The Involvement x Affinity Matrix

This is the third and most useful article in the series about the Involvement x Affinity framework I developed for a coaching client. It might be useful to others beyond that one client.

The first installment was about Involvement Levels, or OSCDaB.¹ How much “skin in the game” each person has.

The second installment was about Affinity. How much someone enjoys the work.²

Each individually is a helpful model.

Combining the model is even more helpful. The combined model will let you make predictions about the energy, enthusiasm, sustainability, and potential personnel risks of a project.³

For lack of a better name, I’ve called the combination The Involvement x Affinity Matrix.

A Quick Recap

If you have not read the posts about Involvement Levels and Affinity, this section will catch you up.

Involvement gauges how much “skin in the game” someone has—time, risk, responsibility, and investment. There are five Involvement Levels:

• Owner – Ultimately responsible for the project. Final decision-maker.
• Steward – Acts on behalf of the owner. Drives the project, makes delegated decisions.
• Cog – Carries out the work. Executes, solves problems, delivers. Core contributor / worker bee.
• Dabbler – Lightly or occasionally involved. Pops in when needed.
• Bystander – Not involved. May observe, or may stay unaware.

Affinity measures how much someone likes the work, with a hint of skill. There are four Affinity Levels:

• Embrace – They enjoy and are energized by the work. They would choose to do it.
• Accept – They don’t mind it. Not (usually) exciting, but not (usually) draining.
• Endure – They don’t like it. Tolerable in the short-term, but wears them down over time.
• Avoid – They actively dislike doing this work, even if they are very good at it.

The Short Summary

Put involvement on one axis and affinity on the other.

Then figure out where each individual falls in the matrix.

Some combinations of involvement and affinity lead to energy, engagement, enthusiasm—and speedy, sustainable results.⁴

Some combinations lead to a project feeling like you’ve been assigned to hand-carry the Taj Mahal to the top of Everest and reassemble it. It takes constant infusions of external energy to keep the project from stalling out.

The Model

The table below puts involvement on the vertical axis and affinity on the horizontal axis. The cells are color-coded with emoji color squares to show whether a combination is good, bad, okay, or ambiguous.

⬇️ Involvement / Affinity ➡️	Embrace	Accept	Endure	Avoid
Owner	🟩 Healthy & Positive	🟨 Okay	🟥 Warning!	🟥 Warning!
Steward	🟩 Healthy & Positive	🟩 Healthy & Positive	🟨 Okay	🟥 Warning!
Cog	🟩 Healthy & Positive	🟩 Healthy & Positive	🟨 Okay	🟥 Warning!
Dabbler	🟦 Context-Dependent	🟨 Okay	🟦 Context-Dependent	🟦 Context-Dependent
Bystander	🟦 Context-Dependent	🟨 Okay	🟩 Healthy & Positive	🟩 Healthy & Positive

• 🟩 A healthy, positive combination.
• 🟨 A combination that is usually okay, but certainly not ideal.
• 🟦 A combination that could be neutral to bad depending on context.
• 🟥 A problematic, harmful, and risky combination.

The next four subsections break down all the individual combinations. If you prefer, you’re safe to skip ahead to how you might apply the model.

Good Combinations

These combinations are extremely healthy, making for nearly-ideal combinations of involvement and affinity. This is a good match of person to work.

• Owner x Embrace
• Steward x Embrace
• Steward x Accept
• Cog x Embrace
• Cog x Accept
• Bystander x Endure
• Bystander x Avoid

For the sake of brevity, I’ll assume these all make sense. They are the combinations with high involvement and high affinity, and the combinations with the lowest involvement and lowest affinity.

Bad Combinations

These combinations are a strong mismatch between involvement and affinity. They’re risky and potentially harmful beyond just this one project or task.

• Owner x Endure
• Owner x Avoid
• Steward x Avoid
• Cog x Avoid

Like the good combinations, these probably make intuitive sense: high involvement plus low affinity is going to lead to frustration.

The frustration comes from at least two sources.

First, the frustration may come from the individual burning out because they are spending time on something they actively dislike. It’s draining.

Second, the frustration may come from the rest of the organization as they suffer slowdowns to their work, due to neglect from the individual matching these combinations. Slow response times, incomplete answers, and a general lack of interest take their toll. This is a more subtle source of frustration, but spreads more widely than the first.

Okay Combinations

These are combinations that are not exactly ideal, but they’re typically sustainable. These are not bad combinations, though you should improve them if you have the chance.

