Could We Ever Let Employees Design Their Own Jobs?

It’s challenging, but an argument does exist.

Let’s start with these points, OK?

• The hiring process isn’t the most amazing thing at most companies
• Job descriptions are often not fully indicative of what the person will actually do
• A lot of people exist at work and don’t really know what a person 1–2 cubicles/offices away even does
• Most managers can’t set their own priorities

If you take those things together, basically you have a preponderance of work environments where this happens:

• People get hired on poorly-contextualized, out-of-date job descriptions
• Their managers are then in charge of determining their workload and work flow
• Their managers don’t often know their own priorities, so how can they be expected to prioritize work for others?
• You now have pockets of people all over the org collecting paychecks and essentially doing nothing because no one really bothers to know or ask what they do

If you think this sounds curmudgeonly, well, I apologize. But every since place I’ve ever worked, it’s been like this. There’s always somewhere between 6 and 30 people (or more in…