Reading series
The Five Areas Series
How teams are actually evaluated: intellect, personality, motivation, behavior, and experience as one chain, from the weakest-area ceiling to what AI can and cannot rent.
6 posts, written to be read in order. Each part stands alone if you arrive mid-series.
- Part 1 of 6
Teams Ship at Their Weakest Area, Not Their Average
A leadership team scores itself across five areas, averages the numbers, and plans against a score it will never ship at. Initiatives run through all five areas in series, and a chain delivers at its minimum.
- Part 2 of 6
Strengths Strategy Is Career Advice. Teams Train Weaknesses.
Every review season says amplify your strengths. Correct for a career, wrong for a team. Teams execute as a chain, and the return on training lives at the weakest link.
- Part 3 of 6
Ten Years Is Not Ten Years of Experience
Two builders both claim ten years. One leaves behind systems that run without them. The other has one year of instincts, repeated ten times. The difference is a conversion rate.
- Part 4 of 6
A Demotivated Quarter Looks Like a Capability Problem
A team's problem-solving scores collapse in review, and leadership books training. Nothing about the people changed. Two leads disengaged after a reorg. The dip was load, not capacity.
- Part 5 of 6
Two of the Five Areas Leave Artifacts
Self-assessments of intellect, resilience, and drive drift upward, because people perform for questionnaires. Behavior and experience leave evidence that cannot flatter itself. Start the audit there.
- Part 6 of 6
When Intellect Rents by the Hour
Three of the five areas a team is judged on now have machine equivalents available by subscription. The evaluation weight shifts to the two that never measured well: resilience and drive.