• Owner x Accept – Not quite as ideal as Owner x Embrace, but not likely to avoid the project. Well, unless they have a lot of Embrace work to hide behind. (If an Owner starts hiding from the project, especially if the project also has a low-affinity Steward, the project will have trouble.)
• Steward x Endure – A Steward can slog through their work, especially if they have an engaged Owner to work with. This one is borderline, though!
• Cog x Endure – Sometimes, Cogs don’t like the work. If they can endure it, if it’s for a limited time, and if they are supported, this combination is survivable.
• Dabbler x Accept – This one is borderline good. They’re only occasionally needed, and they’re fine with the work.⁵
• Bystander x Accept – This one is also borderline good, though if they have mostly Avoid or Endure work, they might resent not being able to work on something they would Accept.

Not surprisingly, these combinations involve affinity levels of Accept or Endure. It’s not anyone’s favorite, but it’s fine.

Ambiguous Combinations

These are combinations where the goodness or badness is heavily context-dependent.

• Dabbler x Embrace – this combination is someone who really likes the work, but is not strongly involved.
  • If they’re doing other work they really like, it’s not a problem.
  • If their very occasional involvement in this project is the one thing about work they like, you’ve got a potential problem on your hands. It probably won’t be a problem for this project, but it’ll be a problem for this person’s morale and satisfaction.⁶
• Dabbler x Endure – this combination is someone that’s (reluctantly) willing to do with the work and isn’t strongly involved.
  • If they understand the need and their involvement stays limited, it’ll probably be just fine.
  • If they keep getting pulled more into the project, especially to the detriment of work they prefer, this will lead to morale issues, potential resentment, and possibly slower delivery of their work for the project.
• Dabbler x Avoid – this combination is someone that does not want to do this work, and is only slightly involved.
  • Best case is they are an occasional resource and can step away quickly after being consulted, and there’s someone being trained up to handle their role on this project.
  • The more likely case is you’ll have trouble getting their time or their work, and other things will keep popping up that keep them from spending time on this project.
• Bystander x Embrace – this combination is a more polarized version of Dabbler x Embrace, with exactly the same considerations as that first bullet.

Lessons, Insight, and Application

There are twenty combinations of involvement and affinity. Some are good and healthy. Some are bad. For some, it depends. Now what’s the good of this?⁷

Here are a few basic lessons.

• If someone Embraces a task or a project, they’re a good candidate to have work on it.
• If someone would prefer to Avoid a task or project, it is probably better to not have them on it.
• If you can’t staff a project entirely with Embrace, look for the highest level of affinity you can find.
• Affinity level is most critical for the Owner.

As simple as those are, they’re worth thinking about when staffing a project. It’s very common for availability and skills to be the only staffing consideration—so even these basic lessons might make you above-average at assembling a project team.

Here are a few deeper lessons.

• There’s risk in the lower left corner of the matrix: Dabbler x Embrace and Bystander x Embrace. That risk comes from sidelining someone who is interested, who likes the work, and who may have relevant skills. There may be good reasons to do so, and not all risks can be avoided. But it’s a factor to weigh.
• Beyond the idea that availability and skills are often the primary consideration for a role, I believe many leaders do not know what their people have Affinity for. And some percentage of those who do know don’t care. They’ll say “that’s what they get paid for” or “if you liked everything about your job, I wouldn’t have to pay you!”⁸ Note that knowing and considering doesn’t mean your decisions must be dictated by Affinity levels. But maybe it affects how you manage someone, especially when they have to do Avoid or Endure work.

It’s worth taking a few minutes to map out Involvement x Affinity for a project before it’s staffed, to avoid issues later on. Put names in the cells, and work through any context-dependent situations. If you don’t gain any insight, I want to hear about it, and why!

But there are other ways to use this framework, even after a project has started.⁹

Practical Application

Here is a brief, specific recommendation for applying this framework practically.

Imagine you have a project that is somehow not going swimmingly.¹⁰ Maybe it’s completely stuck. Maybe it’s moving, but not as fast as you want. Maybe deadlines are being hit, but it’s just an energy drain for everyone involved. Perhaps some quality issues have cropped up. Use your imagination.¹¹

Map out the project using Involvement x Affinity. To do so, draw the matrix on a whiteboard or throw a table in a Google doc. Put everyone’s names in the correct cell.

(Tip: Start by (1) listing all the names off to the side. Then (2) figure out what Involvement level each name is at. Then (3) figure out each person’s affinity, which finally lets you (4) write their name in a cell. It takes a bit more writing, but it can be easier overall because you’re keeping less in your head at once.)

Now look to see where combinations are red, or if most folks are in Endure or Avoid. I would bet you’ll find most projects that are having trouble will have at least one issue that shows up clearly on the matrix. Some examples:

• It could turn out you discover ownership or leadership are missing. Your diagnosis is you don’t have an Owner or Steward. The fix is to find one.
• It could turn out everyone on the project is annoyed, because everyone wants to Avoid the project. If the most enthusiastic person only Endures the project, well, that’s your problem right there.

