Whose Job Is It?

At your company, you probably have things like job descriptions … and you definitely have job titles. They come as dear as corner offices sometimes; they are a mark of seniority, of power, of importance within the company. Are you a senior, senior executive? Is a secretary above or below a personal administrative assistant?

Here are a few jobs that I hope you have job titles (and descriptions) for:

The person whose job is to think of cool free services that will make your clients happy

The person whose job it is to call and mend bridges if a bill/invoice is going to go unpaid or if a letter/order has gone awry before the person on the receiving end expects it

The person whose job is it to make sure the interns aren’t spending their entire day filing

The person whose job is it to listen to the janitorial staff about ways that you can create a cleaner or more streamlined environment for your workers

The person whose job is it to make sure the new guy gets fully integrated into the corporate culture and not just trained for his job

The person who gets paid for playing the devil’s advocate in board meetings

The person who gets promoted if they take a good hard look at the systems and protocols that your company uses and figures out ways to cut costs and paperwork and be more efficient

The person whose job is it to cut the number of meetings employees must attend

The person whose job is it to make sure everyone answers the phone professionally and can write a grammatically correct E-mail

If you want to try a really fun exercise, bring this list to your next meeting and read them to the group. Figure out whose job it is to do these very distinct, very important jobs. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a lot of finger pointing. At least one person will raise their hand and say, “I think that’s my boss’ job.” Because these not only sound like important tasks, they sound like boring or painful tasks. But what if you had people do all these jobs? What if all these jobs were part of your job description? What if all these jobs were part of everyone’s job description?

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