It's not in my job description...

It is my first article on Linkedin. It is also the last day of the year. It was only befitting to start with something motivating, universal and resolution-worthy.

This topic felt right - How do we know if we are doing our job right (annual HR reviews notwithstanding) ?

What should be the right mindset towards one's job?

On this, I got one of the best advises of my life from Benoit Rivallant, scribbled on a tissue paper, during a coffee table discussion a couple of years back.

Let's imagine this square below represents our defined job description. You can also call this the contract with the organisation.

Now, many of us, many times, are very cautious of staying within these boundaries. Cautious of doing only what we are paid for. Cautious of not doing someone else's job.

Considering real-life is actually fluid and not sharply defined boundaries - it is often impossible to go full speed up one edge of the square, stop at the corner, take a sharp 90 degree turn and start running along the other edge. So we start braking and turning when we see the corner approaching as we try to keep our speed and smoothly transition to the new edge. (See the image below)

What ends up happening is very interesting. We end up traversing a circle while we were honestly trying to run along the perimeter of the square. And thus, while we do our job very well in the orange circle, we leave out some white spaces near all the four corners.

This often leads to not-so-uncommon discussions during the appraisal cycle.

"I did what i was supposed to do. We couldn't achieve the target because ... "

And the fact of the matter remains - while we earnestly tried to deliver on what was expected of us, we have missed delivering on the mission per se.

And this is where it becomes important to develop the mission mindset. The mindset to really understand what one's mission is and sometimes go beyond the contractual job description to deliver on that.

i.e. walking the green circle to ensure we truly cover the square and accomplish our mission.

And if everyone in the organization develops this mindset , I believe that is what makes a high-performing organization. Because those white gaps, those silos are the enemy. And the magic happens where those green circles intersect.

Hope this is good food-for-thought as we soft-reboot for 2022!

Cheers!