The NMJ (Not My Job) Syndrome, or How to Motivate People

Why is it, that once we are old enough to work, we forget what every kid knows:

1. Everyone wants to be seen, even if we no longer can say “mommy, look at me standing” or “dad, look at my jumping”
2. Everyone wants to be told the truth and to be able to trust others.
3. Everyone wants to be treated kindly.

Organizations are no different than any other human area of life.

Job descriptions:

In this article, I argue that job descriptions are necessary bureaucracy: for legal reasons and as generic guidelines on what are the broad areas of responsibility of a certain job. They are however static and not the means to motivate people to be proactive, accountable or even only effective in what they do.

Roles:

I am using the term “role”, when I want to refer to a non-static description, that is customized depending on the current organizational priorities and on the incumbent's characteristics. Thus, a role is a non-rigid, non-bureaucratic, more agile and adaptive than a “job”. A role can be easily re-defined, every time when this is relevant and justifiable for both of the sides - organization or employee.

This article is about role design and motivation.

Thus, I argue that career development has nothing to do with static job descriptions, but with role design.

I argue that what really matters for creating a meaningful job in practice (both for the manager/organization and for the incumbent of the position) is a “role design” that takes into consideration a number of principles. As a side effect "role design" can also cerate a humane job and place to work.

I will describe these role design principles shortly...

Before that, why "No" to job descriptions?

I. Job descriptions – do they describe your job?

Here are some examples, that I have seen since the start of my career across companies, beyond the ones I have been working for:

§?People often do not receive a job description, even if it is a requirement.

§?Yes, they did receive a job description, but they first looked at it on year three of their employment. That was when they had a dispute with their boss. In most cases - it did not help resolve the dispute, but only aggravated it.

§?Very often, they received a job description that was very far from what they were told on the interview. I was even told once "We made it formally, we will explain your work separately"

§?Their job description gave such a generic description of their responsibilities, that even their manager could not explain what it means in practice. HR wrote it.

§?Their job description did not help them figure out: Where do I begin? What do I aim and what do I do when I come to work every day? What are my current projects or tasks? None of this is in the job description.

§?They could not understand from their job description why their position exists. Am I HR to spend most of my time in administrative work, or am I HR first and foremost to help the organization find the best strategy to engage[4] employees? If both – which one is more important, when and why is it more important? To these questions the job description cannot give you the answers, a great manager or mentor can - starting with your role design that provides clarity and not only.

I have experienced some of the above as an employee. So, having been in those shoes, when the time came to be responsible for a team, I really wanted to do my best for them and us.

So:

How do you design a role, that it is meaningful for the individual and relevant to the organization?

II. The case study: Role design

“I do my best because I'm counting on you counting on me.”, Maya Angelou

I created the job descriptions for my first two teammates. The two job descriptions were the same in paper, but the roles were different in practice. How and Why?

Principle 1. Every person must have an impactful and visible role:

Everyone must know their contribution and see the ripple effect to the bigger picture.

Everyone’s personal contribution must be credited and attributed to them, actively.

This cannot be achieved with generic job descriptions, but with personalized contributions.

For instance: If a person recruited ten Java experts a month, she must know that her contribution to the HR team justifies the reasons it exists. HR team recruiting more people helps the company produce and sell more. It may seem small and one-time thing, but it has long term impact and is big for the company in terms of revenue. And recruiter must be reminded of it.

In the same way: making visible who recruited those ten people is equally important – this gives credit to that specific person, everyone knows that "this is the Java go-to-person", because she can find Java people and she can do it perfectly.

I am a strong believer that every person should rise and shine for their own contribution. No one should be allowed intentionally to diminish that person’s impact. Only people who can elevate that person should be allowed to do so. Culture should be designed around that by leaders’ actions.

Giving credit may seem easy and popular to speak about, but it is totally not easy in practice. Giving credit, not inconsistent recognition, must be thought and nurtured in order to work and persist. You will be surprised how many impactful and accomplished leaders steal credit.

