Job Descriptions – Standards of Excellence or Minimal Required Standards?

What does a Job Description tell us? How does an employee respond when s/he sees job description for her/his role?

Job descriptions do tell us what is expected of the role. But what is the nature of these expectations? If a job description says A,B,C, and D needs to be done, should role incumbent just do A,B,C, and D and nothing else? A similar dilemma exists for Key Performance Indicators agreed on to for a role at the start of the year.

I would argue that job descriptions and Key Performance Indicators are minimal required conditions at the best. They define the skeleton.

To put flesh on that skeleton, is left to us. How much flesh we put on the skeleton and what contours the body takes depends on our willingness to exert ourselves.

This is a different way of looking at work. If we were to equate job descriptions and KPIs with something akin to accounting or quality standards, then meeting ‘job standards’ doesn’t necessarily lead to excellence. What is required is positive deviation over and above ‘job standards’ specified. How much deviation and in what direction – that is something which ‘individual energies’ would determine?

The question to ask oneself is ‘What am I going to do today which is over and above what my job description or KPI demands?’

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Sourav

Career Choices

For the past few weeks, there is this question which I have been mulling over - Why do people make the career choices they make?.

I frequently find students making career choices on basis of elimination. ‘I am studying Commerce because I don’t like Science’. ‘I want to do Marketing because I don’t like numbers – hence Finance doesn’t suit me.’ I find this process of selecting something because other options are not acceptable intriguing. But then maybe that’s a reflection of our maturation process. We first figure out what we don’t want. Some of us, over time, manage to realize what we want. Even amongst those who realize what they want, a miniscule number seem to be able to gather the energy to pursue what their dream.

Edgar Schein does talk about 8 Career Anchors – Technical/Functional Competence, General Managerial Competence, Autonomy/Independence, Security/Stability, Entrepreneurial Creativity, Service/Dedication to a Cause, Pure Challenge, and Lifestyle.

But I find Edgar Schein’s model static. I don’t feel it captures the intra-personal and individual-environment dynamics involved when a person makes a career decision.

As per Schein’s model every individual has a Career Anchor which influences how the person makes his/her career choices. Let’s say a person has Pure Challenge as his Career Anchor. Does it mean that he would always opt to work in jobs which have Pure Challenge irrespective of other costs involved?

There are a number of things which are important to us at any point of time. These would be all or a combination of the 8 different career anchors. We may value them differently. So it’s perfectly possible that I may have Entrepreneurial Creativity as a Career Anchor but that doesn’t mean I would take up an Entreprenurial Creative role which has no Lifestyle or Security involved.

There are some things which are important for us at the hygiene level. Then there are other things which are motivators for us. What constitutes hygiene factors and what constitutes motivational factors is individual dependent. So money may be a motivational factor for one person while being a hygiene factor for others.

I feel our Career Decisions are based on an evaluation of what motivates us given presence of minimum acceptable quantity of hygiene factors. Take away hygiene factors and relevant career option would not be acceptable anymore.

Hence what is applicable to an individual is a network of career anchors – some of which are hygiene factors and some of which are motivation factors. The minimum acceptable levels of different hygiene factors might change from time to time. Preference order of motivators may change from time to time. Given presence of hygiene factors, we would work towards maximizing our motivational factors.

Also, this entire network of career anchors for an individual exists within the larger phenomenal field within which an individual lives. It hence influences and is influenced by this phenomenal field. Only if we were to accept this, would we be able to make sense of those situations when an individual takes career decisions which can’t only be explained by his network of career anchors.

As individuals what we can do is to reflect on the times we have taken critical career decisions, to understand what our career hygiene and motivation factors are. As Managers we should encourage our team members to engage in similar reflections.

Answers may not be straightforward, but the journey itself may be revealing and fulfilling.

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Sourav

A Clean Canvas!

I was having a discussion with a friend over the weekend. We were exchanging notes on the most hilarious campus interviews we have been part of either as an interviewee or an interviewer.

Here are excerpts from 2 such interviews:

Interview 1

Panelist 1: Are you an extrovert?

Interviewee: I am an extrovert.

Panelist 2 (to himself): Which dud would tell you a no? Every interviewee who has undergone some form of interview preparation would proclaim himself to be a people’s person. And hello - what happened to non – leading questions?

Panelist 1: How do you say that? Prove it!

Interviewee: {Has a weird expression on his face which is a combination of intrigue, shock, disbelief and deep concentration}.

Panelist 2 (to himself): Wow! What a deep and insightful question? Would the interviewee now pull his chair closer to us? I hope not!

Interview 2

Panelist 1: What is your favourite book?

Interviewee: Book XYZ

Panelist 1: So what does it tell me about you?

Panelist 2 (to himself): That he is a geek! What else do you expect to hear?

Talks like these abound, especially when interview of a fresher is being taken. It reminds me one of the famous quotes I use to describe aimless interviews:

“A blind man asking a deaf person to show him the picture.” J.

What do you think the candidate goes through when asked such questions? (and here I let loose a bit of my rhyming abilities J)

“He fumbles and then mumbles, follows it up with bumbles and stumbles and finally expectantly tumbles. All this while the heart of one panelist crumbles while the brains of the other panelist rumble.”

This according to me is a manifestation of a lack of clarity on what to select a candidate on. Now when it comes to an experienced candidate, we have the canvas of prior work experience to fall back upon, viz: similarity of work experience or industry, our judgement on the candidate’s performance on the job, etc. This happens to be a large canvas on which we can let our biases loose (e.g: Retainability of this candidate may be an issue, this candidate is not committed or serious) and it also allows us to camouflage our lack of clarity on what we should be hiring a candidate for. But when it comes to interviewing a fresher we don’t have this camouflage at our disposal and in the face of lack of clarity, even the best of us, tend to fumble (and pretty obviously at that).

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Sourav