Module 3 · Lesson 3.2
Reading the profile
Why no organisation sits at one stage, and how to read the mix instead.
Key idea
The stages describe habits at individual interfaces. Build a profile of the mix, then compare it with what each interface carries.
In this lesson
- Habits, not a score
- Harbourline’s profile along one value stream
- Finding the gap worth closing
- Reading a profile in your own organisation
Habits, not a score
The six stages describe habits: the default, routine way people and teams work together across an interface. They are not a score for a single meeting or a single handoff.
Any one meeting can go well or badly. A team at C1 on an interface can have a good week, and a team at C5 can have a bad one. What the stages capture is what happens normally, week after week, when nobody is making a special effort.
That is why it makes no sense to label a whole organisation with one stage. No organisation sits at a single point on the continuum, and none should. Real work is a mixture of all six kinds of interaction, happening at once, across different relationships, matched to what each one needs.
The profile
Harbourline · the project-to-service value stream
The useful move is to build a profile: the mix of stages across the interfaces in a team, a function, a value stream or a whole organisation. Then compare that mix with what those interfaces actually need.
Harbourline’s canvas worked example shows one profile. It follows the interfaces along the project-to-service value stream, from winning a project to running it as a steady service.
| Interface | What it carries | How it works today |
|---|---|---|
| Bids and Proposals to the Kraków Salesforce practice | Service levels promised to the client | Governed by an agreed definition, “Delivery sign-off”, with an owner and a test |
| Salesforce practice to Service Transition | The service design for each new client service | Governed by an agreed definition, “Service design ready for transition” |
| Service Transition to the Pune Service Desk | Run-books for each new service | Governed by an agreed definition, “Run-book ready for go-live”, signed off by the Service Desk |
| Salesforce practice to the Pune Service Desk | Release notes and configuration changes | One-sided: the Service Desk lists it as an input; the Salesforce practice doesn’t list it as a Deliverable |
Three interfaces have been deliberately designed. One hasn’t. Neither fact alone says whether Harbourline is doing well. The question is whether each interface’s level of structure matches what it carries.
Try it
Find the gap worth closing
For each interface in Harbourline’s profile, decide whether its structure matches what it carries. Then check.
Bids and Proposals to the Kraków Salesforce practice: service levels promised to the client, governed by “Delivery sign-off”.
Salesforce practice to Service Transition: the service design for each new client service, governed by “Service design ready for transition”.
Service Transition to the Pune Service Desk: run-books for each new service, signed off by the Service Desk.
Salesforce practice to the Pune Service Desk: release notes and configuration changes. The Service Desk lists it as an input; Kraków doesn’t list it as a deliverable.
The gap worth closing
The gap that matters is not the distance to C6. It is the gap between the current mix and a mix that matches investment to importance: enough structure where an interface is important and recurring, and no more than that where it isn’t.
In Harbourline’s profile, the release-notes interface stands out. It is important, because every failure lands on Northlight Financial’s 3,000 service-desk users, and it recurs with every release. Yet it still runs as simple, unreliable communication. That is where the next piece of effort belongs, not on making the three designed interfaces even more elaborate.
Reading a profile in your own organisation
- Pick a scope: one team, a function, or a value stream from start to finish.
- List the interfaces in it, both the ones your team depends on and the ones that depend on your team.
- For each, describe how it habitually works today, not how it worked on its best day.
- Mark which interfaces are important and recurring.
- Look for the mismatches: important, recurring interfaces running on goodwill, and trivial ones carrying more structure than they need.
The next lesson names those two mismatches.
Pause and think · your notes
Sketch a profile for one part of your own organisation.
How Alex would answer
Describe how each interface works in an ordinary week. Most people find one or two important interfaces running on goodwill; those are where effort pays back first.
What to take away
- No organisation sits at one stage, and none should.
- Build a profile: the mix of stages across the interfaces in a scope.
- Close the gap between structure and need, not the distance to C6.
Your progress
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