In physics, a force is said to do work if, when acting, there is a displacement of the point of application in the direction of the force. There are there components here: force, acting and displacement (movement).
In an employment context, there is effort that is like force, there is activity, the application of effort to a task, and there are results, that are like displacement.
What is missing in this analogy are the performance factors. Performance is always measured against a goal. Performance can be thought of as having several dimensions: speed, efficiency, effectiveness, endurance, capacity.
Performance considers opposing forces, be they static like an obstacle to maneuver around, or varying along one dimension or another.
Back in the employment context, what differentiates performance among individuals is often decision making. Even in mostly manual labor, decisions are an extremely important input to performance. Working at capacity leads to problems along the endurance dimension. Working at speed may introduce problems in the efficiency dimension. Working at the limit of endurance may lead to problems in the effectiveness dimension. These circumstances point toward decisions addressing pace.
As work grows in complexity, rather than simply repetitive tasks, the order of activities may be important for different reasons. Capacity may vary dramatically by activity. Activities may introduce wait times. In these cases sequencing decisions become important.
In the end what passes for skill often boils down to two basic decisions: what to do next and how fast to go.
I’m not saying that knowledge of how to do a task is not important. What I am saying is that I can train people to do a task, but most people learn to make decisions by making bad decisions. It’s easy to assess task competency in interviews, but much harder to assess decision making.
When we have team work, who on the team decides pace and sequence? When we lead individual contributors, how do we inform their decisions about pace and sequence? When we coach leaders how do we help them influence pace and sequence?