Attending a concert is an exhilarating night out. From the moment the hush falls over the audience once the Concert Master has ensured the orchestral members set their instruments to a common pitch, the excitement begins.
To hear the haunting qualities of the oboe, the flights of fancy on the piccolo, the rumbling of the double basses and tubas, the piercing brilliance of the trumpets, and the power and strength of the combined violins, violas and cellos makes a night out at the orchestra an event to be remembered.
But what about those in the orchestra? These are the workers who produce the sounds the audience enjoys as music. They each contribute to the combined outcome of the orchestra. What does their job description look like?
Imagine the typical description for an orchestral member. Turn up on time for rehearsals and performances. Dress immaculately in the performance, but blue jeans are OK at rehearsal. You work 35-hour week, and get three-weeks vacation. Such a description is almost useless to the members of the orchestra and the paying public.Here's why. The position description has been abstracted from what they do. What do they do? They use tools -- violins, trumpets, timpani. For what purpose? To produce...
And therein you begin to see that the real job description of the orchestral member is the score that is in front of him. It's a changing description of the job. In this composition he must hold his violin bow slow and steady, legato. In the next, the demand for spiccato requires the employee to bounce the bow in different ways over all four strings.
In other words, the orchestral member needs to know how to use his instrument of work to produce different outcomes. In essence, the description of the job is a portion of the whole picture. It is an explanation of the particular part that the instrumentalist has to play, but it is not in isolation to everything else. His job description is play this score at this time, not that one. The job description is to obtain a particular result not just for each individual player, but for the orchestra as a whole.Similarly, the carpenter's work description is not "use a hammer", but "complete this house to specification." In the factory, the workers are not starting and stopping machinery, they are making automobiles, or heating units, or computers, or white goods, the myriad of objects you buy to enhance your lifestyle.
The job description is not "move the bow", "blow into the mouthpiece," or "swing the hammer." It is "use these tools to produce this outcome, the final product. You don't improve manufacturing tolerances to create less friction: you improve them to make better automobiles. That's a meaningful description of a job: make better automobiles, since it describes the expected outcome. It's a position description that gives meaning and purpose to work, a standard and a goal to which people can aspire.
In this way, position descriptions are dynamic, not static. It is not "to make music". Tonight Bach, tomorrow Mahler; next week Stravinsky and Mozart. Today this home design, tomorrow a different one. Today this model vehicle, next month a new model, with new demands for the tools of production and those wielding them.
But now you see that the job description is not centered on the employer/employee; it is customer focused. The job description should define the outcome for the customer, so that the employee knows what is really expected of him.
Too many job descriptions turn the employee inward, looking at himself in the mirror, maybe accompanied by his boss who similarly sees himself as the center of attention.
One of the mistakes in business is to isolate job descriptions and abstract them from the overall outcome of the business. This mistake is almost never made by the orchestra because all the other members of the orchestra are within hearing range, and it is the combined effort of all the musicians that brings the audience back again and again.
Why, then, do so many business owners demand job descriptions? "Our employees need job descriptions," the business owner bellows."Why?" asks the business consultant.
"Because we need to keep them under control," comes the stern reply.
When position descriptions are seen as tools of control rather than explanations of the part a person must play in the processes of production for a predetermined outcome, the employee is downgraded to slave status, not that of equal employee.
And we wonder why we have productivity issues and unhappy staff.
Go to another concert and while enjoying the experience, observe how to develop meaningful job descriptions for your staff.