract attention to important but obscure points (as in Ashley and Eric’s story above).
• Poorly planned work schedules: unavailability of supervision or mentoring for tricky assignments, or overloading a person with assignments.
• Poor corporate culture: low tolerance to mistakes, excessive competitiveness, unrealistic performance targets.
• Lack of ownership and mutual trust.

Note that none of the above communication failures can be addressed on the operator’s level alone: it is the person that sets the task that needs to realize and respond to them, ideally building on company-wide practices. Company culture that incorporates efficient communication strategy can help facilitate that.

In the previous article we mentioned that the Customer and Service Provider model of intra-company communication can help reduce the negative effect of competence gaps. It should now be clear why: 

• The task setter (the customer) is forced to pay more attention to formulating the task. With the operator (the service provider) at arm’s length, there is no place for shortcuts or potentially faulty assumptions about the operator’s competence.
• At the end of the cycle, the task setter is forced to formally accept the deliverable, for which they share accountability with the operator. This ensures control, as the task setter is required to sign off on the quality of the work.
• The supplier is cleared of any faults that result from inaccuracies or omissions in the task description. They do what they are ordered to do – no more and no less. 

Putting the customer hat on would incentivise Ashley to focus better on making the blueprint crystal clear for the arm’s-length Eric. Knowing that he is partly accountable for the quality of the deliverable would also encourage him to do more to verify that the part was produced in full accordance with his idea.

If Eric thinks of optimizing out the detail, he will be incentivised to contact Ashley first, as doing that without Ashley’s consent would invalidate his service contract. This both creates a safeguard and works as a catalyst for stronger communication.

If the error nevertheless does happen, Eric and Ashley would bear responsibility for the failure together. That would propagate the problem to the higher level of company hierarchy and make the issue more visible to them – which gives it much better chances of being recognised as a communication problem and addressed as such. 

If not mitigated, competence gaps can introduce hard-to-track issues to the product and hide behind the operator’s error label. Aim to build efficient and empathetic communication processes, and mind that a “human error” signifies the beginning of an investigation, not the end of it.