Business Mastery

One of my prospective clients had scheduled a brand-new restaurant opening day last week. But, it did not happen.

All the employees had been hired and trained and showed up for their first day to serve customers.

Hordes of anxious new patrons were lined up outside the front doors.

The local press had sent a camera crew and reporter planning to publish the success of the opening day.

But, also present was an official of the state’s health department. She had a notice in her hand requiring the restaurant to remain closed until a required document was filed properly.

The owner told me that he was very surprised because one of his senior management had the responsibility to complete the required documentation. In addition, that manager was his son-in-law and one of the restaurants owners.

When and if the outcome will be successful remains unclear.

Sadly, this incident reminded me of how many people believe that responsibility for something means that it will be done.

Actually, there’s very little connection between having the responsibility for something and things actually getting done as expected or hoped for.

Most of the time and individual’s areas of responsibility are delineated in their position descriptions or job descriptions.

Simply because someone has the responsibility, as outlined in their position description, doesn’t mean they’ll actually perform the job as you would have anticipated.

The best way to think about this is to envision a group of people with the same responsibilities.

That group could be your salesforce,  your file clerks or your warehouse personnel. People in those kinds of jobs, like schoolteachers, all have similar responsibilities. You know however, their actual job performance varies widely. Individually they will range from in competent to magnificent.

What the restaurant owner required and what you must always insist on is accountability.

In simple terms accountability means a culture of people giving their word and actually keeping it. Everyone else’s role is to insist people finish what they have agreed to do.

Position descriptions and job descriptions are slightly different. Let me explain. A position description reflects the duties, goals, compensation, reporting structure, and other matters relating to a specific position. There is no person connected with a position description.

A job description relates to the duties performed by an individual person. Think about this way. Many of us have small businesses. When you are running a lean and mean organization many people are expected to hold down one, two or even more positions.

So a job description for let’s say Sarah might include the duties as a receptionist and as a file clerk. You are better advised to evaluate service performance as both a receptionist and as a file clerk Van to create a unique position description for her.

Position descriptions and the related organization charts are excellent hiring and development tools. The best advice for every business owner is to develop solid position descriptions for every box on the organization chart. In fact, most companies should have organization charged for now, a year from now and 10 years from now. Provided that the organization is a growing one and the subsequent organization charts will have positions on it which are not yet being filled. That’s because they don’t exist.

However, these future position descriptions have great value. Let’s say for example you currently have only one office. Based on your strategic plan, however, the 10 year organization chart indicates two new branch offices. Your talented and aggressive employees will be asking you about those future branch offices. This gives you an excellent opportunity to coach them on the skills needed to be, a branch manager.

In summary, resists the temptation to create individual job descriptions for every employee you currently have. You’re much better served to create position descriptions and if needed assign various employee is a multiple positions. When you give your employee performance evaluations of course, you will need to evaluating them based on their job description. In other words how well they performed in the positions you’ve assigned them.