Do What You Are Paid To Do

During the workday, we often find ourselves doing a myriad of tasks, from taking part in meetings, talking on the telephone, dealing with clients and helping co-workers. However, many times, we find ourselves performing tasks that are not our responsibility and have no impact on what our supervisors will hold us accountable for. When we perform tasks that have no benefit for us or fail to help us carry out our responsibilities, we are ineffective.

To be effective at work, we must ask ourselves what, specifically, were we hired to do. Brian Tracy calls these our key areas of responsibility (KAR). In short, by taking care of our key areas of responsibility, we earn our pay. No one else is responsible for them; if we don’t do them, they remain undone. Failure in these areas reflects on us, no one else.

Five to seven key areas of responsibility usually define an employment position. A manager’s key areas, for example, may include planning, organizing, hiring, supervising, reporting, delegating, and measuring. We would hope the manager’s training resulted in a competence that allows the successful completion of these tasks. The manager’s supervisor will judge the manager’s effectiveness by these key areas. Unfortunately, the general rule is that one’s weakest key area places a limit on the extent that one can use the other areas.

To be as effective as possible, a manager should create a program of improvement to develop their expertise in their key areas, specifically in their weakest one. Here is a suggested plan:

• Identify your key areas of responsibility – After drafting these, discuss them with your supervisor and co-workers. There should be agreement on the areas. If your profession uses a specialized form or rubric in evaluations, consult this as well.
• Grade yourself in each area on a scale from one to ten – Find your weakest area. This is the area that will create drag on the others.
• Create a plan to strengthen the weakest area – This is the hardest to do because it is human nature to avoid that which we find difficult. Those are the areas in which we find ourselves procrastinating. However, it is competence in these areas that allows one to use their other areas to their fullest extent.

Focus on and develop your key areas of responsibilities to be effective. While doing so, one gains another benefit. When one is skillful in the important areas, one’s feelings of self-confidence will soar.  There is nothing like feeling unstoppable when doing what one loves to do.

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Comments

[ProudWorker]

Great, another proponent of "Sorry, that isn't part of my job description." If everyone had this attitude then nothing around my office would ever get done. Take pride in your work, provide "Best effort" assistance when called on, and take one for the team for gods sake.

[Bert]

ProudWorker --

This is not about refusing to go above and beyond. Everyone should be looking for additional ways to contribute to the organization. This, however, should be done AFTER one "takes care of business". Why, on Earth, would an employee spend their day doing things that do not matter to their department or organization, things that, more than likely, are the responsibility of someone else (if management has done a half-way decent job in planning), and that have nothing to do with why the employee was hired in the first place. In addition, while they are doing things unrelated to their position, they are neglecting their primary responsibilities. In effect, the employer has paid the employee for ignoring their responsibilities.

I'm a manager as well as a worker. I deal with both sides of this. I want my employees to do what they are paid to do. I give them support, resources, time, and, most of all, the freedom to exercise their own professional judgement on how to accomplish the assigned projects and tasks. I reward the accomplishment of goals. What I don't want is for a worker to neglect what I assign because they've decided they'd rather do something else. As a worker, I want to do what I'm paid to do. That's the minimum. Anthing less and I would feel guilty reaching out for that paycheck.

By the way, when someone doesn't get done what they are responsible for, who else going to do it for them? I guess the other option is to go back and ask the boss for more time. Neither of these options bode well for the employee come evaluation time.

[Lisa McMillan]

Create a plan to strengthen the weakest area – This is the hardest to do because it is human nature to avoid that which we find difficult. Those are the areas in which we find ourselves procrastinating. However, it is competence in these areas that allows one to use their other areas to their fullest extent.

I must be backwards (though that certainly isn't any news to me). I actually procrastinate with the things I already know well because I don't find it challenging or creative. Sparks don't fly with things I have done before. Give me something new any day and it goes right to the top of my list. :-)

It's just another perspective - I'm sure most people are the other way around.

Great post btw. It really opened my eyes to some things.

[Andrei Popov]

While I agree with a point of "do what you're paid for first," I also would agree with the point that staying *only* within the lines of JD is not only impossible, but also is wrong. That extra mile *always* counts (though one does have to be careful not to become the only one doing all those miles and miles...)

[Bert]

Andrei--

Someone once told me that when we only do what we're paid to do, our employer breaks even on their investment in us. It is when we go above and beyond that our effort earns a profit.

Again, I'm not against doing more than I'm asked to do. In fact, I'm always looking for additional ways to make contributions. However, I take care of the boss' expectations first. Sounds like we agree!

[Barry]

I learned a lesson on this topic in my first job. I wanted to be a great team player and had two areas of knowledge that were relatively lacking in my co-workers (computers and accounting). I eagerly helped some people out in these areas and quickly became the go-to guy for the whole department. Some days I felt like I was spending more time in the helping role than on my real job. My productivity plummeted and I found it nearly impossible to get out of that role. In other offices that I have worked in since then, I will help (with computers in particular) to a point, but quickly refer tough problems to the IT department. I often have to say, "I don't know" even when I do. I am careful not to help so much that I become the defacto go-to guy again. I have had to recognize that I was hired to do a certain job and the IT folks were hired for a certain job and it is destructive to my personal career goals to jump over that line too much, even though it feels like I am helping the organization at the time.

Another area of risk is being "too organized." You don't want to become known as the guy who can get his hands on any sort of document such as last month's staff meeting agenda on a moment's notice. Everyone will come to you for this kind of minutia instead of keeping up with it themselves. If your personal files really are that good, you are better off lying and saying "I tossed that a month ago" unless there is a really good reason someone needs it. It probably is not your job to be the office's archivist, so don't fall into that role.

None of this means that I don't want to be a team player. In fact, I still help out in these areas more than anyone else in my department. I just try to stay in the same league as everyone else for my own good. The best way to help my team in the long run is to focus on my core responsibilities.

[Mark]

In many small companies, though, there is *no* chance that what you are nominally paid to do is in reality going to be more than 5% of your actual job.

My boss tells me what he wants to spend 90% of my time doing, and then spends the rest of the time ensuring that 90% of my time is taken up with other stuff.

If I did only (or even mostly) what he *says* he wants me to do, and turn down the stuff he *actually* tasks me with, I wouldn't last five minutes.

[Barry]

Mark, as long as you are doing stuff your boss asked you to do, you can't be too far off track. That is, if you have a good boss who is delegating properly and will evaluate you on the stuff he is delegating to you instead of the stuff he hired you for that is getting less of your time. But we all know that is not a foregone conclusion. Good luck.