Bring Your Job Into Focus With These Two Lenses
At CultivateMe we help people get awesome at their job. The first challenge we often hear is this…
What exactly IS my job?
How do people solve this right now? What do people “hire” to help them understand their job so they can get better at it? Three common solutions are:
Their Manager. This is usually a 1-on-1 meeting with questions like, “What should I be focusing on right now?” or “Is this MY responsibility?” or “Can you help me prioritize some of my work?”
Original Job Description. A written document with boilerplate content about the company, the mission, the team, the core responsibilities, the required skills and competencies, etc. Often the same thing used to advertise the job in the first place.
Competency Framework. Usually as part of annual performance reviews. Some list or spreadsheet that breaks down every possible aspect of a role. Often includes a rating scale.
Each of these solutions have their own inherent shortcomings. Managers are often unavailable when you need them, and may themselves not really know your job. Most job descriptions are out of date and were written in a hurry by someone who didn’t really understand the role to begin with. And competency frameworks can be overwhelming and abstract — they don’t line up with how the job feels day to day.
There are two issues at the heart of the challenge: language (What are the words we use to describe a role?) and taxonomy (How do we group those words in a structured and memorable way?)
This post will address the language issue. I’ll tackle taxonomy in a future post.
Words have meaning. Sometimes too much.
The world of talent development is full of slippery, abstract terms: skills, abilities, knowledge, competencies, capabilities, responsibilities, accountabilities, etc. What’s the difference? And do we really need so many terms?
At CultivateMe we address the language issue with only two terms: Activities and Abilities.
Activities are observable actions you take in the physical world that are bound by time.
- Attend a client meeting
- Present at a weekly retro meeting
- Enter call notes into a CRM
- Send the weekly newsletter
- Process my email inbox
- Hold a 1-on-1 with my teammate
- Draft a blog post
- Submit weekly time-sheets
These are the things that show up on your todo list or your calendar. They are the building blocks of your day. We used to call them “concrete engagements” but now we prefer the term “Activities” because (a) it’s shorter, (b) they are “active”.
Most importantly, Activities offer context. They paint a picture of what you are doing and why. They describe what triggers the Activity, the steps involved, how long it takes and how often you do it. You can clearly envision an Activity in your mind.
Abilities, on the other hand, are more abstract.
- Active listening
- Written expression
- Critical thinking
- Negotiation
- Self-awareness
- Deductive reasoning
- Adaptability
- Delegation
By definition, Abilities are transferable skills that are not bound by a single context. They are hard to envision and you can put them to work in many different situations.
Each defines the other
The power of this approach is how these terms help define each other. You use them in tandem to create a more clear and nuanced picture of a role. For example, each one of the Activities listed above requires several Abilities.
“Attend a client meeting” requires active listening, verbal communication, empathy, improvisation, speed of closure, persuasion, and so on.
“Enter call notes into a CRM” requires focus, written expression, memorization, reflection, inductive reasoning, problem sensitivity, and the like.
As you start to map out a role using Activities and Abilities you see a many to many relationship emerge. Persuasion, for example, shows up in many Activities across all sorts of jobs: from a retail sales rep talking with a customer, to a project manager chasing a teammate for their overdue activities, to a father trying to get his 5-year-old to take a bath. And as discussed above, one Activity almost without exception involves many different Abilities.
Activities are concrete. Abilities are abstract.
Activities are verb-ish. Abilities are noun-ish.
Activities provide context. Abilities are transferrable.
Activities are kinetic energy. Abilities are potential energy.
The challenge in using these two concepts lies in the interface, or rather lack of interface, available in most tools today. The many-to-many relationship quickly becomes complicated and unwieldy. We have developed a new interface to overcome this, but I’ll have to address that in a future post.
For now, try to list out the activities of your current role. Make a list of your Activities — the things you do all day. Then try to map out the Abilities required to do each of those things. Also, see if you can go a week using only those two terms to describe the work you do. Jettison all other terms and see if you don’t need them after all.
CultivateMe is a talent development agency for agencies. We help agencies establish a repeatable, scalable, and sustainable system for growing their people and winning the talent war. To get fresh ideas on how to improve learning at work, sign up for our newsletter.
