Explore it yourself
Practical starting points for exploring generative capacity - individually, in a one-to-one, or with a team.
These are starting points, not a structured programme. Use whichever feels right for where you are - individually, in a one-to-one, or with a team.
A question to sit with
If your three most knowledgeable people left tomorrow, what would the organisation lose that it couldn't replace?
Sit with that honestly. Not the polished answer - the real one. If the list is long, that tells you something about where knowledge lives. If it's short, that tells you something about how well your organisation generates capability rather than just holding it.
A conversation to have
Ask three people at different stages of their career: What's the most valuable thing you've learned here - and how did you learn it? Listen for whether the learning came from formal development or from the conditions around them. From a course or from a person. From a programme or from being trusted with something that stretched them. The pattern in their answers will tell you whether your organisation develops people by design or by accident - and which environments are doing the real work of building capability.
Something to observe this week
Notice who people go to when they need help. Not who's on the org chart - who actually gets asked. Then notice: is that knowledge flowing, or is it pooling? Are those people sharing what they know in ways that build others' capability, or are they becoming bottlenecks - indispensable but overloaded? You're not judging anyone. You're seeing the system. Where knowledge pools, it creates dependency. Where it flows, it creates capacity.
A useful tension to name
Think about the last time someone in your organisation made a significant mistake while trying something new. What happened next? Was it treated as evidence that they shouldn't have been trusted, or as a natural part of development? The answer tells you how safe it is to grow here. And that safety - or its absence - is one of the strongest predictors of whether an organisation generates capability or just manages the capability it already has.
One thing to try
Ask each person in your team to identify one thing they know how to do that nobody else in the team can do. Just one. Then ask: what would it take for that knowledge to live in more than one person? You're not creating a training plan. You're making the concentration of knowledge visible - and opening a conversation about what it would mean for that knowledge to be shared. The gaps that emerge will tell you exactly where your generative capacity is strongest and where it's most fragile.