Four jobs, are you in the right one?

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom is given the dreary task of whitewashing Aunt Polly’s 810-square-foot fence. It is looking like a boring day until Tom gets magnificent inspiration when Ben ambles by to mock him. Tom builds up and presents his dour task as being a privilege of great intrinsic motivation, which makes Ben trade his apple for a few brushstrokes. And so do any other boys passing by, such that the fence task is done several times over.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body does not have to do.

Tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation; when institutions focus on the short-term and opt for controlling people’s behavior, they do considerable long-term damage to creativity, innovation, competitiveness and sustainability.

On the other hand Social Media is inundated with endless survivorship-biased "live your dreams" posts. Of course, these posts invariably assume everyone dreams of "quitting the rat race," and "working 100 hours a week for themselves so they don't have to work 40 hours a week for someone else." Et al.

Likewise, there's typically a not-so-subtle insinuation that the only courageous people in life are those who start their own businesses. Perhaps this emotional powerade is exactly what 0.1% of the population needs to finally take that step. And, perhaps, the overwhelming majority of people don't actually dream about it at all. After all, who are we to judge the career choices of strangers?

From my many years on the grind I know that if you love what you do, there is nothing wrong with being an employee. There is nothing wrong with working your butt off - and getting well paid and enjoying your nights and weekends - to help someone build their company. A lot of people have fulfilled their dreams this way, from the good old monthly paycheck complete with a reasonable medical cover, retirement benefits scheme, brand identity, team building events and all the other perks that come with employment. These things are clearer once you spend a week in the shoes of an entrepreneur.?

There is nothing wrong with finding personal fulfillment outside of your career. There is nothing wrong with sacrificing maximum income for maximum quality time. You shouldn’t let anyone downplay the choices you've made in your career. If you love what you do, no matter what it is, hold your head high.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to find your passion if you already haven’t. That thing you do, after your day job, in your free time, very early in the morning, very late at night. That thing you do when you're all alone and there's no-one to impress, nothing to prove, no money to be made, simply a passion to pursue. That's it. That's your thing. That's the thing you must, must do.

Your dreams are within your reach, if you’re willing to let go of what you think you know and open your eyes to combine your known (skills, experiences, talents, competencies) with the unknown (hopes, dreams, thoughts, aspirations, potential).?If you are ready to try, that new life is possible and very obtainable, once you make that first leap. For those who aren’t ready yet, each day you will find excuses about why you can’t do something today, or how hard your life is. Don’t give up, and don’t belittle those who are making an effort to change their own lives. You may be in their shoes one day. And yes you can run a parallel of earning a living while chasing your passion at the same time. It is a conscious choice.

During my time jobhunting a while back I noticed the myriad of performance-based job descriptions defining the actual duties a hire needs to do to earn a living. Surprisingly though, as first surfaced by Lou Adler, at the very core of all these descriptions are only four different jobs in the whole world.

Everything starts with an idea, and this is the first of the four jobs – the Thinkers. Then come the Builders to convert these ideas into reality. Thereafter are the Improvers who make this reality better. Finally Producers do the work over and over again, delivering quality goods and services to the firm’s customers in a repeatable manner. And then the process begins again with new ideas and new ways of doing business being developed as the old ones become stale or obsolete.

As a company grows and reaches maturity, more of the work gets done by the Producers and Improvers. However, without a culture of consistent improvement, the Producers soon take over and entrench themselves; implementing any change becomes slower and more bureaucratic until improvement stops. Long before this the Thinkers and Builders will have left for some new venture. Improvers soon follow to join their former co-workers and hire new Producers to add some order to the newly created chaos. The old Producers who aren’t continually evolving, learning new skills and processes, are left behind to fend for themselves.?

The unit that used to be known as HR has the critical task of constantly maintaining balance across all four work types as a necessary struggle for a company to continue to grow, adapt, and survive. Many times, technology will disrupt producers, improvers and builders in that order before it obliterates the stalled thinkers at the top of the food chain.

