Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
168. "Not My Job"
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We tackle the workplace dilemma of being asked to do work outside your job description and why saying "not my job" can damage your career.
• Three key reasons behind "not my job" situations: resource gaps, skill mismatches, and prioritization issues
• Why successful professionals avoid saying "not my job" even when tasks fall outside their responsibilities
• Strategies for addressing work overload without damaging professional relationships
• The importance of having honest conversations with your manager about skill gaps and time constraints
• How managers should sometimes protect their team by saying "that's not their job" on their behalf
• Tips for turning potential "not my job" moments into opportunities for growth and advancement
• Why company "all hands" meetings are inappropriately named based on the naval emergency origins of the term
Click/Tap HERE for everything Corporate Strategy
Elevator Music by Julian Avila
Promoted by MrSnooze
Don't forget ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ it helps!
Playful Periodic Table Banter
Speaker 1Okay, all right, cool Cowabunga.
Speaker 2Radical.
Speaker 1Gnarly Phosphorus. Wait, wait, wait. You're just going periodic table on me. Yeah, why not? You start ripping those out of nowhere. Lithium Sodium, you got to say. But if you do the periodic table, you got to do the actual two-letter.
Speaker 2Beryllium.
Speaker 1Sodium N-A what?
Speaker 2is beryllium B-I. Absolutely, you cannot say the letters, it's got to just hydrogen, all right.
Speaker 1Oxygen, I need it, oh yeah.
Speaker 2Potassium Okay.
Speaker 1All right, we just turned into 3-6 Mafia for the baritone. We got a table Holiday season.
Speaker 2Unumptanium, thatobtainium.
Speaker 1That's not it. There are some crazy ones though. Yeah, there's some crazy. You know some crazy elements. I mean, I just pulled up the periodic table because I was like what are the ones that are ridiculous? I like that you couldn't even stick with what you.
Speaker 2You had to go look it up. I wanted the weird ones. Because, you said unobtainium weird ones.
Speaker 1You should know them. You said unobtainment. That's not a thing you want to bet. I'm looking at it right now.
Speaker 2There's some wild ones. You see how it's right towards the bottom.
Speaker 1Oh, yeah, just bottom right.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's right next to Deezium. That's false. You gotta look for Deezium, that's false.
Speaker 1You just see in the table for some Deezium.
Speaker 2There you go search.
Speaker 1Okay, okay, here you go. What if I name three, where two are fake and one is real? I'm ready.
Speaker 2Let's are fake, okay, and one is real. I'm ready, let's do it. Let's go, let's play this game right now. Come on, I know my elements. Oh my gosh, hit me. Come on, stop trying to hit me and hit me, all right.
Speaker 1I'm going to smack you across the face.
Speaker 2Smack me with these elements. You ready, ready, I'm ready?
Speaker 118 times Galvium, uh-huh. Zeronium, uh-huh, okay, flarovium.
Speaker 2Wait, say that last one again.
Speaker 1Flarovium. It's Galvium. You think that's the real one? I think that's the real one. False. It's Flavorium Period table FL114 Flavorium Flavorium Like.
Speaker 2The Flavorium of my drink Is delicious. I don't know what Flavorium is.
Speaker 1Synthetic element Fi, atomic number 114 extremely radioactive get out of here it was first. It is named after a Florov laboratory of nuclear reactions in Dubna, russia, where it was first synthesized. It's always.
Speaker 2Dubna, it's always Dubna. Hey, Galvium sounded good. Good job. Did you make that up or did you use AI? Probably AI. How dare you Do you have not a creative ounce of blood in your cells? None Zero.
Speaker 1But it was a fun game, it was a fun game. Nerds would love this. We should make this a board game. Okay, sell millions.
Speaker 2Yeah, but any chemist is just like. This is the dumbest game ever. This is like Mario, but it's a flat plane. There's no jumping.
Speaker 1This is how you tell who your true chemist friends and who your fake ones are.
Speaker 2I have that problem. I'm sure your true chemist friends work in a lab Usually identifiable by the white coats wait, they just wear those around with test tubes and beakers in their hands, like, oh yes, the reaction, catalyzing, stimulating. I see what's the molecular combination of this substance. Swirl the beaker, swirl the test tube, you know, flavodium.
Speaker 1Flavorium Founded in Dubno Russia.
Speaker 2Good, it's great. No, every chemist I know talks this way.
