If you are a leader of a growing business, you spend a lot of time recruiting and assimilating new team members. I hope to share a few ideas in this post to help you get a better return on your efforts. Most of these ideas fit under this heading: roles, NOT responsibilities.
I hate job descriptions. Hate. I am passionate about seeing people flourish to their potential, and IMHO nothing smothers potential like an HR-friendly, legal-approved job description. The prototypical job description would make Marx chuckle and say "I told you so" -- meaning this description leaves almost nothing to chance, focuses exclusively on the list of specific things for which this person can be judged individually as having done/not, and speaks of the position's manager as one who will tell you what to do, when, and how. This is not an epic existence. Far from it. This is a recipe for total creative shutdown, for dehumanization, for withering, for apathy, for disengagement, for stagnation. If that's not clear, contrast it with how we learn naturally…as pre-school children, before the institutional machine starts working us over.
Children instinctively live mythically. "Precision" is sacrificed for a greater degree of suggestion. Myth is the mode of simultaneous awareness of a complex group of causes and effects. Myth means putting on the audience, putting on one's environment….putting on a whole vesture, a whole time, a Zeit. People today reject goals. They want roles -- R-O-L-E-S. That is, total involvement. They do not want fragmented, specialized goals or jobs. Marshall McLuhan
At some risk of inviting critique from the HR and Legal department, here are my 3 simple reasons for ditching "job descriptions" and replacing them with "roles."
#1: Roles are about BEING, rather than DOING.
The hyper-focus on responsibilities is a canker left over from the Smith-to-Taylor industrial days, breaking down tasks into sub-tasks -- and roles into sets of tasks -- ad infinitum. Great for pin manufacturing. Not great for the post-modern, post-industrial information economy in which ideas and creativity cut the path to profit. I know this is cliche, but that's probably because it's true: we are called human BEINGS, not human DOINGS. When you think about your team, don't do it with an org chart in front of you. Don't think about tasks and responsibilities. Rather, approach it as a director of a theatrical production: how would I describe each role on the cast? If you have not seen a cast summary in a while, go find one on the internet. It will DEFINITELY NOT talk about tasks, because it's a ROLE. And, the beautiful thing about roles is….they give the cast member room to improvise, to interpret, to experiment….to grow. To BE and BECOME.
#2: Roles are elastic and relative.
Most job descriptions that focus on responsibility are rigid and isolated. Given the pace, complexity, and fluidity of the challenges you face each day, can you afford to have your hard-won recruits shackled within rigidly defined individual responsibilities that make the word ME look a lot bigger than the word TEAM? I think not. Most of us face challenges that (1) were unanticipated when the job descriptions were written and (2) can only be solved collaboratively -- in relation to other people. Define and communicate roles in a way that reflects this reality.
#3: Role performance must be judged holistically.
To satisfy the HR or Legal guidelines, we create job descriptions from bullet points of easily observable accountabilities for each individual on the team. But, while the king may prance around proud of this clothing, he's naked -- and everyone knows it this time….the recruits especially. As discussed in the previous paragraph, the nature of work has morphed significantly in the post-industrial era. We need to stop pretending that the old accountability model works. The old list of job responsibilities isn't REALLY what we're using to evaluate people. Nobody's buying that. So, we should stop pretending that's how we judge people. A role is judged holistically and subjectively -- sort of like a…human.
Change the way you think about your team, then change the way you communicate about it. Think of your team as a cast, yourself as a director. Eschew silly pretense about tasky job descriptions. And, you'll find yourself building and retaining a much more creative team.
From my experience this assessment is RIGHT ON. Good read!
Posted by: Jafar Tabaian | October 12, 2011 at 03:27 PM