Giving credit: It is important to start somewhere. As a leader you can learn and teach giving credit. Even if it is only for your team. Once people discover how good it feels to be credited, to be counted on and to discover own strengths, that they themselves had not noticed - they will do the same for others.

No separate recognition or bonuses go that far, as giving credit, providing visibility via ownership of a personal “domain”.

Yes, the “domains” are the key to designing a role. More on them follows shortly.

Figure 1: Designing a Role

Legend: SWE - Software Developer, TL - Team Leader

Principle 2. All team members must learn to share.

First and foremost, they must be strong and empowered in owning their own domains.

Then, it is important that the whole works together on shared domains of work within the HR team.

Information is power and thus information sharing is power. Withholding is old-fashioned and speaks for itslef.

Here it is how we would do it in our team. We started with a clear role split by domains, but also clear understanding of how one domain connects to the other. Strong competency and fluency in one’s own domain was key, but also understanding of how one person’s competences complete the other’s in the team.

Yes, completing each other is sharing. Sharing a common purpose, sharing knowledge. The sum of the group is more than the parts.

And yes, shared responsibility is no responsibility. Responsibility must be for an outcome, that you can influence. If it is shared, your influence diminishes, as it does not depend only on you. For that responsibilities must be split within a team. If individuals are not accountable for their own domains first, they cannot be responsible for a shared goal.

To achieve this in practice, every person in the team was able to try all the HR areas within the HR team. Still, every person would have main areas of responsibility, which we called “domains”, and the others would be adjacent domains. Domains were their own areas, where everybody knew “this is the go-to person when it comes to Java recruitment”, or “this is the training person”, etc. If training, for example, is person A’s domain, he is accountable for it and he drives it.

Adjacent domains would give a person a taste of all other HR areas. Adjacent areas would also allow this person to collaborate, by default - more than within the domain areas. Adjacent domain for person A, would be main domain for person B. Credit for the work on this domain would go to both names as a team, working strongly together. Still it would be known that it is main domain for one of them.

In addition, sharing updates on main and adjacent domains, would give additional knowledge of these domains for everyone in the team. It would further complete the picture on how they all complete each other in terms of personal competences and how their work domains connect to each other.

In summary, owning the domains and knowing the adjacent ones, completes the knowledge of all the HR domains for everyone on the team: It gives the bigger picture – what are the HR team priorities, how they connect to each other, as HR domains and as individual competences. This is achieved, before everything – with giving individual accountability and credit of recognition.

As a bonus, this set up also secures business continuity when people are absent, and furthermore - succession planning. As an extra bonus – on the job learning in adjacent domains that may become main domains as next step in one’s career development.

Principle 3. It is most important how the person feels on the role and how the whole team feels. Great work comes after that.

That is why when I was agreeing the distribution of domains among the team members, there were three focus zones to keep on top of mind:

1. Is this a domain that the person will be great at – does he have enough passion, competences and skills, grit, desire, possibility to develop this domain and grow personally
2. Is this a domain in which the person will be able to make a visible contribution – does he have enough knowledge and time, among other responsibilities, to produce a quality, significant, valuable for someone result, that would give him the credit
3. Is she the best person in the team for this domain at the moment – often times, one and the same domain would be wanted by two people. Then we had to come to a win-win situation. To do that, I would always turn to two criteria above – is he great at it to grow and excel personally and to make a visible impact that will give him credit. Most of the times, people would reach to solution themselves, as competences and aspirations are rarely the same for two people.
4. If after all, there were still any unsatisfied desires for one and the same domain – then two people would work together – one would have it as main domain and the other one as adjacent. Meanwhile, credit would go to both for completing the project, as a team! While working on it, they would each find their strengths and re-adjust their priorities. Thus, over time it is very possible that one of them would hand over this domain for the sake of a more interesting or impactful one. Roles are snapshots, but fluid over time.

If you have mature and emotionally intelligent people on your team, then all of the above would come easily. They will understand that having fun and feeling good comes first to bring great work. If not – this is some new field for you to work on as a leader.

