• Thinking strategically: The ability to see past today’s issues and focus on a longer term destination.
• Setting a visionary destination: The ability to establish a positive future in the minds of others that doesn’t exist today.
• Thinking inventively: The ability to conceptualize a working solution that can ultimately convert into a tangible product-service offering.
• Generating imaginative ideas: The ability to see and articulate possibilities that are not purely grounded in experience.
• Thinking creatively: The ability to offer new thoughts on subject areas that others have not considered.
• Pioneering new ideas: The ability to create a new line of thought that has not yet been proven in practice.
• Brainstorming new ideas: The ability to work with others to co-create new ideas and new solutions.

Where the ‘envision strength’ is more subjective, the ‘design strength’ is more objective. 

These folks like to get to the facts, and are well-suited as planners and very good at answering the question, ‘what do we need to do when?’ We often find these strengths in newly minted MBA’s, analysts, planners, and CFOs.

• Analyzing situations: The ability to conceptually break down a situation into parts and understand those parts.
• Defining clear policies: The ability to establish well-understood guidelines to help groups of individuals work in a unified way.
• Defining detailed objectives: The ability to create explicit goals to direct the work of individuals and the organization overall.
• Planning budgets: The ability to establish and control the allocation of resources to achieve organizational goals.
• Establishing clear performance measures: The ability to create a standard mechanism to evaluate whether or not goals are achieved.
• Judging performance objectively: The ability to independently weigh evidence and form an opinion on personal and organizational results.
• Making decisions by the numbers: The ability to make a final choice based upon quantitative reasoning and measures.

Where the ‘design’ strength is more focused on facts and figures, the ‘build’ strength is more process-oriented – energized by how to best get jobs done.

These individuals are energized by systematizing and systematized work. Where the ‘envision’ person typically hates repetitive work, the ‘build’ person thrives on it. You will typically find build people in functions such as manufacturing, logistics, and IT systems management.

• Implement standard processes: The ability to get work done effectively, efficiently, and consistently, using a repeatable series of actions.
• Implement step-by-step procedures: The ability to get work done using an established set of instructions or checklists.
• Implement important projects: The ability to execute a planned set of activities to achieve a significant organizational or physical change.
• Implement integrated programs: The ability to unify—and manage as a group—a series of projects to holistically achieve enterprise results.
• Implement proven methods: The ability to use well-established procedures to improve enterprise performance.
• Implement practical solutions: The ability to solve problems by applying tools and techniques that are proven to be sufficient, rather than state of the art.
• Implement roles and responsibilities: The ability to systematically execute activities through the enterprise’s organizational structure.

With knowledge work, this term has a slightly different connotation than it did in the industrial age.

With knowledge work, operators make things happen with and through other people and get a lot of energy from human interaction. They focus on the who. Sales people and good mentors are often very strong in the ‘operate’ area.

• Building personal relationships: The ability to productively and progressively bond with key people as individuals and groups on an emotional level.
• Working in teams: The ability to work with others in a way where you subordinate yourself as an individual to better achieve the goals of the group.
• Coaching others: The ability to help people contribute more by facilitating their personal growth breakthroughs to achieve specific personal and organizational goals.
• Supporting others: The ability to help people achieve their goals and recover when they encounter problems.
• Relating to people: The ability to establish a kinship with others, building upon commonalities and deemphasizing or diffusing differences.
• Communicating: The ability to transfer information verbally and non-verbally to achieve sufficient interpersonal understanding and produce actions.
• Changing spontaneously: The ability to consistently achieve better results by rapidly and successfully adapting to a dynamic environment.