It's not my job ... or is it?

The phrase “not my job”, has long been a pet peeve of mine. I remember early in my career when I was the marketing director for a general contractor. It was bid day and a bit tense around the office. I was retrieving my mail from the front desk when I overheard the project manager responsible for the bid inform the controller that the fax machine wasn’t working (Back then, that was how we received subcontractor bids). She shrugged her shoulders and blandly responded, “That’s not my job.”

My younger self was not so skilled in the art of communications and I am pretty sure I snapped at her, declaring something like, “I don’t care if the estimating team needs a $%@ cup of coffee, it’s our job to support them on bid day”.

No doubt the “not my job” mentality bristles against my predisposition for helpfulness and my Midwestern work ethic. I also worry that it can also rob people of the camaraderie experienced when there is an “all-hands-on-deck” task to execute. Doing what it takes to get the job done and having each other’s backs have been the epitome of teamwork for me. As someone who hasn’t always been great at asking for help, a culture that promotes lending a hand also makes it easier to ask for and accept support.

I realize the annoyance for me is more about the attitude I perceive behind it. The reality is that it’s more complicated than that. There are ways in which the “not my job” mantra can be invoked, in a professional manner, for smart operational management – bringing clarity and accountability to roles, responsibilities, and workflows. There are times when “not my job” provides a reality check on an organization’s true resource capacity. (When we stretch ourselves too thin, upper management just sees work getting accomplished and may not see the labor it is taking to get there).

Having worked with hundreds of organizations navigating growth and change, I have witnessed how muddied roles and responsibilities can get and how quickly communication breaks down.

Confusion in roles and responsibilities can plant the seeds for frustration and resentment – and often precipitate a decline in productivity and quality.

Expectations + Accountability + Firefighting

People want to understand what is expected of them and for what they will be held accountable. If it falls outside of their domain, they can still contribute on occasion, but it is not a regular ask.

If someone tries to delegate an undesirable task that is theirs, it might be appropriate to redirect their efforts. A classic example I see is when a manager identifies an employee who needs a performance improvement plan (PIP). Oftentimes, that manager informs the employee that Human Resources will be putting them on a PIP. HR is your business partner, there to guide and support you, but it is not their job to manage the employee. You can’t delegate a relationship!

If your organization is experiencing daily firefighting, it is worth examining how clear people’s authority is in their role and how well known and followed are the procedures and protocols? Ironically, it is often in slowing down that you can begin to catch up. #GoSlowToGoFast

 Ownership and Boundaries

It’s healthy to own our role and be accountable for our work. It can be inspiring to tackle tasks that are not in our lane, but that build our knowledge and skills – and our empathy and understanding of how the broader organization functions. It can fuel our creativity to help a colleague navigate a challenging problem. Lending support can foster a more resilient work community.  (Note: I recommend thoughtfulness when embarking on something not in one’s lane as it can be perceived as interfering, controlling, and/or untrusting).

It’s unhealthy when we say “yes” when we need to say “no”. We can feel overworked, underappreciated, and overwhelmed. Consistently overcommitting (no boundaries) deteriorates trust and leads to burnout.  

If we don’t have boundaries for our workload, our own work may suffer, and we may be masking underlying organizational ailments. Is the organization under resourced? Is it tolerating vague, haphazard, and unpredictable workflows? Is it asking people to do work that they are ill-equipped to execute? Is it ignoring poor performance by having top performers pick up the slack?

Sometimes saying “Let me help you with that” is the right offer at the right time. Sometimes, a boundary is exactly the right response.

You may come up against requests of you that are legitimately not your job and require conversations to navigate. Consider it your job to speak up, to articulate your needs, your capacity, be your own advocate, redirect a request, be a team player, and contribute to problem solving.

For example, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the fax machines, that’s Terry’s expertise. Let me bring her into this conversation. Or “Actually, as your HR Business Partner, I don’t manage the Performance Improvement Plan. I can however coach you through the process so you can mentor your team member.”

Helping our colleagues can be an immensely satisfying experience. When we share a common goal and have our fingerprints on the work, we get to celebrate in the collective wins. It can foster a sense of being needed, appreciated, and belonging. If we are regularly asked to do more than our fair share, it can feel exhausting and generate feelings of being taken for granted.

Healthy boundaries at work can keep us from getting into unhealthy dynamics.  What can you own as your job?

New Paths, Old Resistance

How to keep things right-side up during times of transition.

