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Business Practice

Job Descriptions Can Be Stupid

by Andrew Swenson

I contend that people think, act, and express their passions at work in ways that don’t always fit into rigidly-defined department or job description boundaries:

  • Someone on the accounting staff may be a stud PHP programmer.
  • Someone on the web team may also be a phenomenal print designer.
  • Someone in marketing may have built the next killer app in his/her spare time.

But we’re often bound by our job descriptions, forced into completing only the tasks  we’re assigned in that proverbial big binder we all got on our first day. This, I think, is a shame.

Don’t get me wrong, job descriptions serve an important function because they clearly state what type of expertise a person needs to fulfill a given role—e.g. a designer must have design skill. But what if your expert designer was also a phenomenal blogger? Should he/she also use that ability for the marketing/PR department?

In my opinion, organizations should work hard to recognize the gifts of their employees and give them the opportunity to express those abilities—even if it means crossing departmental boundaries.

Allowing employees to cross department lines creates an opportunity for specific, project-level/campaign-level/product-level collaboration that wouldn’t have otherwise existed.

Many organizations assess the performance of  individual departments, meaning departmental teams are incentivized to protect their departmental interests rather than company project interests. This, I think, can be dangerous.

When people are assessed based on how an interdepartmental project/campaign/product comes out, they’re more likely to find ways to work together. It’s all a matter of motivation.

So from my perspective, crossing departmental boundaries is important for two reasons:

  1. It allows people to express all of their gifts.
  2. It holds a team of people from various departments accountable for the work they produce, not the performance of the department they belong to.

Please share your thoughts.

-Andrew

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