Director mode decomposes into five capacities. They are separable, they are trainable, and almost nothing in current education or professional training addresses them directly.
- Specificity of articulation — saying what you mean at a resolution the work can act on.
- Comparative judgement — recognising the better candidate, and knowing why.
- Reference fluency — carrying enough prior work in your head to have somewhere to point.
- Constraint design — building the brief as an instrument rather than a wish list.
- Iteration discipline — the courage to stop, which is rarer than the willingness to continue.
A person can be strong in three of these and effectively unable to direct, because the weakest capacity binds the rest.