Create Definitive Job Descriptions
Give each role a clear, agreed definition of what it owns and what success looks like—so there's less overlap, confusion, and rework.
Each role has a clear, agreed definition of what it owns and what success looks like, reducing overlap, confusion, and rework.
Why This Project Matters
Most people think of job descriptions as a list of tasks. In fact, that's the most common advice: brainstorm all the things you don't want to do, the things you need to delegate, the tasks that need to get off your plate. Organize them into some nice-sounding bullet points, and voilà — you've got a workable job description.
Well, it might be workable for some very basic situations: specifically, where you want to be telling your team exactly what to do and how to do it, without them actually using their brains to solve problems and make things happen. But if you want people to use their heads — and not just be an extra set of order-following hands — then you need to go beyond task lists and start writing proper job descriptions.
Not to mention, task-based job descriptions are a maintenance nightmare. Change project management tools? Better make sure your job descriptions don't reference Asana. New hot social media platform? Gotta get it in the job description. And so on.
Properly constructed job descriptions have three primary components:
- Position Summary — the title, Job #1, hours, compensation, and other fine-print details
- Success Measures & Metrics — what it means to be successful in the position
- Competencies — the transferable skills, aptitudes, and attitudes that will help someone be more successful in achieving those outcomes
When your job descriptions include all of those elements, you end up with a document that helps your team focus on results that matter, provides a roadmap for hiring, onboarding, and developing team members, and clarifies performance expectations so problems are rarer and easier to address when they do arise.