Week 21, 2021 — Issue #153
Task Relevant Maturity (TRM): Instruct, Support, and Delegate
Each week: three ideas on and about the future of work. This week: three ideas on something called Task Relevant Maturity (TRM).
TRM is a combination of two things: (1) your skill and ability to perform a certain task and (2) your willingness and motivation with which to do so. It’s a simple enough concept to understand. But despite that simplicity, it has proven to be a rather useful concept.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Instruct
TRM is a framework that helps managers provide the right kind of support to the right person at the right time. At its most basic level, when your TRM is low, the framework suggests you are best served by practical instructions as to the what, why, and how of the specific activity you need to perform.
2. Support
Your TRM improves with your ability and willingness to perform. And when it does, your need for practical instruction subsides. You no longer need to be told what to do and TRM suggests that you are now best served by monitoring and support.
3. Delegate
Your TRM peaks when your ability and willingness are both high. And at that point, the framework suggests that your manager should simply get out of the way and let you get on with things. At most, they should help you establish and monitors objectives.
Sound familiar? It should. TRM was first introduced by Andy Grove in 1983’s High Output Management (w152021) and it shares more than a passing resemblance to the Will/Skill Matrix (see w482019).
That said, TRM does highlight one very important idea:
“How often you monitor should not be based on what you believe your subordinate can do in general, but on his experience with a specific task and his prior performance with it” — Andy Grove
Note the focus on specific tasks.
In my experience, it’s all too common that managers think there’s a one-to-one relationship between people and management style. There isn’t. The fact that someone is best served by coaching in one area doesn’t mean they are somehow above instruction in another. One isn’t necessarily better than the other. And TRM helps us remember that.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time: Make it matter.