Speaker 1Yeah, same here. I know a lot of them. I mean, I passed my AP environmental science exam in high school, so I'm basically a chemist.
Speaker 2I failed every AP test. I took Every single one. No, every single one, yeah.
Speaker 1Dang.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm pretty stupid on the whole. I'm pretty stupid Like on a chart, definitely falling in the average. You know what I'm saying. Like I'm in that big bell curve. That's me. That's me in the middle, right in the middle.
Speaker 1Representing the people. Yeah, right in the middle, you know it's not fair.
Speaker 2There is no deviation in my standard. Let me just tell you. There is no deviation in my standard. Let me just tell you.
Speaker 1What's not fair is that school smarts. You know people are. Are you, would you consider yourself? Would you consider yourself a good test taker or no?
Speaker 2I'm a terrible test taker, great interviewer, terrible test taker, yeah.
Element Guessing Game
Speaker 1Interesting I was actually. That was going to be a follow up question Like is the correlation between people who are good test takers or good interviewers? I don't think there's any.
Speaker 2No, not at all, because I'm not. I'm really bad at recalling information when like demanded, especially when presented with multiple answers. It's like something happens to me where it's like oh, I know this, I know this. But now that you've presented me with these two answers that sound kind of the same Flavonium, galvium, zirconium like I don't know which one to pick. Which one do I pick?
Speaker 1It's always picked wrong, as evidenced by the game we played earlier. See, unless I'm completely separated from the information, like I have no idea what the information is. Oh, we have a special guest. There's a four-legged guest. Needs a little bit of a haircut, but the salt and pepper is really working for it, so cute.
Speaker 2So cute. It's thundering and he has the fear he's going to hide under my chair and I'm going to squish his tail, tail.
Speaker 1So it's better I just put him in a lap, pick him up. I do the same, yeah. But going back to what I was, I was thinking is tell me, yeah, I learned a long time ago that if I know even an ounce of the information, or I generally have studied, then I know to go to my with my gut. I used to be a really bad test taker, like in middle school I'd. I'd always be like, oh, maybe it's this one, maybe it's this one. And then when I got into high school, I started just saying just let it rip. And from there on I just go with my gut. Whatever, the first answer is no second guessing, you're paying me.
Speaker 2I am Beyblades with your tests. I like it, that's right. That's right. Yeah, I did way better Like I passed pretty much all of my AP exams except for like one. If it was a written test, crush it, I could crush it, yeah.
Speaker 1Written exam yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2Yeah, you're creative. If it is a multiple choice, I'm probably going to get a C or below Guarantee. Yeah, no.
Speaker 1I just yeah, I'm the opposite, not good at that.
Speaker 2But if it's trivia, like if you're like hey, do you know the answer to this? Like yeah, of course I know the answer to that. It's this assertive. It's interesting don't give me choices. How dare you give me choices? Yeah, I'm not. Wow, I got a weird brain. Uh, certifiably stupid, I think, is what they would call people like that is that what they call that curve like right in the middle is the dude.
Speaker 1That's's like the ninja or the Jedi. He's on.
Speaker 2Yes, that's me, I'm the Jedi. And then you have like doofus on the one end and then you know, brainiac on the other yeah big brain on the other and you're just right in the middle.
Speaker 1I got the hood up?
Speaker 2Yeah, that's me, what's up. Hello, what's up, fellow stoops?
Speaker 1You know, now that we've talked about your brain a little bit, I want to hear about your vibe track. But on your physical ailments, I want to hear about your feet. How are they doing?
Speaker 2Welcome back to Foot Strategy. The podcast is all about feet. Time to talk about Bruce's feet. Clark, your feet are golden. Hopefully your pinky toe is healing. Well, it's all about feet today.
Speaker 2Yeah, my toes are doing squexcellent, as some might say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've still got a little bit of scabbing on the left side because I had both sides done on the left toe. For those that didn't listen to the previous couple of casts, I had my toes chopped off to get rid of some ingrown toenails and left one. For those that didn't listen to the previous couple of casts had my toes chopped off, uh, to get rid of some ingrown toenails and left one almost completely healed Right one. That's. That's the most beautiful looking toe I've ever seen in my life. So, yeah, yeah, there's no ingrown. There's no curvature to the nail. Great, it worked. That's what I like to hear. Well, we'll see. Time is really the true teller of secrets when it comes to ingrowns. So we'll see if they come back or not, but I'm confident on the right one. How's your little baby toe? You slammed that thing into a wall at 100 miles an hour.
