Posts from the ‘Organizational Practices’ Category

Out with job descriptions; in with thoughtful analysis of value-creating work

Last week I spoke with a client who was asked by her soon to be manager to draft a new job description; the goal of this exercise was to free herself up to focus on more strategic, organizational priorities.  This individual works in a Chief of Staff operations role where she gets pulled in a number of different directions–and due to her unique quantitative and technical skillset–is frequently called upon to do ad hoc consultation and data analysis.  Not surprisingly, this client was so busy, she was not finding time to meet this request.

Thus, we took a session to analyze her current responsibilities and have what Organizational Development professionals call a START, STOP, CONTINUE conversation.  This is to ask three very simple questions, listed below:

• What do you want to start doing?
• What can you stop doing?
• What do you want/need to continue doing?

While simple to ask, these questions are not so easy to answer, particularly when it comes to stopping work that we have previously owned and which others rely on us to do.   With this particular client, we talked about what initiatives need more attention for the organization to execute against, what she needs to train others to do so she can step out of less critical responsibilities, and what aspects of her job she wants and needs to maintain to be connected to the overall organizational agenda.

The client then decided to forego a formal job description; instead, she decided to create a two-by-two matrix of her scope of responsibilities against the following axes:

• Strategic vs. Operational
• Routine vs. Arising

This, she thought, would enable a more thoughtful conversation about what is most critical to get done with the organizational lens and goals in mind.    This, I thought, is a much more useful way to construct and evaluate the work that people should be doing inside of organizations.

So often job descriptions are opaque and verbose, and laundry list in nature.  Isn’t it time job descriptions had a facelift to reflect what the work really is, which are primary vs. secondary responsibilities, and how the work aligns to the broader organizational goals?

Whether or not job descriptions do evolve, it’s possible to have more thoughtful dialogue about people’s work and how to invest our talent’s most precious resource: their time!  What is it that you and your team should be starting? stopping? continuing? to make the biggest impact? How can you help elevate the conversations and analysis of how people spend their time?

Stay Interviews: Tool for Preventing Exit Interviews with Key Talent

Recently, I was speaking with an executive who mentioned she was traveling across the country to meet with employees who she thought could be at risk for leaving the organization.  When I inquired if she was planning to do stay interviews, she looked at me with a blank stare.  This smart, savvy and concerned leader had no idea what I was talking about.  Her plan for retention centered on traveling 3,000 miles to spend time with these employees.  Wasn’t that enough?

That’s when it dawned on me that a “stay interview” is not necessarily widely known or practiced, even among experienced leaders and managers. Beverly Kay, author of the book,Love’em or Lose’em; Getting Good People to Stay is widely seen as the originator of this simple yet brilliant tool for preventing exit interviews with key employees.

A stay interview is about asking thought provoking questions to valued employees about what is most important to them and what will keep them in their job and/or with the organization

Examples of stay interview questions include:

• What will keep you here?
• What gets you out of bed in the morning?
• What one thing, if it changed about your job, would make you want to leave?
• How can I be a better manager to you?

While managers can take a formal approach to having a stay interview with an employee, stay interview questions can be inserted into a developmental conversation, a casual one-on-one check in or even a group icebreaker in a team meeting (if the question is selected carefully enough).

Five years ago, I had the opportunity to introduce stay interviews to a healthcare organization as part of a Talent Review and Succession Planning process.  Leaders immediately liked the simplicity of the tool, but were concerned that asking such questions would  lead to disappointment if the request or need could not be met.  In most cases, research shows, employees will not respond to stay interview questions with unreasonable demands related to compensation and/or promotion.   More often than not, the needs might center on developmental opportunities, desire for advancement and/or more recognition and support. In addition, employees will appreciate the gesture and a manager’s attempt to address an employee’s concern, regardless of the outcome.

Five years later, stay interviews are now common language and common practice in the organization.  Not only does this practice support retention of key talent, but it also helps leaders identify individuals who have aspirations for leadership and provides leaders with a valuable pulse check on the climate and priorities of their team members.

Stay Interviews allow you to have near 20/20 vision about what key employees value and where they want to go.  In this day and age, it’s hard to imagine how leaders would risk not asking these questions.