> 2. In LO, there is no Job Description, is it true?
It should be true- there should be no job descriptions in a learning
organization. I remember the following incident in a hierarchy I worked
in. One day, a quality assurance board was auditing us, and as you do, we
tidied up certain parts of the organization to which the assessor could
safely be steered. (Measurements always distort). Part of the preparation
involved everyone in the department having their job description readily
available to show the quality assessor should it be requested. A job
description is a document that explains the position in the hierarchy a
job takes (who the jobholder reports to) along with a listing of the key
tasks and responsibilities the job entails. Stated on my job description
was a field saying that the jobholder's signature was optional. I
exercised this option and chose not to sign.
The head of department Richard called me in and stated that most people
were glad to have a job description to refer to and more than happy to
sign it. I don't agree that people are insecure enough to gain reassurance
from a piece of paper which is so vague that it was not representative of
a typical job in a fast-changing organization. Indeed, the job description
was so ambiguous that it may as well not have existed. This, of course, is
not a bad thing- better an ineffectual procedure than an effective one.
However, when a procedure serves no purpose, it should be abolished.
Richard told me that this was the real world now, and that I wasn't there
to form an opinion and act upon it. Instead, I should accept my manager's
wisdom as being for the greater corporate good. I didn't sign because the
job description didn't fully reflect my responsibilities and efforts on a
day-to-day basis, and contained the dreaded words "Marketing Officer
reporting to Marketing Manager". By not signing, I was not trying to be
deliberately obstructive, I just considered the job description to be
irrelevant.
Hence, job descriptions THAT ARE REFERRED TO AND FOLLOWED hinder the
development of learning organization because both the unmotivated employee
and politiking managers use the job description as a hindrance to
exploration and therefore learning on the job. By defining the job
according to a set description you are precluding the carrying out of
other jobs- and it is new jobs that people tend to learn from.
Hence, downstructuring advocates the wholesale elimination of job
descriptions- if they are vague they are irrelevant, ifr they are referred
to, they hinder learning. In either case, eliminate them to facilitate
learning!
(See the job description section in Unorganization: The Business Handbook
at http://www.unorg.com/bh.htm for more, different information).
regards sincerely
Simon Buckingham, unorganization: business not busyness!
--Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>
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