Speaker 1Yo, that thing stepped right in my squat rack and man, that metal squat rack done, messed up my toe Like black by the end of the night could barely. I was lipping around. It was rough. You don't realize, like, how much you depend on a single toe until you have. You know this until you do something to your toes and then you're like holy cow. That impacts my whole life it really does.
Test-Taking Skills and Interview Abilities
Speaker 2Mobility is tied so much to your big toes I mean all your toes like your balance, your ability to actually move with any kind of speed. It's all toe. It's all toe work.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's crazy because you think, like you try to like walk where only, like, the top of your foot hits and your toe doesn't really hit. It doesn't work. You walk real slow, real slow. But yeah, I'm good. No, no broken toe, no need for an x-ray. I think it's fully healed at this point, so I'm feeling good after a couple of weeks. I appreciate you asking.
Speaker 2Good, I'm glad to hear it.
Speaker 1Corporate strategy, podiatry, foot strategy, foot strategy, podiatry lovers that's it. Keep going. No, no, I love podiatry, that's it that. No, no, I love podiatry, that's it. That's our next. Love feet, you love feet. Huh, how does somebody get into that craft? Because I always go in like a diet. Well, I went to my podiatrist. I'm like she was just so happy to like be touching feet all day yes, my brother-in-law is a podiatrist.
Speaker 2What you want to have him on, you want to ask him. He'll tell you yeah I actually I know the answer I know the I'm not gonna say I'll bring'm not going to say it, we'll bring him on Guess what.
Speaker 1Yeah, we'll have him on, we'll leave a cliffhanger, because I'm super curious. She was talking to me and grabbing my foot and stretching things out at the same time. It was something she enjoyed doing and I was like this is just weird. How do people get into this?
Speaker 2He likes it. He's good at it. Uh, yeah, uh, husband of keelan, who was on the pod before telling us about unions, we'll bring him on.
Speaker 1You'll get to talk to a podiatrist heck, yeah, man, we're so connected in this podcast. Now, like we're so connected, we would have never had this connection. I know they're family, but let's pretend like we're huge. Wow, well, we'll edit that part out. We would have never had this connection four years ago. But now, cause we are so big, it's so easy to get podiatrists on here.
Speaker 2Y'all you know we get like a thousand listens per episode. Now, did you know that? Did you know corporate strategy is the biggest fricking thing on Apple podcasts?
Speaker 1Didn't? Uh didn? Rogan sent an invite the other day for us to come on.
Speaker 2He did and a couple of like serial. Serial was like hey, we know you haven't murdered anybody, but we'd still like to do an investigation into you. I'm like, please investigate us, that's right, Find those skeletons. You won't.
Speaker 1I want them. I want them to find them, cause I want to make sure that they keep us in check, but we won't use their real names because I don't want them to link anything to me, you know.
Speaker 2Clark was a normal, average male until one day he wasn't when he snapped and took out his co-worker while they were making a dump in the middle of a crowded office hallway. No one knows who the dumper was, except for Clark.
Speaker 1So we brought him onto our show to interview and get his side of the story. You know, I liked all that, except for the verb you used, making a dump. Making a dump I don't I really don't like that.
Speaker 2I mean, don't they call it make, right, so that's like. You know, that's. It's another word for excrement, the make.
Speaker 1You know you gotta clean up your make Stool excrement. Yeah, Feces.
Speaker 2Fecal matter. Feculants Make yeah, let's just throw them all out there what is this? Good, this is a good one. 13 minutes in. I feel like we're really covering some new ground here. Uh, die. Hey, it's been like two months since we podcast, but our last episode ended on a cliffhanger. Do you even remember what our last episode was about?
Speaker 1clark I remember be honest. No, I'm gonna be 100 honest. I'm not touching anything. It was about having hard conversations. Having hard conversations. Do I remember the cliffhanger? No, I'll be completely honest, I don't remember. Good, good.
Speaker 2So I mean, I'm actually happy you got like most of it. The hard conversations was the topic, but there was a specific thing that I teased and I said this gets brought up a lot and it's not as easy to solve as the rest of the hard conversations out there. You ready for it? I'm ready. It's a phrase You've heard. It might have even said it. It's not my job. Now you see why I wanted to save an episode for this because it's huge.
