How to crowd-source your next job description

Organisations and new ways of working are creating all sorts of new roles and job titles. How do you make sense of a job that no one’s ever done before? And even if you know how to do your job, how do you make sense of doing it in one particular place, together with all the other people in that place?

I started in a new team recently, in a new organisational structure. New roles were created, old roles had changed, and we needed to know how about 50 people were going to collaborate. It’s the kind of chaos that’s really fun when you can make some sense of it together. We had some fun, and discovered a process that was so useful that I’d like to share it with you.

A bit of background — we’d taken a look at Jimmy Janlén’s blog on role expectations mapping, and we were wondering if there was a way we could run it a bit leaner. Think a three hour workshop as opposed to a multi day process. I’d also experienced a collaborative role definition process at Westpac which drew on Andrew Rusling’s scrum roles and responsibilities game, so all these inspirations combined to create the process I’m sharing here.

Here’s a quick overview:

And here’s what the journey of one role looks like through the workshop:

Now that you’ve seen that overview, it might be all you need to jumpstart your own process. For a few more details and gotchas, read on!

1. Gather data / preparation

Before we all get in a room, everyone should have had the opportunity for deep, uninterrupted thinking about:

• What they expect each role (including their own) to be doing at a high level
• How they want to collaborate with other roles
• How they want to be supported by other roles
• How they want to support other roles

You don’t need people to prepare an essay — just their top 5 bullet points is fine. Quality over quantity!

To enable this preparation to happen, you’ll probably want to clarify the scope of the session, ie which roles we’re talking about and which ones we’re not. Consider sharing an example or two showing the kind of detail we’re looking for: something like communicate our strategy, not work on XYZ short term project.

2. Visualise and consolidate

Great! You’ve got lots of smart well-prepared people coming to your workshop. They are coming with some data that we want to visualise. You can choose your own visualisation method, but here’s a format we used:

Prepare your workshop room with a bunch of role posters, ready to capture the material. Then you’re ready to kick things off. Start the workshop however you like, which ideally includes saying why we’re here, and gently ramping up people’s engagement.

Next, get people into small groups (pairs work well if you have the right numbers). Spread the groups around the different role posters. Ask them to share their ideas and expectations about the role, coming up with things to add to the poster. If they agree on something that they expect from the role, they can add it to “In”. If they end up discussing it for a while and can’t decide, add it to “???”. And if, over the course of the discussion they agree that something shouldn’t be an expectation for that role, then they can move it to “Out”.

Here’s what a role poster might look like once one group has looked at it:

Now each group is at a new role poster, which already has some material on it. Their job is now to add more material to the poster, while also reviewing the existing material. They have full permission to do whatever they want— add things, move stuff around, change things from “In” to “Out”, tweak wording, split one sticky into two, or summarise two into one.

After two groups have worked on it, a role poster might look something like this:

Continue the process until each group has seen every role poster. By this point the role posters will probably have lots of great raw material on them. Get everyone together for a breather and ask them for some quick reflections if you like.

One more thing to do in this phase — prepare the posters for prioritisation. Ask each “role rep” to go and tidy up their own poster. For example, I’m an Agile Team Facilitator, so I should go and tidy up the Agile Team Facilitator poster. By the time I’m done, my role poster should have a bunch of clear, atomic ideas or expectations. All I need to do is ask myself “If I was going to vote on this poster to prioritise it, what would I need to see?”

3. Prioritise each role poster

Now the group gets to democratically decide which material on each poster is the best. Ask people to rotate around each poster again, voting for their favourite points. We used dot voting, but any method will do.

4. Finalise the role posters

Each role rep can go back to their poster now, and move things in priority order. This is also an opportunity to get rid of anything that no one voted for.

Now it’s up to the role reps to prepare their commitments — to come up with some statements that respond to the expectations and ideas that we’ve all expressed. It might look something like this:

Of course, the role reps are the ones with ultimate autonomy over their roles. They have a bunch of ideas, expectations and advice from their peers in front of them. If they have a good reason for going against what the group has said on any points, then they are empowered to do that. As long as they don’t mind explaining their reasons to the group.

5. Agree

Rotate the whole group around the room, visiting each role poster. Each role rep presents their commitments back to the group, explaining how their commitments relate to the material and priorities that the group laid out. The most important thing to bring up any areas where they might have chosen to go in a different direction to what the group said. And explain their reasoning for doing that.

The group has the chance to raise feedback at this point, and any feedback should be incorporated or added to “???”. Then you can do a final vote to say “we all consent to this role following this set of role commitments”.

Notice how I used the word “consent” there. That means if no one objects or has serious concerns, then we consider that the group has consented. If there are objections or concerns, these can be raised as feedback. It’s much easier to do it this way than trying to achieve full consensus on every little detail — otherwise you’d be in the workshop for weeks!

If you’re struggling even to get consent, then make sure you’re using the “???” section on the role poster, and asking the group “Do you consent to this collection of initial role commitments and outstanding questions?”

Once all roles have been consented by the group, you’re done. Each role rep might not be leaving with a perfect job description, but the knowledge raised in your workshop is even more priceless — it’s a social contract on how to do great work, collaborate and support each other in your specific context.

Optional homework

Now the role reps can go and write up their finalised role poster however they want. Some people might want to get creative, some people might want to capture their commitments in writing digitally, while others might prefer to just keep their role poster as is.

Here’s an example of a write up:

Summary

You’ve just read through a process for figuring out how your people are going to work together. If you run a similar process yourself, you’ll get lots of value both from knowing each other’s commitments, and from seeing where people raise questions or can’t agree. You’ll also get that great feeling of being listened to by your peers, knowing you’ve all influenced each other in how you work.

I hope reading about this workshop encourages you to try something similar! If you’re interested in reading more, I’ve also written about creating roles in a fully self-managing team.