It’s Not Your Job!!!

Last week, I had another “argument” with one of the highest performing CROs I’ve been privileged to work with. We’ve worked with each other, in various roles, for about 10 years. Our “arguments” are conversations where we push each other very hard. We are comfortable with them, because we know we are in lockstep on our goals, purpose, and friendship. Sometimes, people who happen to observe them are shocked, “Dave you are pushing her awfully hard!!! or people tell her, “You are being really bad to Dave, you should listen to him, plus you should be kinder to the elderly….”

What were we arguing about?

She was talking about her daily agenda, how busy she is, how she doesn’t have a free moment, and about how badly she felt about the things she really wanted to do, but didn’t have the time to do. She was intensely frustrated with herself. thinking she should be doing so much more. We were arguing about a recent email she sent to the entire sales team (it’s about 100, worldwide).

She wrote, “I need to schedule 15 minute reviews with each of you every two weeks. You need to be prepared to talk about these things in your pipelines.” She was basically blocking a day each week to rotate through everyone on her team. What she wanted to review was pricing issues (they are heavily threatened with tariffs), specific contract issues, and other similar things. These were conversations that got deep into the weeds on opportunities in the final stages of closing.

I had asked her about this series of meetings, “Why are you doing these? Don’t you have more important things to do in that time? Are these things part of your job?”

She replied, “No, they aren’t my job, but they aren’t getting done, so I have to make sure they are done, I have to do it myself!”

You can see where I am going on this. We see this behavior too often. However well intended and impactful she is in working with her team, she wasn’t solving the problem. Unconsciously, she may have been creating more problems because of the things she wasn’t doing because she had diverted her time from other very important things that only she could do.

While what she was doing was very well intended, and she has high trust in and with her team, she wasn’t solving the problem.

We see these behaviors, some well intended, some just bad leadership all the time.

• Managers swooping into closing deals because they feel they can do it better.
• Sellers and managers not trusting others to do something, do it themselves.
• The attitude, I can do it much faster myself.
• The attitude, I can do it much better myself.
• The attitude, we don’t have the time to do it the way I know we should be doing it.
• ……..and more…..

Doing the work that others are accountable for doing doesn’t solve the problem. It exacerbates it. It creates other problems.

With this CRO, the people that should have been doing this work were her RVPs, some of the Sales Ops Team, and some from Contracts/Legal. They weren’t doing the things she needed them to do, partly because they didn’t know it was part of their job, partly because it these were new processes being put in place and they didn’t know how to do it.

Our argument was short, she immediately recognized the problem she was creating. What did she do?

• She sat down with the team of people responsible for these reviews making sure they understood why these reviews are important, what she expected to achieve as a result of these reviews, and what she was holding them accountable to do. This should be a good conversation helping align the team around the purpose and urgency of these changes.
• The team spent time talking about how they would accomplish these things. What prep for each review was needed, how they might most impactfully conduct the reviews, how they would track progress, how/what they would they would report. What resources might be needed to support them.
• She offered to participate, though not lead, some of the initial meetings the team would conduct. Her purpose was to coach them and the team in these meetings, accelerating their ability to implement these changes.
• She reconfirmed in her one on one’s with them, their understanding of this initiative and their accountability in implementing it.

They are in the early stages of implementing this. She no longer blocks a day a week for these meetings. She’s blocked about a third of a day each week to participate in reviews her team is invites her to participate. Her managers run the meetings, she contributes to the meetings where appropriate. In her one on one’s with her managers, she coaches them, where appropriate. Within about 4 weeks, she expects she will rarely have to participate in these meetings.

One of the biggest challenges I see, both in management and in individual contributor roles, is people doing things that aren’t their jobs. This is closely associated with people not doing things that are their jobs. Why does this happen? The majority of the time is people don’t understand their jobs. The don’t understand what they are accountable for–I don’t mean things like, “You gotta make your number,” rather they don’t understand the details of what they should be doing how they most effectively spend their time.

People don’t understand the workflows, roles/responsibilities. They may not be doing key things for which they are accountable simply because they don’t know they are accountable for these things. They dive into doing things they are not part of their jobs out of good intent and some impatience, failing to realize they really aren’t helping.

Don’t get me wrong, every once in a while we have to do things that are not our jobs. Something happens that needs immediate action and the best way to respond is doing it ourselves. But when this becomes a systemic part of we work, our organizations become dysfunctional. And rather than solving problems we are creating more problems.

• Do you understand your job and what you are accountable for? Are you doing them? Are you maximizing your performance in doing those?
• Are you doing things that aren’t your job? Have you identified who is responsible for doing these things and are you doing what you can to transfer those things to the appropriate person?
• Are you and your team identifying those things that are falling through the cracks. Things that are important to be done, but no one is accountable for them? Are you and the team identifying where these things best fit?
• Are you coaching and developing everyone so they can be top performers in doing their jobs.

The CRO and I, after the argument, had a fascinating discussion. She reflected, “I have a really high performing team. All of us want to succeed, each of us have way too much on our plates. And, I suspect each of them are making the same mistake I was making. We need to stop this!”

We now have a new initiative with her team, we’ve labelled it, “Shit we have to stop!” Each person is reviewing things they are doing, perhaps because they’ve always done them, that are no longer necessary. They are just stopping those. They are identifying the things they are doing that aren’t their jobs and sitting down as a team to identify who is responsible. There are some things they haven’t been able to assign responsibility—they are figuring those things out.

Try this experiment. Are you always doing something that’s really not your job? Stop it! Sit down with the people responsible and transfer the things you are doing but they are accountable for doing. You’d be amazed at how much time you free up to focus on those things for which you are accountable.

And, my friend the CRO…… We have two new and fascinating new arguments. Her people are, sometimes, embarrassed by these arguments, but she is a true innovator and we are looking at exciting new ideas to drive growth in the organization.

Afterword: Here is the AI generated discussion about this article. Enjoy!