Actually, I’m re-gifting a valuable insight from former Intel CEO Andy Grove and, in reality, it’s more of a gift for you.

In his book, High Output Management, Grove discusses at length Task Relevant Maturity. Understanding it well and applying it successfully can drastically improve outputs and can free you from the polar opposites of neglect and micro-management.

Task Relevant Maturity (TRM) is the match between a person and a particular task, not how strong they are “in general.” Your guidance to them on day-to-day responsibilities and especially on special assignments must be driven by TRM.

Three things drive TRM –

• Competence – The employee’s knowledge, skills, and prior success on similar work.
• Experience – The number of times they have actually done it including dealing with trickier edge cases.
• Commitment – The willingness, energy, and ownership they bring for this specific work.

How closely you direct and monitor someone should depend on their TRM for that task. As performance improves, you should relinquish more control and lessen the amount of detailed direction.

Typically, it should look like this –

• With Low TRM the supervision should be very structured – you define what you want, the timeline, and the specific actions required to complete the task. This should be accompanied by frequent check‑ins.
• With Medium TRM it should look more like coaching than supervision. Planning the task should look like joint problem solving. There should be less step‑by‑step direction. There should be regular check-ins.
• With High TRM you should be largely hands‑off. At the outset, you should align on outcomes, objectives and metrics. Then monitor results rather than methods.

Dan Pink’s 2009 book, Drive, dips into the social sciences to tell us what people want from work. Here’s the short answer – Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose, Well executed TRM delivers two of those. Autonomy – the ability to control what we do, how we do it, when we do it, and who we do it with – is at the heart of TRM. By knowing team members well, we are able to expertly mete out the right level of autonomy. Ideally, the right level of autonomy on a task pushes the team member just past their current skill level. The task should be hard, causing them to grow, but not too hard causing them to fail. Regular task check-ins gauge the accuracy of the autonomy given. Mastery – getting better at a task knowing we can never fully master it – is the end game of TRM. We want team members to keep improving their TRM in a variety of skills that are important to them and important to our organization. The coaching and joint problem solving involved in completing a task equips the team member for the next more complex role or task.

One situation merits a special mention. It’s near and dear to me because it describes my formative years in business. What to you do with the high performer with Low TRM? I spent a number of years early in my career volunteering for the tasks no one else wanted to do and shortly afterward being volunteered for all the tasks no one else wanted to do. In some of those circumstances, we were plowing new ground so the only direction I had was the final objective – much like you’d do for someone with High TRM. Here’s the takeaway – Your coaching on the task should mirror the amount of risk you’re willing to bear while the team member figures it out on the fly. In my case, my bosses were very open to letting me learn by doing and if the task took slightly longer or was less than perfect, that was OK. In the end, the job was done and I had new skills and experiences. It was an investment in the long-term health of the organization because I was able to turn around and share my newly-minted skills with others in the organization.

TRM will transform your relationship with your direct reports because your direction to them will become more focused. They’ll feel more empowered as you mete out the appropriate level of autonomy for tasks. Getting your direct reports to teach TRM to your line managers will supercharge growth in your organization as team members throughout the organization are stretched towards new levels of skill and competence.