Evidence · Readiness
What practice can tell us about readiness
A practice record can support a specific decision about responsibility. It cannot turn one performance into a verdict about a person.
Mike Vaughan · April 13, 2025 · 2 min read · updated September 26, 2026
Someone completes a simulation with a strong result. Is that person ready to lead the next initiative?
Before answering, ask a smaller question: what did the simulation give them an opportunity to demonstrate?
A budget exercise may reveal how they compare financial trade-offs. It may tell us very little about how they negotiate a disagreement, notice a safety concern, or respond when a sponsor changes the goal. The label “leadership simulation” does not fill those gaps.
Start with the responsibility
“Ready to lead” is too broad. “Ready to lead a small rollout with an experienced sponsor available for escalation” gives the evidence a job.
List the decisions that responsibility includes. Identify the constraints, the people affected, and the consequences of getting it wrong. Then examine whether the practice situation gives the person a fair opportunity to demonstrate the relevant behavior.
Keep the record close to the work
In an illustrative rollout exercise, a useful record might say:
After seeing that the pilot excluded legacy customers, the participant proposed a restricted release and asked for a separate support plan. They explained which customers would be included and named a review date.
That is more useful than “high systems thinking.” It lets another person inspect the basis of the interpretation.
Record the help available too. Did a facilitator point out the missing group? Did a teammate make the recommendation? Did the participant receive a worked example immediately beforehand? Assisted work can still be valuable; describing the assistance prevents an unsupported claim of independence.
Give the person something they can use
The individual should receive the observation, a chance to explain context, and a specific next practice. They may see something the evaluator missed.
For example: “You identified the coverage gap. Next, practice negotiating the restricted rollout with a sponsor who opposes delay.” That feedback identifies a boundary without reducing the person to a score.
Keep organizational conclusions bounded
A reasonable conclusion might be: “This exercise supports further supervised practice on rollout planning. Stakeholder negotiation and repeated performance have not yet been observed.”
Readiness for consequential work calls for relevant evidence across more than one occasion, clear criteria, and human review. A public website exercise cannot provide that determination.
Also distinguish an absence of evidence from evidence of an absence. If the task never created a reason to challenge a stakeholder, it cannot establish that the participant lacks that ability.
Improve the evidence design
Ask two observers to examine the same sample. If they disagree, look at the criteria and task before treating the disagreement as a property of the learner. Specify what the behavior would look like, what alternative explanations exist, and what observation could resolve the uncertainty.
Take this into a readiness discussion: “What responsibility does this evidence support, under what conditions, and what have we still not seen?”
Build an evidence plan before designing the next assessment.
Concepts in this piece
- The knowing-doing gap · The distance between explaining an approach and using it when the task becomes difficult.
Bring a real problem
What does your learning need to change?
A role people are struggling with. A decision that keeps going wrong. A capability you need to see before giving someone more responsibility. Start there.