By John Baldoni

“What’s my job?”

That’s a question that many managers ask themselves, usually not out loud though for fear of looking like a fool. Nonetheless the question is a real one. It has been my experience in working with many companies in many different industries that employees are often uninformed about their roles and responsibilities. Yes, employees know their job specifics and often perform as well as they can. What they lack is context, that is, “Why am I doing what I am doing and how does it affect the organization?” Employees who are so uninformed are not dull headed lackeys; they are bright, energetic people whose management has not bothered to explain their value to the organization.

Expectations lost in the details
For example, employees in purchasing are constantly asked to implement a host of new parameters to conform to new rules and regulations, some spawned by the Sarbannes Oxley Act of 2002. Employees go by the rules, but they end up following procedures that feel more like trapdoors and blind alleys than an updated process. When suppliers complain, purchasing agents are powerless to make adjustments and do a poor job of communicating why. Suppliers end up frustrated and angry, and purchasers feel betrayed by a system they have been hired to implement. The net result is that the company loses experienced suppliers and alienates the very employees whose job it is to ensure conformity with established standards.

The challenge of “what’s my job?” is one that Denison Consulting, a leading organizational culture survey company, has studied and measured. As founding partner Bill Neale puts it, “In our research, we have found that managers typically judge an employee’s performance on a far different set of standards than others do in the workplace.” Based on survey data of more than 1000 companies, the company has identified three sets of expectations, one for each constituency in the workplace: boss, direct report and peer. “If you’re serious about succeeding, however, the first order of business is becoming cognizant of the various expectations—both spoken and unspoken—you need to satisfy,” says Neale. Let’s take them one at a time.

What your boss expects. Keeping strategy aligned to the mission and goals is essential to fulfilling what the boss wants. “You can be the greatest team player” says Neale, “but if you ignore the organizational mission you will never satisfy the boss.” In other words, make certain that what you do is adding value to the enterprise. Focus on doing your job and ensuring that what you do is in line with corporate strategies. Conversations with the boss will help ensure that you stay in line with what the organization needs. Managers and employees have to be wary of the “boss’s boss” syndrome—when people get pulled off one project to do another project that may not always fulfill the mission but does make the “boss’s boss” look good. In this instance, employees are caught between fulfilling the mission, i.e., doing the right job for the right reasons, or fulfilling the super boss’s reputation, i.e., the wrong job for the wrong reasons. This happens every day but smart managers pull their employees aside and let them know what is happening and why. This may not preserve organizational mission but it does enhance boss employee relations.