If no issues pop out immediately, double-check your initial Affinity responses. Did you list Programmer Pat as Embrace because Programmer Pat likes programming? Does the project involve a kind of programming Pat likes—or dislikes?¹² (Maybe Pat dislikes front-end programming, and this is a front-end project?) Is the project outcome something Pat has affinity for? (Maybe Pat is all about the environment, and this project is all about dunking baby polar bears in crude oil?)¹³ For a bit more guidance, see the Overthinking It section in the Affinity Levels post.

After generating insight into potential causes of project issues, think of ways to solve them. Then—and this is the critical part, even though it’s not really part of this framework—then solve them.

Individual Application

This framework can also be applied to an individual’s work, by breaking down the parts of it. Take a manager, for example. Some of their responsibilities:

• Manage people
• Run projects
• Support projects they’re not running
• Track and report business metrics

Let’s assume Manager Mike’s burning out. Work has become something he doesn’t like anymore. But why? He still likes his team, a lot. There are still projects to run, and he likes the people in other parts of the business. And sure, he has to do his reports. Always has.

If we look back a year, we might find that Manager Mike used to spend a lot more time, say, supporting projects he’s not running. Now he’s running both of his team’s projects. That means he’s spending more of his time tracking and reporting business metrics.

And if Run Projects is Endure work for Mike, and Track and Report Business Metrics is Avoid work, we can see the problem pretty easily.

For a visual, use dots or stars in the matrix to indicate the percentage of work in each.

For Mike, 10% of his work used to be Avoid, 10% Endure, and the rest was Accept or Embrace.

But with the changes in projects and the work coming into his department, he’s at 20% Avoid and 40% Endure. Yikes!

Or, in a slightly different version of this scenario, you might notice that Mike is really handling certain levels of involvement, but not others. For example, maybe he’s good at supporting other projects (he likes Dabbler or Cog work), but Owner work burns him out.

It’s a contrived example, but it moves out of the abstract bullet list, and into a more concrete picture of what an individual’s work is and how they relate to it.

Wrapping Up

This framework uses the level of involvement (skin in the game) and affinity (liking) a person has to make predictions about, or diagnose problems with, a project.

The major insight is that combining two different scales can bring clarity that a single scale can’t. So don’t take Involvement and Affinity as the only axes that can be combined. There might be situations that are most clarified by Involvement x Competence, or Competence x Affinity, or Time x Involvement.

The Involvement x Affinity framework is a potentially-useful thinking tool for diagnosing and solving organizational issues. It’s worth a try if something feels like it’s not going as well as it could.

Thanks to Carter Baxter for feedback on an earlier draft of this article!

---

Are things not going as well as they should? Want an outside perspective? I offer coaching to help you solve organizational or individual issues. Book an intro session, and we’ll dig in.

1. Owner, Steward, Cog, Dabbler, Bystander. [↩]
2. There’s an aspect of skill involved. Read the original post for the extended-play discussion. [↩]
3. Or task, or assigned responsibility, etc. [↩]
4. The alliteration in that sentence was entirely accidental. [↩]
5. This one truly could go either way: green/healthy or yellow/okay. [↩]
6. Here’s one way it might be a problem for the project: if they want to be more involved, and their increasing presence becomes disruptive. Perhaps edging out Cog or Steward folks, or perhaps their manager starts having long “just to level-set on their involvement” conversations with the Owner or Steward. [↩]
7. After all, frameworks for the sake of having a framework is a waste of time and energy. [↩]
8. Ha! That’s funny! Just like when your box of Cheerios won’t scan and you tell the cashier “must be free today!” Yes, everyone thinks you’re original and clever…wait, no. Seriously, this comes across as an unwillingness to listen to your people. Over the long term, deflecting with trite catchphrases will lead to your people telling you less—so you’ll have a harder time gaining situational awareness. All because the conversation about affinity and preferences was difficult. [↩]
9. or a task has been assigned, or a responsibility has been delegated… [↩]
10. I’ve heard those exist. [↩]
11. Or your memory. [↩]
12. Programmer Pat prefers programming, particularly Python, on proactive programming projects! [↩]
13. Earlier this summer, my son and several friends cut holes in garbage bags, put them on like vests, slathered themselves in dish soap, and threw themselves down the grassy neighborhood sledding hill. Aside from a lot of scrapes, they had a great time. I think the visual of dunking in oil reminded me of this, or maybe it’s that dish soap is used to clean oil-slicked birds. [↩]