#9 What would you say you DO here?

Here's a story, anonymized as usual: 

Busy CEO. Normal, but there are some abnormal distractions going on.

Before anything breaks, the CRO steps up with an email for the CEO to send. They need to motivate everyone into the end of the quarter. Head of Comms gets a whiff. 

"THAT'S MY JOB" she snarls, and kicks off 6 months of political cold war. 

This kind of stuff is what seventh grade and C-suites have in common. You've probably seen it at most levels in between. 

In fact, you've probably been the person worried about someone else doing your job. We all have. 

It's evolutionarily baked into our resource-guarding, purpose-needing human brains. But eventually, we all need to rise above the job description mindset.

Job description thinking is the number one way to GET and FEEL stuck in your career. 

My two companies have written thousands, if not tens of thousands, of job descriptions. It was actually one of Publera's most profitable revenue streams to be completely evaporated by AI. RIP future yacht.

(The good news: we've survived longer than these guys!)

One job description that doesn't get a lot of discussion is the CEO's.

You would think a CEO JD ought to be a complicated document, and in some public companies it is. But the truth is, whether public or private, big or small, the CEO has the shortest job description of any person in any business. Here it is:

Responsible for all aspects of the company.  

That's it. 

This is why a CEO doesn't care whether good comms are drafted by the Head of Marketing, or the Head of Barketing. 

There's an old saying that you have to do a job before you're promoted to do it. "Proving your worth," or "earn it to own it," are clichés that describe the idea. 

You do the work a level above yourself before you're entitled or promoted to do it. It's the classic ladder out of middle management: pile up big projects to climb over and out. 

But it's not exactly true.  

In reality, and in my experience, the people who advance in their careers fastest and highest constantly take on a bigger mindset. 

Before you can be a C-something you must think like a C-something. 

And how does the CEO think about your job description? Answer: She doesn't.  

Because she is responsible for all aspects of the company. She’s thinking about a million other things. For you, she cares less about your remit and much more about what effect you have on all aspects of the company.  

For clients building sales teams, we teach young sellers to introduce themselves by saying what they do, specifically for the client whose hand they're shaking. 

For instance, instead of saying, "I'm Mike, Senior Account Manager, I manage the account managers," Mike is trained to say, "I'm Mike, account management. I make sure everything HE says [points to account exec] gets done for you right and on time. Great to meet you."  

Try this out right now. Describe yourself by what you do for the people you talk to most. Imagine a few scenarios: upward, downward, external. Or: to your clients, your team, your community. Your mom.

Or, have fun with it. A comedian friend says, "My job is like coal mining, where the miner works for 18 hours straight in a little dark tunnel, barely bigger than his body and miles below the surface. Chipping away one rock at a time with an ancient hammer, stained by years of blood and sweat. Except, instead of coal, it's jokes!"

I don't know if that's a LinkedIn bio, but the point is to stretch how you THINK about it.

Another reason to stop caring about your job description is it's going to change anyway. Whatever they told you on the way in will never be your scenario in a month. Everyone knows that.  

It's not because recruiters lied, it's because companies experience changing realities.  

You had a big budget when you started, but now you're doing layoffs? That's reality. Hired to run a country but now you're reporting internationally? As your new boss in London says, "bugger it."  

Keep calm and career on.

There's also a good chance you're losing your job. I think we're probably in the short December hiatus from layoffs right now (it's not totally unheard of to RIF in early December), but I'm expecting another bloodletting or two in both tech and non-tech as the new year kicks off.  (If that happens to you, I recommend you enjoy a garden year).

But what does your layoff have to do with mindset?  Well there's at least one person you know of who isn't worried about losing their job: The CEO. 

Does this mean CEO's don't lose their jobs? They do all the time! In fact, average C-suite tenure is extremely short compared to most other positions in a company.  

But the best ones don't worry about it. Why?

Because the only real work of leadership is just to help other people proceed through uncertainty. 

It doesn't help much if you're up there being uncertain about your own job. Project certainty and your teams will proceed, with a better chance to succeed.

One of the ways we encourage this mindset is by paying executives differently. In easy terms, they make enough to get fired. 

They also have good separation agreements, and you should too. 

A pre-negotiated severance agreement will do more than just protect you from the risks of rapidly changing reality. A good separation contract also frees you to take executive risks. It frees you to do things that are in the best interest of the business, instead of yourself. Because you’re already taken care of.

It's possible you may not be high enough in the org to have your severance terms signed before they matter. That's okay. You’ll need to muster this mindset to ever get there.

One thing I've learned over 20 years is people who know what their job description says are usually afraid of losing it. Meanwhile, the people who don't know their JD seem most afraid that not enough is getting done. 

This is proof that if fear motivates equally, then not all fears are equal. Choose the monster that makes you run in the right direction!  Be afraid of low output, not low respect. 

As for me, this is weird, but I am afraid of having built a business in my image that isn’t transferrable into someone else’s care. That fear motivates me to keep pushing on systems that need me less. (Side benefit, I’m gaining a tiny bit more time to do things like this newsletter)

As I've learned from all of my most successful clients, most big work is a heck of a lot easier to do when I'm not concerned with how to describe myself doing it.  

Plus, it would be an awful shame to spend your whole life in the bottom of a coal mine, just digging for the right word. 

Thanks for coming along,
Jesse

PS: If you're struggling on a job description or executing a layoff soon, shoot me an email. Those two things are pretty fast and easy for us, and one purpose of keeping this newsletter small is to be able to offer my time, pro-bono, for the people joining me earliest (you). I'm happy to offer quick help, or connect you with someone better than me.  

Also, as promised, I'm re-mentioning my little french pins project, Wood & Grain. There's about 8 left if you're considering holiday gifts or making pie crusts in front of snobby people. I'll take the site down when they're all gone. 

PSS: DO you have to give that impromptu speech at a holiday party? Here's the easiest hack: I made a quick template for you. Works 100% of the time.

PSSS: Keep sharing! We (RIP) experienced our first unsubscribe last week. It took 8 issues to earn one. But I'd really like enough subscribers to this thing that at least one of y'all gets tired of me every week. Keep helping me grow please! I think I mentioned the rewards in Issue #2.