Im involved in the deployment of a capability model that two collegues have constructed  for use in a strategic process. It is just exploratory at the moment, but it looks as though it will be well received.

The exercise is raising some interesting modelling questions regarding how a capability should be conceptualised.,

 

by convention it is a combination of people, processes and technology – but the meaning of combination in this context is vague.

Capability is something that someone has. it indicates whether they are able to do something or not.

 

to think of capabilities independent of such persons is like thinking about red, without also thinking of some red thing. or even the class of all red things.

the outcome of this is for a capability to be effectively  a sort of property that will be predicated of a concrete entity like a business unit, a faculty or school for example.

we can talk about “capability”, but is like talking about “colour”

talking about the ability to manage curriculum is like talking about red which is a colour.

even below this level it is possible to talk about a colour having components RGB or hue, tone, and intensity.

 

So there are several levels

• Level 2 – Colour – universal – Capability
• Level 1 – Red – determinable – curriculum management ( see Armstrong, state of affairs )
• Level 0 – this [Red] car – instance – faculty of Arts capability to mange curriculum
• Level 0.5 – Red = RGB( 100,0,0)  – the processes, people and technology that make up this capability.

 

This is basically factor analysis

components are

•  R__
• _G_
• __B

each of which is assigned a value from  0-255  ( 1 byte )  ( or is this the level of determinables ??)

• the product of these three components is a colour. any colour can be factored into these 3 components
• any two colours that yield the same values when so factored are the same colour.
• two distinct colours will differ in at least on factor

 

in the concrete sense, we talk about whether a business unit has a capability to X or not. and we talk about whether a particular tree is of a particular shade ( eg. the same as a particular bush )

the conceptual domain must accommodate all these discursive phases.

 

The component level helps explain

• why a particular colour differs from another – more intense, lighter hue…
• It also lets us derive operational imperatives, make the shed a bit darker, the walls need to be painted with a bluer blue….

 

I will explore this further over the next few weeks.