There Are Four P's in "Hodges model"

People are not very good at multitasking (surprise, surprise!).

In conversation people discuss one topic or thing at a time. If the subject alters, the change of context is indicated through a verbal redirect "There's something else...", or a gesture. When writing, paragraphs help structure our prose. If there are several tasks to perform, then it really is a case of "one at a time thank you!". Although, as the saying goes though - where there's a will, there's a way - hence the constant emphasis on EFFECTIVE team working.

Reality is of course rarely presented to us in discrete contextualised packets. Experience is not always filtered to the extent that only information relating to one context is delivered to our senses. Can you imagine the informational equivalent of the IV drip? (Virtual reality?) And yet this is what our brains are tasked with, to select, sort and prioritise....

There are exceptions:- the arrival of news about an impending birth or sudden illness or accident. Then informationally speaking the world is ordered and yet a personal chaos ensues. We move like the wind...

So usually several contexts are knotted and presented together. Predicatable consequences may follow; confusion, a task may be left incomplete, risk becomes a dance partner, although at first this passes unnoticed as we are still going with the flow. A key message becomes garbled, the meaning fails to get through.

The amount of information needed by a team is erm... well - a big number! The demand for data and information on just process and policy is monumental. Project management tools are no guarantee against satisficing. The volume of information and human fallibility can fracture discipline and has us saying "that’s far enough", or "that will do for now".

So without untying the contexts, unwrapping the complexity - key parts of the picture may be missing. Sometimes even when the picture is complete, we forget about the frame and picture hook? Just which way is 'up' if that matters a[r]t all?

In the same way that items of data can have meta-data (that is data about data), could it be that Hodges’ care domains have their own meta-terms of reference? These terms characterise each of the care domains and their respective contents. In the same way that process is integral to project management, perhaps there are terms that can contribute to the overall effectiveness and scope of Hodges’ model? What I have in mind is the following:

Purpose Process
Practice Policy

Surely this rather complicates matters? For an artist this would actually prove a very limited palette. And yet this is a common strategy – reduce the palette to four colours. This greatly affects the 'masterpiece' assuring discipline and influencing style before the paint is even amb(r)ushed.

For project managers armed with their PM tools the 4Ps really are a handful, but well worth getting to grips with.