The power of secondary responsibilities

We all have primary responsibilities in our job, the ones for which we are hired, we are measured against during our appraisals and for which we are paid for.

However what about secondary responsibilities or portfolios that are given to you or you take it upon yourself proactively.

Have you ever taken such responsibilities which are not even close to you the skills you have hired for? And if you have taken or such responsibilities have been given to you, have you taken them seriously, have you added value like no one else could have done it?

If not, here why you should have. Let me start with few examples of what secondary responsibilities might look like.

Before that, why would there be secondary responsibilities. There are multiple reasons.

• Your team, unit or organization has operational needs which might be outside the purview of the Organization's Operations Department.
• A representation might be needed to discuss specifics of your team / unit.
• Your non-technical leadership skills might help to keep focus.
• Your organization is small that there cannot be a focal for everything.

Quoting few examples from my career.

Year 2005

• Primary Responsibilities : Managing a Offshore Production Support team of a particular module
• Secondary Responsibilities : Responsible for the Communications Infrastructure, including Vendor Selection for the complete unit.

This was given to me by my manager back then. However, might be due to the years of experience, I might not have put a lot of thought process in the choice of this secondary responsibilities or even might not have carried out to the best of my ability.

Year 2012-2014

• Primary Responsibilities : Responsible for implementation of a set of modules in order for successful moving of pan India circles of a leading telco into Amdocs Billing Platform , followed by Transformation for a Large Thai Telco, followed by handling multiple transformations in the APAC region.
• Secondary Responsibilities 1 : Managing the Space Logistics for the Unit and Managing the Growth Needs, Recruitment and Onboarding for the unit.

These additional portfolios were carefully chosen and there was a deep thought-process behind it. Here is some of the background.

I had been in Amdocs since 2000. The Indian Development started in 2004 and I repatriated from the Cyprus Development Center in mid 2005 and then again between mid-2008 and September 2012, I was in Canada. So though being in Amdocs for around 12 years, I was still not known to a lot of the Amdocs, India employees including the Leadership layer.

I was confident that my techno-functional expertise would make me popular in the team I joined.

However what about being known for my leadership skills outside the unit or even for that matter, people knowing me within the larger unit, which my team was part of, wherein my peer managers were already part of the unit for around 8 years.

I always have believed in one fact, your seeds of success are sowed in the initial days of your joining a new team / unit / organization and you need to work hard in these few initial days.

Success is based on team work, team work is based on rapport and I was yet to create a rapport.

The reason for choosing the Space Logistics was primarily to build a rapport.

Ofcourse, we had floor assistants handling the actual movements of team members, coordinating with the office boys etc, however there was a layer missing that took care of right co-locations within the unit. I decided to step in over there. Each and every person I moved, now knew about my existence, whether a new person to Amdocs or a veteran. The Operations team came to know about my existence. The value I was adding with simple updates and reports was helping the other managers. That a techno-functional manager can step into such a secondary skill and add value, was a new concept to most of the unit. Indirectly it helped in the coming future.

The reason for choosing Unit Growth was primarily to extend my leadership traits to outside the unit. Being a representative for Talent Acquisition for the unit, I was part of the Leadership meetings with other representatives from other units connecting with the highly senior leadership during both deficit and surplus times. In addition to the benefit of building rapport within the team, each and every new person the unit initially reporting to me during their onboarding, the main achievement was the value add in this portfolio. I had project officers to help, however the value addition in terms of timely updates to the complete unit on our growth plans, status of talent acquisition, analytics on applications, interviews, offers, drop rate and joining, onboarding plan, campus plans working in close coordination with the Talent Acquisition team of Amdocs was surely welcomed. In addition to that gamification of the interview process, a tool that was built to capture interviewer's contribution and reward them, helped to show my leadership skills beyond the one in context to my techno-functional expertise.

Now does this mean that you leave the focus on your primary roles & responsibilities.

Your primary portfolio, if impacted, can cost you your career and hence the focus on that should stay. However a right balance and focus on your secondary portfolio can surely make you a differentiator, make you stand apart, give you an edge over others.

That's the power of secondary responsibilities !!