By Karen Natzel, Business Therapist, K Communications

Let’s face it. Change can be messy. Chaotic. Uncertain. It can also be invigorating and full of possibilities. Change can lead to growth, if we choose to lean into – rather than resist - it.  If we can learn to be fluid, open, and curious to the change we are facing, we can move through the discomfort and into its potential benefits.

Big organizational change typically falls into three buckets: shift in strategy or priorities, change of people / positions, and a redesign of how work gets done. Any one of these can be overwhelming, but often organizations experience change in each of these categories simultaneously. Whatever the change, implementing a few best practices can make it less arduous and more impactful.

Shift in Strategy/Priorities

If external or internal forces require your organization to move in a new direction or to reprioritize your resources, learning how to tell the story of what and why is essential. When you can clearly paint a picture of the reason these changes are in motion, you shorten the adoption of the change and soften the disappointment if a beloved project is being shelved.

When you can explain the changes in context of your team members’ roles and motivators, you make it relevant and compelling, giving them a reason to give the new ideas or initiatives a try. Without a strong story that captures what is in it for them, it can sound like noise and feel like a burden. To lead your team through this chapter, you will need to understand what they truly care about and help them see how they can contribute to the new direction or focus.

Poor implementation of strategy is often a result of a failure to acknowledge natural resistance to change and a missed opportunity to generate engaged buy-in. When you empathize with the struggle and create space for them to shape the outcomes, you’ll generally find you can get better traction.

 Share your vision. Give people something to which they can say an enthusiastic, “Yes!”.

Change of People/Positions

You may have heard the adage, “Right person in the right role”. The wisdom behind this is about leveraging strengths, passions, experience, and ambitions. To set someone up for success in a new role, co-create goals for the first 90-days, 6-months, and year. When those goals are aligned with the organization’s purpose and are in service to a meaningful contribution, you have a winning formula.

New roles, shifts in responsibilities, new colleague relationships, and new authority all mark the experience of a leader’s journey. As one new leader recently confessed, “It’s surprisingly lonely in this role.” It can be daunting to step into a new position. One of the most common laments I hear during times of change is a lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities. This can be befuddling to senior leaders who feel like they have laid out the role and want the new leader to step up and own it.

 Accepting a lack of clarity as a natural condition of leading can foster a healthy bias for action. Rather than waiting for clarity to strike, great leaders take what they see as the next best possible action. Grant yourself – and your team – the permission needed to evolve.

Operational Redesign

At some point, how you’ve always done things will not serve how you need to do things now. By right-sizing your operations with the appropriate workflows and processes, you create a necessary framework for people to understand how work gets done. A process with clear handoffs helps illustrate what people need to do in their respective roles to deliver great work – and it shows the interdependence of cross-functional teams. Effective processes are not patchworked together but also not over-engineered.

Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

There’s a reason my mantra is “Have the conversation”. Transition breeds confusion. People feel uprooted. Trust can be in jeopardy. A commitment to communicating – keeping people informed and in the loop, engaging in brainstorming sessions, and checking for understanding brings people together.

Leaders, having been privy to the change for a much longer period, often forget to recalibrate to where their people are. Slowing down to roll out the change with some intentionality can help people feel valued and respected. After all, implementation is in the hands of the people!

Leading change isn’t just about presenting a new direction, opportunity, or operational restructuring. It’s about listening to what isn’t working and finding ways to remove the obstacles. It’s about articulating clear expectations and offering supportive guidance. People need feedback – and this is especially true in the face of uncertainty and in the space of new habit formation. By giving specific, real-time positive and constructive feedback, you are reinforcing your expectations while helping them manifest the desired change, one attitude and one behavior at a time.  

As you step into the role of change agent, consider:

• What problem(s) are you trying to solve with the proposed change?

• What are the priorities? Too many or a lack of clarity will torpedo your efforts.

• What are the impacts you are seeking? When you see any proof of progress, acknowledge and celebrate it.

• How aligned is your leadership team? Beating the same drum and in plain speak can aid in advancing the cause.

• How will you be a resource to your team? Hold space for real conversations.

When we move with change, we may find creativity-infused thinking that ignites a fresh perspective. If we move along with the status quo, insisting things are “fine”, we will stagnate.

Leaders who stay grounded in a compelling and shared purpose, and demonstrate a commitment to creating meaningful value, will be better positioned to navigate the sea of change.

Go ahead, experiment, say yes to evolving your organization to what’s next. You don’t need permission to start making a difference.

Preserving Your Culture During Periods of Transition and Growth

A thriving culture attracts and retains great employees, collaborators, and clients. Growth, even when welcomed and necessary, can feel like a threat to that which we cherish.

