“Document control” means different things to different people. Four activities in professional businesses can be labelled as “document control”; each is a unique problem needing bespoke solutions.

• Document transmittals: the inwards to, and outwards from, the business must be controlled, particularly in case of a dispute about which is the most recent.

• Versions of internal documents: while being developed internally, document versions need to be controlled.

• Storage of records: a finished document should be findable.

• Communications and newsletters: the content of these may need referencing, but often aren’t specifically controlled.

The best approach to control documents is by repeatable processes.

General management and business acumen training courses are widely available and offered in many different contexts. Technical training is more specialised, has a smaller audience, and is less profitable.

Management and business acumen courses do not train technical workers in the skills needed to interpret specifications, use judgement when technical information is incomplete, or application of a technical theory to arrive at practical solutions.

These judgement skills for technical topics are difficult to teach, especially to workers who are years into their career. Also, it is difficult to measure the knowledge achieved in the classroom. Experience is a better teacher.

Routine, repetitive, systemised work in the future will be replaced by some form of ‘robot’, or artificial intelligence. The workers of the future will thrive on the non-routine work, that which cannot be easily programmed. Our approach to education, training, development, and competency will turn towards targeting skills that non-routine work requires – skills that are deep and technical, as well as soft and social. Work that requires deep analytical thought combined with empathy and emotional intelligence is very difficult to automate. Creativity, teamwork, human interaction and shared experiences are a long way from going the way of the robots.

In organisations with knowledge workers, there can be tension amongst a worker’s position description, their role title, and what they actually spend their time on.

In an investigation into determining competence, it is observable how awkward it gets when the conversation turns to explore what a worker actually does during the day. It inevitably seems to boil down to meetings and emails. Perhaps this is not the best use of a credentialed technical worker’s time. Unless, of course, those emails discuss complex technical issues, and those meetings solve deep and complicated design problems. Then that time spent is very useful.

There is a continuum for what we manage, between time and mind/energy, and another continuum for focus, between outcomes and procedures. As a 4x4 grid, the vertical access runs from outcomes at the bottom to procedures at the top. The horizontal axis covers time on the left, and mind/energy on the right.

The four quadrants of behaviour are: transactional (time + outcomes), entrepreneurial (outcomes + mind), functional (time + procedures) and inspirational (mind + procedures).

In this model, we can see that time is – or should be - spent in each quadrant at different times depending on mood or circumstances.

Experience underpins credibility. Of all the inputs into competence, or credibility, such as knowledge, skills, attitude, personality, or experience – experience is the one that is hardest to fake. It is also the one that relies on other humans for verification. It’s like if a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? If you gain experience, but no one knows about it, does it matter?

Every test of someone’s competence includes input of experience. It’s a rare interview that does not delve into someone’s past in order to verify abilities.

Looking for, or wanting to be, an expert in a topic takes a different effort than looking for, or wanting to be, someone who is able to do a broad range of work in a field.

As careers are developing, it’s wise to pursue broad ranges of experiences, do wide ranging training courses, and read a wide range of publications. There comes a time, though, when breadth or depth of knowledge should be considered. Sometimes those decisions are more obvious than it may seem. Natural tendencies to depth or breadth are a good indication of where future success will be.

Participating in conversations that are built around the “when-we’s” is informative but not always helpful.

“When we did this before….”,

“When I was in a role like that…”,

The way things are done in a business or an industry change and improve over time, rightly or wrongly, for the better and not always for the better. But they do progress. Don’t make that wrong. It just is.

Lamenting on the past may feel good, but it does not make the younger people who are part of the conversation feel like they are contributing or improving.

Be aware of the ‘whenwes’.

Many technical solutions are guided or directed by national technical standards. There are two types of approaches to standardisation: prescriptive or performance-based. Prescriptive standards give specific direction as to how a technical solution must be arrived at, like a cookbook recipe. There is very little room for innovation. The other type is performance-based, where requirements are stated for outcomes or results, without specifying how the user should arrive there. This approach relies heavily on the competence and sound judgement of the user. Controversially, it’s possible that the next generation doesn’t have the technical background to appropriately apply performance-based standards.

Engineering work is not management work. Managerial work emphasises organisational goals, resolving conflicts, planning and control. Engineering work is the application of theories, problem-solving and technically creative thought.

Upon graduation, engineers now expect to be provided with exciting, fulfilling and satisfying roles immediately. Before this ‘instant gratification’, there was an expectation that an engineer’s first few years would be spent on the drawing board.

What has been lost in all the enthusiasm for immediately fulfilling roles, is that in doing the menial work (before technology took that over), much knowledge and understanding accumulated. That ‘menial’ work built real-world foundational knowledge.

