Levels of Abstraction

“Everything finds its level” is an old adage and while not actually true, is nevertheless a useful proposition.

The best performers in life and in organizations are those operating at their natural level of abstraction. Unfortunately most people and most organizations have no idea what this means, so let’s take a look at some examples.

More than two decades ago I was working for a large database company as part of a group that was supposed to be helping chart the company’s future strategy. One of my colleagues was tasked with participating in the SQL standards group. Ideally he’d have been thinking about how each proposed addition or alteration to the standards would impact our company’s users.

His level of abstraction, however, was at the detailed technical level. He knew everything there was to be known about current standards, proposed future standards, and their deep technical implications. But he had no concept of why any of this would matter to people buying and using databases and so he was incapable of providing either strategic analysis of potential impact nor was he able to steer the new standards in a direction that would help customers. His level of abstraction was too low to be of use in the role he’d been placed in.

It’s surprisingly common for organizations to assume that if someone is competent at one level then…