• We know change is a constant, and sometimes it comes hard and fast.

• We know change is a constant, and yet, we may find ourselves and our teams resistant to it.

Why? Change can spike feelings of uncertainty, triggering a desire to stubbornly preserve what is and to exert control where we can. It can feel more secure to stay with what is known, than to venture into unchartered territory.

Many leaders have expressed to me the legitimate concern that change and growth will upend their beloved culture. They fear becoming, “too corporate”, and losing the essence of who they are; and of losing their capacity to be nimble and fluid. They are right not to take their culture for granted or leave it to chance.

I have witnessed clients come up against the culture challenge during times of change. Intellectually they understand they cannot manage a firm of 80-100 people, the same way they had managed a team of 10-20. Yet, organizations, as a collection of people, have established patterns in how they do what they do. These norms may be formalized into standard operating procedures, or more likely, a loosely organized understanding of how stuff gets done.

It is not uncommon for organizations to continue practices that are well past their effective shelf life. How we have always done things generally is not a compelling reason on its own to be the way in which we do things moving forward.

Telltale Signs

During times of substantial transition and rapid growth, be on the lookout for these common signs of growing pains:

• Increased communication breakdowns. You may find it more challenging to keep people informed, aligned, and engaged, with conflict on the rise.

• Lack of clarity of who does what. Blurred roles and responsibilities can create frustrations and inefficiencies.

• Unclear strategy or direction and competing priorities. To make the most of your resources, you need to articulate a clear plan that gives your team focus and empowerment.

• Decline in quality. Without proper workflows or explicit expectations at all levels, quality can slip.

• Stalled initiatives may indicate a failure to achieve buy-in and/or too many at once, often resulting in a dive in employee engagement.

• Less collaboration and more, “just tell me what to do”.

• Slow decision-making. While being deliberate and inclusive in making important decisions is smart, being overly democratic and indecisive reflects poorly on leadership.

• Compromised brand integrity. Your brand is an external representation of the internal company workings. An integrity gap is the distance between what you say about your organization and how you actually operate. When there is a disconnect, you run the risk of deteriorating trust – internally and externally.

Beware the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. “We’ve always done it this way”; “when I became a leader, we just did whatever it took”. We humans tend to soften past struggles and slip into a simpler story of the past than we originally experienced it. And conditions now are likely different than they were then. Resistance to change by the “old guard” can result in less creativity and contribution by younger or newer staff.

Adaptability in Action.

Recently a client identified critical issues undermining their capacity to deliver.  They underwent a swift departmental restructuring. The resulting reorganization was instrumental in retention of key employees, as well as providing growth opportunities for top talent. This change better reflected and supported the ground truth reality of what was needed to continue delivering optimal service to their clients. They were able to execute this decision quickly and with minimal disruption in part because they embrace a growth mindset. If it’s not working, their culture is equipped to adapt.

Values and Beliefs as GPS Coordinates.

I have a client that has well-established and fully integrated values and beliefs that shape its cultural norms. Managers use them in making decisions and in giving feedback; at meetings you’ll hear their values guiding discussions; and they are embedded in performance reviews. They reflect a commitment to excellence, communications, balanced lives, a safe work environment, accountability, and even fun and laughter. This shared code of conduct helps team members navigate the inevitable challenges and frustrations that arise – internally and externally. And this is a firm with thousands of employees across the globe, serving several public and private industries. In other words, they are a large, complex organization that has relied on its values and beliefs developed at the origin of the company, to keep fostering a culture that creates a sense of belonging while driving performance.

What can you do to lead your organization through times of transition and growth?

Take Inventory:

1.     Examine your organization’s patterns. What still works? What no longer serves you? How do you address difficult issues/conversations? How do you make decisions?

2.     Conduct an Integrity Audit. How well are you living the brand you profess? If you proudly tell clients about your collaborative approach, where might you level up your collaboration internally? Recommit to articulating and practicing your stated values.

3.     What do you cherish about your culture? What is part of your DNA that you want to preserve?

4.     Where can you remove barriers of resistance? How can you enroll others in your vision?

I invite you to shift from being change-resistant to being intentional about creating the change that will best serve your organization. Stability or security is not in tightly holding onto what is, but in trusting in the integrity of how you operate; and in welcoming the creative energy that can come from change.

An intentionally curated culture, based on a solid foundation of values and effective norms, can not only weather the seas of change, but embrace the continual evolution that makes for robust organizational health.