III. The Dialogue: Designing a Role

Here are some of the personal questions[3], that would help me get to the focus zones and agree a distribution of domains among my teammates:

• How do you feel when doing your job?
• What is the topic that you are really passionate about?
• What is it that you are really good at? (And help him/her find it.)
• What is it that you do not find comfortable doing? Why? Compromises you can and you cannot make?
• What is it that you really like doing and would like to excel at?
• How do you see your impact? What would you like to be remembered for?
• Where do you see your job developing in the future?
• How do you see your career path, as part of your life path? What would make you happy and fulfilled?

IV. Key principles in Designing a Role. The Human aspect

“To create engagement, we have to eliminate disengaging jobs”, Debra Corey

Let us summarize in a comprehensive framework what we discussed so far. What determines how engaging[4] a role would be?

Firstly, it needs to be demanding enough, so that a person can feel fulfilled enough when doing it. At the same time not too demanding so that the person can do it without stretching to the extreme the resources that he has, whether this is time, efforts, skills, etc.

What does this mean in practice? Domains need to be created, so that they are significant and big enough. When the domains are not demanding enough, it is time to move on to a new domain. Roles are fluid.

Secondly, the role needs to allow the incumbent enough control over the outcome, so that the results of that person’s efforts can be visible and credited to that person. On the other hand, if the outcome is hardly influenced by the input of that person (whether it is because his managers intervenes, because too many people are involved, or because the person does not have the resources, or other “factors”), that would discourage the person to put any effort, as that would slightly, if at all, affect the outcome. We discussed it earlier – shared responsibility is no responsibility.

How could this be achieved in practice? Well it takes a lot of work, as the factors can be many, but splitting responsibilities into domains is a good start. As discussed above, owning a domain gives the person autonomy, accountability, and visibility. Standing up for that person, when credit is taken away from him is also something that helps immensely.

Combine both demanding domains and control, and you have a role that gives visibility of impact and accountability.

Figure 2: Role Design Considerations[6]

Thus, when designing a job, there are a few human factors we, as leads, need to address in order to build it:

1.?????How much freedom of control does this person have over his role?

• How can I give him more power to make decisions?
• How can I define his “domain”, so that he can see his impact: input-output?
• How can I give him the access to resources (skills, time, contacts, information, etc.) to be able to give good results and influence the outcome as much as possible?
• How can I diminish the “eaters of control” – whether this is additional people performing the same role or lack of resources (unknown circumstances-information, lack of time, etc.)

2.?????What output or result could the employee own?

• All the above, would make the output impactful and own-able
• Still, if the employee does not have enough resources and cannot be given enough resources and control at this moment – how can I change the role, so that the outcome is within his control and impactful?

This can be the difference between “Oh it was awful?I stayed so late and worked so hard, but the partners totally hated it” and “What an amazing week, I worked so hard and I can really see how my part helped the while team”

3.?????How will this role develop?

“Personal development is really a function of job design, rather than training – to be able to develop, you actually need room to grow, space and freedom built into the role.” [2]

Learning should be inextricable part of the job, driven by the demands of that job. Thus, we can ask:

• How can this role grow as the person’s skills develop? This is different than asking what role the individual could get next.

This should be a dialogue with the person. Understand what they need. See how you can help.

V. Roles over Job descriptions. The organizational aspect

What this way of role designing?means for the organizational success?

As mentioned at the start, I am using the term “role”, when I want to refer to a non-static description that is customized depending on the incumbent and current organizational priorities. Thus, a role is ’fluid’, non-rigid, non-bureaucratic, agile.

“Roles”, that are fluid depending on current business priorities and incumbent’s competences and aspirations, instead of only “job descriptions”, that are constant and too general to apply in practice, are the answer to a dynamic environment.

• Roles are fluid, because they change as priorities change for the team – due to current business demands or due to a request from the role incumbent. Roles are constant for their owner, only until the domains themselves are no longer relevant or till the owner needs to change domains or grows out of the role.
• Roles are “fluid” and adaptable to context, as they consist of commitments. Commitments are current responsibilities, defined by current priorities. They are smaller and less visible than domains, but very defining of the incumbent’s accountability. Commitments have shorter life than domains, but can signal or discourage trust in and credibility of the incumbent. So, incumbent should be flexible to consider context and priorities to “Promise only what you can deliver, and then deliver more”, Unknown.