Every job has a mix of all four work types dependent on the actual work involved, the scope and scale of the role, and the company’s growth rate. To ensure balance and flexibility, all these four work types should be taken into account when preparing any performance-based job description. Everything starts ate the bottom of the skillset going up as follows:

Producers execute or maintain a repeatable process. This ranges from simple things like working on an inbound help desk and handling some transactional process like basic sales, to the more complex such as auditing the performance of a big system, writing code, or producing the monthly financial reports. Producers typically require training or advanced skills to be in a position to execute the process. To determine the appropriate Producer performance objectives, define how any required skill is used on the job and how its success would be measured, e.g., “contact 15 new customers per week and have 5 agree to an onsite demo“. This is a lot better than asking for “3-5 years experience selling to sophisticated buyers of electro-mechanical control valves.”

Improvers upgrade, change or make a repeatable process better. Typically managers, they are generally required to continually monitor and improve a process under their responsibility, which includes building, training and developing the team to implement a process. Improvers can be individual contributors or managers of teams and projects with a focus on improving an existing system, business or process. A performance objective for an Improver could be “conduct a comprehensive process review of the prospect-to-revenue process to determine what it would take to improve closure rate by 10%.”

Builders take an idea from scratch and convert it into something tangible. This could be creating a new business, designing a complex new product, closing a big deal, or developing a new process. Entrepreneurs, inventors, turn-around executives, deal-makers, and project managers are typical jobs that emphasize the Builder component. This component is determined by what big changes, new developments, big problems or major projects the person in the job would need to address. An example might be, “lead the restructuring of business processes and skills alignment over multiple business units including international.” This is a lot better than saying “must have five years’ experience and strong expertise in implementing Agile methodology."

Thinkers are the visionaries, strategists, intellects, and creators of the world, and every big idea starts with them. Their work covers new products, new business ideas, and different ways of doing everyday things. Thinker performance objectives are developed where a job requires thinking out-of-the-box or major problems to solve. “Develop a totally new approach for reducing lead-to-revenue turnaround by 50%,” is a lot better than saying “Must have over 5 years of change management background including 3-5 years of proven sales processes improvement with a knack for creative solutions."

I recognize that this classifying borders on pigeonholing human uniqueness. Perhaps a better way is to define the roles in terms of input as per today’s standards and what Seth Godin calls the hierarchy of value:

1. Lift

2. Hunt

3. Grow

4. Produce

5. Sell

6. Connect

7. Create/ Invent

Whereby up the hierarchy (from 1 to 7) the work gets easier and the pay gets better, but ironically the number of people available to do the work gets smaller. It is a natural drift from people who work with their hands (labourers), to those who work with their hands and brains (craftsmen), and finally to those who work with their hands, brains and hearts (artists).?

This distinction is evident from the lowest of workers such as your local carpenter or plumber, to your franchised multinational corporation; why some excel and others don’t yet they are doing the same job. It is an inherent culture issue that requires a mental shift to improve.

But regardless of which 4 jobs we are, our only obligation is to do our best. Wanna know who does better work between you and your colleagues? He who enjoys their work most. Because they give their best, and they work for themselves not for the money. They don’t have to do the job.

In reality every person is a mix of each work type, with one or two dominant traits. Companies must get this blending right when selecting people for new roles, and this starts by understanding the full requirements of the position, the strengths and weaknesses of others on the team, and the primary objective of the department, group or company. In the rush to hire, it’s easy to lose sight of this bigger picture, emphasizing skills and experience over performance and fit. This is how Builders get hired for Improver jobs, and Thinkers get recruited when Producers are required. While there are only four work types, hiring the wrong one is often how the wrong work gets done over and over again.

Painting fences is such a fun enjoyable job when you put some hand, mind and heart into it. And the end results reflect this fun.

Yet as the Bambara people of West Africa say, no matter how long a log stays in water, it doesn’t become a crocodile... Are you in the right role for your skillset?