A persons capacity is equal to the persons effort and his/her capability. This does make sense right? I don’t know how much science there is behind this statement, but in some way it make sense right?
Capacity is the persons range and effectiveness when performing some kind of work.
Effort is the energy you need to put in to accomplish a task.
Capability is the persons knowledge, experience, and skill for the particular task.
So this is a context-sensitive approach, different effort and capability is required depending on which context you are in. For example, digging a hole in the ground will require you to select the correct shovel and how to dig a hole without breaking your back. This could be your capability: your knowledge about shovels, and maybe how to dig correctly. Your effort will then be your strength. If you don’t have good digging technique you will have to be stronger then if you had one. Hence, high capability will require low effort, and low capability will require a higher effort. In this context strength is a parameter.
An other example is solving a math problem. Without proper education you might need to think harder, probe more, and that will require a higher effort than if you had the proper education. It is not that you will fail, or even take longer time, it is just that you will have to put in more effort, more energy into your work.
Now, it would be easy to say that well, high effort sounds tough… so the solution must be to increase capability. Well, I would say that one affects the other. Capability is not just given to you. Capability is what you get while practicing… that is trying, failing, and trying again which will probably require a high effort. Hopefully, however, you will learn something which will lower your effort after a while. Taking a class, or watching a video clip to learn something is a very good start. But it is not until you have tried it out for real, actually using your newly gained knowledge that you will increase your capability. So your effort learning will feed back and increase your capability. This is the empirists approach, not the rationalists 🙂
This is why you need to educate your developers, let them go to conferences, maybe provide continuous learning through O’Reilly or LinkedIn Learning, these are all good tools for continuous learning. Then let them practice this continuously to not only learn but also practice and hence increase their capacity. Don’t wait for them to ask for this, just give them an account and give them time to study. It is almost like companies forgets about this. Many of their employees have been studying for 3+ years to get a degree, and that knowledge is old by the time they get their first job (well, I might be a little hard but… almost), what do have learned, and are used to, is effective studies. So let them keep learning, I bet you won’t regret it.