An effective method for dealing with change, is at the project kick-off meeting, to loudly and clearly declare:

“There shall be no change!”

While this declaration is patently incorrect and impossible to abide by, it sets the position. There will surely be a considered approach to any change if the declaration is made that there shall be none. This also requires a particularly clear scope, budget, and schedule. Without a baseline scope, budget and schedule, it’s impossible to know if something has changed.

Recognising change also requires recognition of the difference between situational change (day-to-day) and project change (scope/budget/schedule).

When work is tough, or it doesn’t feel like any progress is being made, try this:

Do something each day that makes you proud.

It can be as simple as fixing a spreadsheet, getting in a key workout, or sorting out some files. But it is essential that in completing the task, you sit back and can honestly say you feel proud about doing it. It doesn’t count if the task is done because someone else wanted you to do it. It must be something you want to do, that you enjoy, and brings you the unmistakable feeling of pride.

Going through a job interview, seeking a promotion, or applying for a credential like professional engineer or chartered accountant, inevitably requires the seeker to demonstrate competence. Some competence is tangible – take a test, demonstrate a skill. Some is not – experience, and behaviours. The difficulties of assessing experience are obvious: what constitutes evidence of competence, and against what criteria. Evidence of competence tends to be provided via stories and recollections by the interviewee of past behaviour in various situations. The criteria are inevitably contaminated by the interviewer’s past, their knowledge, and, frankly whether they like – or respect- the interviewee or not.

In the knowledge worker environment, competency is evaluated by outputs, interactions, and stories. We are judged by how we behave and how we handle difficult situations or people. Those are interactions, and the resulting stories build a reputation. But most importantly, we are judged by what we write.

Consider an expert in a field, and inevitably that person will have a body of work, in a form of a book or a blog or, in the corporate environment, a long email chain somewhere along the way.

In the knowledge work environment, the best way to be seen is to write.

A “skilled engineer” brings to mind someone who is good at technical design or drawing, focussed on detail, and someone who delivers elegant technical solutions. Ideally this skilled engineer also communicates well, writes reports and meets deadlines. Focussing on development of these non-technical skills as an engineering requirement, while beneficial, may be producing engineering generalists who are adept at communication, and dealing with people, but who might not be so good at technical calculations, creative problem solving, or tasks requiring repetition or focus on details. A complex society will always need scientific and technical knowledge to be tested and stretched.

Experience is a key ingredient in determining competence. There is a “70/20/10” model that describes a view on optimal sources and weighted proportions of workplace learning. Looking at it in reverse, the lowest proportion of learning comes from formal instruction, at 10%. It is well known that training occurs at a moment in time. Next is feedback, interactions and relationships, which accounts for 20% of a person’s learning. This makes sense; feedback is essential to learning. The big one, 70%, is the experiences faced in the workplace, particularly the challenging and memorable ones. Gain experience by doing the work.

If competence is a combination of knowledge, skills and experience, then the opposite - incompetence – means being inexperienced, unskilled, and/or uninformed.

Looking at competence from the opposite side provides an alternative perspective.

If the knowledge is needed, there are books or courses or Google rabbit-holes to explore. If skills are needed, repetitive action on a task will develop that. But the one of most interest, and deep down for humans, what is truly looked for when looking for competence, is experience. Experience is crucial for demonstrable competence. The nominated experience need not be exactly the same but must be relatable.

Ray Dalio tells us in his book that “Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundation for behaviour that gets you what you want out of life.”

A good set of principles is like a good collection of recipes, for success. Having good governance systems – a system of checks and balances for ourselves will show us to be stronger and more reliable. Learning is a product of a continuous real-time feedback loop in which we make decisions, see the outcome, and improve our understanding of reality.

These can be built into principles that guide decision making in the future.

Underutilised in the business context is the use of consequences when a process isn’t followed, or a document isn’t read. Meeting requirements on a project or in business relies on, or assumes, that a business document or process is part of achieving those requirements. And yet, particularly in dysfunctional businesses or projects, the number of documents or processes that are not followed is often “most of them”. There are no consequences for not reading the document or not following the procedure. Hurdles requiring evidence of usage will quickly identify which procedures or documents are, actually, not useful after all.

In the construction workspace, safety inductions for the workers are legislated, expected, tolerated, and, simply, done. You wouldn’t (can’t) start a construction project without an induction.

Besides being legally required, and also potentially tedious and repetitive, there are still benefits to safety inductions: they can set behaviour expectations and introduce site-specific hazard identification.

For office-based knowledge workers, perhaps there is an opportunity for an induction approach to quality of work. A “permit to work” system for those who produce the pictures and words. A “knowledge induction” that presents design knowledge expectations and description of a project or company-specific technical hazards.