Do you have a job description? Have you seen it since you were hired into your current position? Does it bear any resemblance to what you actually do every day? If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions (much less all 3 of them), you are in the minority. Most organizations either don’t have job descriptions, or have ones that are useless.
There is a good argument to be made that job descriptions are a relic from a time gone by, and that many jobs defy a linear description that is normally seen on a job description. I would argue that the majority of jobs can, and should have job descriptions, but not in the way they are normally done.
If your job description articulates in painstaking detail the activities that you will undertake on a “normal” day, then it officially sucks. Sorry to be the one to bring it up but:
a) Nobody cares how busy you are.
b) Nobody cares what you do.
Of course there are some highly bureaucratic organizations (often governmental organizations) where they do care about these things, but they are the minority.
Well run organizations care what you get done. What did you produce? What are your results? How much value did you create? A good job description will articulate these things – not how many paper clips you will use to file a report.
So I’m drawing a line in the sand today – Job Descriptions are dead. Throw them away. In their place, we will create POSTION OUTCOMES DESCRIPTIONS (PODs). This is not a directive to the HR people out there – they are usually the last to come on board with such changes. This is to every person who wants to make a difference. A well-written POD will facilitate you making a difference at your job.
Write yours today, and get your boss to sign-off on it. Then, when the crap-tasks start sliding across your desk, you have some mechanism by which to question it. In your old Job Description, the crap-task would have fallen under “other duties as assigned”.
Now do you see why you need to do this? There are lots of tools on the Wily Manager website to help you with this. Join the revolution – and let us know how you’re making out.