by Jeffrey Pelletier

Created on: October 23, 2008   Last Updated: August 23, 2010

OUTCOMES- The end of Job Descriptions

The End of Job Descriptions

The standard job description is a list of the generalized responsibility tasks, activities, scope, duties that a person must meet in the course of their employment. Most job descriptions are nothing more than task lists, and an outline of a "flow" of the work, in an attempt to somehow prescribe the activity of the job as a means of controlling the work in advance.

I'm not sure this approach ever made any sense, but NOW it is obsolete and a new paradigm is needed, in short, job descriptions at every level must be reinvented. Why, in an era of constant improvement what we DO is always changing.

Welcome to Outcome Based job descriptions!

In a world of constant change it is not feasible and does not make any sense to try to describe the tasks or sequence of a job, and in fact it is, plainly, why job descriptions once written, are virtually never looked at again. Job tasks are constantly changing. Outcome Based job descriptions on the other hand define what you want the job (and the person doing it) to accomplish, to define its eternal end point and its subsidiary destinations to getting to it. The end point is the job's purpose, the reason it exists, and its primary outcome. This approach produces a template for employee and manager alike, because it provides a meaningful context for managing performance and succeeding at work. How?

First, it gives the employee a sense of significance and purpose that is linked and informed by the organization's purpose, and second, Outcome Based job descriptions give the supervisor or manager a benchmark for helping people succeed because the purpose and outcomes also define employee success and contribute directly to organizational success, and third, they liberate people to be innovative in how they accomplish these outcomes so there is a deep sense of relevance, people know what they are charged with accomplishing and can point to that success. A read of the book First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently (Hardcover)by Marcus Buckingham (Author), Curt Coffman (Author) Managers have something tangible to reward at review time. Fourth, business is about results, when jobs are formulated towards success, managing people towards that success becomes a management obligation.

The idea for them came from inspiration I received from the book "Good to Great- Why some companies make the leap and others don't" by Jim Collins. This book

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• Next Page >>