Getting people into a capability they do not yet have, and keeping the managers above them capable of holding it.
Tandem Care, home care services
A 12-day, competency-gated onboarding program: new coordinators earned a caseload by passing three review gates, not by putting in time.
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Most new coordinators went solo by day 12. Anyone who didn't pass one of the three review gates kept training until they did.
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Tandem Care
Moved frontline managers from directing to coaching, and trained them to run it themselves. The full program, including how I checked whether managers actually coached, has its own page: Work Sample: How Do You Know Managers Are Actually Coaching?
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Once the manager layer existed, escalations reaching me dropped from 3 to 5 a week to at most one, and most weeks none.
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Federal teacher residency grant, CSUDH with Green Dot Public Schools
Ran the training side of a residency shared by a university and a school network, and held both to a standard neither one owned.
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Escalations changed placements, rather than just documenting concerns.
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The university trained and certified residents; the school network employed them and supplied their mentors. The two sides had different incentives, and the resident absorbed the difference.
| Failure mode | What it looked like |
|---|---|
| Under-delegation | Residents observed instead of practicing |
| Over-delegation | A mentor got pulled away, and the resident taught solo with no supervision |