In this context the role allows you the flexibility to go above and beyond and not be limited by your job description. Job descriptions only show you the “What” you have to do, but never the “Why” exactly you are the best one to do it and “How” it contributes to the team and company.

Job descriptions limit you. Roles give you the possibility of freedom, accountability, real impact and results for the organization, personal career development, engagement.

VI.?How not to plant a tree in cement? Adding everything together [5]

No matter how well you design a role, it is important to consider it is only part of the system. Everything you do has to be consistent. A well-designed role must be supported by corresponding actions of managers and practices in the organization. Otherwise contradicting signals will be sent, and the system will fall apart.

1.?????As already mentioned, nurturing credit giving and visibility culture should stand over separate recognitions or bonuses.

If we have done the role design right, but we steal credit – it all falls apart.

If we only rely on externally coming recognitions and bonuses to feel valuable and valued, the role is not designed impactful enough. This does not stand to say recognitions and bonuses are unnecessary.

2.?????Allow freedom to fail and develop.

Failure provides freedom to grow. Allow people to take informed risks and fail. Failure is the feedback that you need in order to learn and avoid failure next time. If you allow a person to own a domain and be accountable for it, you must accept that she will sometimes need to fail and develop with the role or the specific domain.

3.?????Focused, nimble teams

“No team should be larger than two pizzas can feed” Jeff Bozos. This means 6-7 people. This keeps communication manageable. With a team of 6, there are 15 links between everyone – 15 possible conversations. If you design everything right, but have teams so big that you cannot coordinate priorities and support everyone, it may very easily fall apart.

Teams should be designed to fit well as pieces of puzzle together:

·???????Have roles of domains that are designed to complement each other into a team

·???????Have people with personal traits and interests to share together. If all have only emotional intelligence in common, that is also enough.

?4.?????Accountability, visibility, impact.

You cannot imagine how many organizational problems one can solve by proper role design. Role design is the center of all HR challenges – motivation, decision making, innovation, learning, succession planning, team collaboration, agility, innovation, trust, leadership….

Important to remember, though, perfectly designed roles can solve all those challenges, only if part of a consistent system. This is a system of an organization where processes complement each other, and messages do not contradict. For example: You design a role so that it stimulates ownership and accountability. At the same time, the decisions for that role are taken always by the same people in the meeting. This is contradiction.

Organizations are no different than any other area of human life:

Being accountable and trusted for something that has an impact, being visible and appreciated: These are fundamentally important human needs.

Being part of something big, sharing, reciprocating, making friends: This pertains to another quintessential human need – belonging.

So, yes role design is in the center of everything human, everything organizational and HR.

This is where you need to start.

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References:

[1.] Source of picture: https://cdn.themindcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/not-my-job-funny-pics-2.jpg

[2.] Frederic Laloux and Etienne Appert, “Reinventing Organizations”

[3.] Personal questions towards designing a role: The idea for these questions is taken from, probably my most favorite book ever, that of Debra Corey and Glenn Elliott, “Build it: The Rebel Playbook of world-class employee engagement ”, p.110. The questions are adapted and extended, as I have tried them in my practice.

[4.] Engagement hereby is defined as: creating living processes, not procedures, that support caring for people so that they feel motivated to develop themselves and achieve the team’s and organizational’ s goals.

[5.]Here again, I used?the book of Debra Corey and Glenn Elliott, “Build it: The Rebel Playbook of world-class employee engagement ”. I use what she calls “Key Rebel?behaviors”, p. 116. I used the adapted by me framework of these bahaviours to frame the examples for my topic “Planting trees in cement”

?[6.] This model, originally named “Designing high-engagement jobs” , is taken from the book of Debra Corey and Glenn Elliott, “Build it: The Rebel Playbook of world-class employee engagement ”, p.114

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