Speaker 2This is so much more difficult to deal with as a manager or an ic than any of those other things, because there are two very radical extremes to this phrase. That, like we got to unpack it right so. So if you've spent any amount of time in the workplace, you have heard someone utter the phrase not my job and it has produced a reaction from you. Or maybe you've said it yourself and it's produced a reaction from others, but it's a loaded thing like you can't just drop this on the fly, like. That's like pulling out a gun in a crowded theater. You say not my job, you are inviting angst, pain, potentially a conversation with your manager. When was the last time you heard it, clark?
Speaker 1Or when was the last time you said it? Yeah, to your point, it definitely is is it's loaded? And it's loaded if you think about, like, when does it? When does it occur? Okay, that's what got me thinking of like, what is the, what is the typical reason or the motivation behind saying it? And I think the biggest motivation and this is the one that hurts the most it means somebody didn't do something correctly or there's a need, there's a need out there that's being unfulfilled, and that's typically when you hear it. You're all sitting there and, man, it would be great if somebody did this, because it would really help us progress this. And then everybody looks at each other like, well, not my job, or that's probably the last time.
Speaker 2I heard it, davey, can you, could you take this on as part of your assignments for this week? Not my job, yep, or that's not what I was hired for. The eloquent answer.
Speaker 1Yes, that's the way, corporate way to say it is. Hey, sorry, not in my job description, not part of my department. Can't help you there Not my can it's interesting.
Foot Problems and Recovery Updates
Speaker 1I actually think it can be used innocently too, absolutely, which is why it's so heavy. It's like it can be sarcastic. It can be like a backhanded compliment to somebody of, like you know, someone just dropped the ball and isn't doing well. It could be a true gap that's out there that nobody is fulfilling, and I think that's I probably have heard it most in the last two. Like the innocent one is pretty rare, I think yeah, at least in my experience, but the there's a gap and no one's fulfilling it, or it's backhanded to say well, sorry, not my job. Like that is the sarcastic. Somebody didn't do something right or they're failing again to fulfill what we need them to do. That's when I hear it the most.
Speaker 2It. It is almost all. I love the way you set this up, because it is almost always a failure on someone else that is now being trickled down to someone else to fix. And that's when you break this out. Right, because, like in the back of your mind, when you whip out the not my job, it's because you're thinking, well, that was Jeff's job, like that was his responsibility, and now I'm being asked to do it, like I'm gonna say these words.
Speaker 2But let me tell you as a, as a manager or as as a person who's a leader, the second you hear not my job. All you can think is I want to punt this person into the sky for uttering this and saying this, because how much of the things do all of us do that isn't our job. And you know, fundamentally, the problem is they're right, it's not their job. I would assume 99% of the time people say not my job. They're accurate, like very rarely do they say it, and they're like oh, actually, no, it wasn't my contract. Lol, lmfao, sorry about, about it I'll do better next time turns out it was my job 99 of the time.
Speaker 2It's not their job, but saying it is bad yep 100.
Speaker 1What's?
Speaker 2that about.
Speaker 1It doesn't look good to say that no but it's true, yeah, yeah, it's like, and I think of it actually recently. I have an example. Um, you know, being in product, I have an expectation of my team to understand data. You know they should be looking at the data for what they're building, the features that they're building, see if they're hitting their kpis, if it's fulfilling our okrs. I'm using these acronyms.
Speaker 2Gross.
Speaker 1If you don't know them, just start Urban Dictionary and you'll figure it out. So, whenever they're doing that, I'm like I need you guys to make sure you don't need to know like SQL to like query this data. That is not an expectation of your job, but you should know how to pull up a dashboard that's pointing to our data source and be able to look at the data of your feature. Like you probably wrote the requirements for the data gathering, and so you should be able to like see, are we doing good, Are we not doing good? That's my expectation and, for whatever reason, instead of doing that, they write the requirements but they never look at the data. And I'm like so can you show me the dashboard? And they're like well, we're waiting on the analytics team to put a dashboard together. So I'm like well, can you tell me, like generally, are we doing good, Are we doing bad? And they can't.
Introducing "Not My Job" Dilemma
Speaker 1And I'm like hold on, I don't know how to build a beautiful dashboard that the analytics team would give me, but I know enough to get in there the data. Yeah, I know enough to like I know where the data is. I have access to the tools. I'm not going to build. You know a funnel chart that shows the dropout rate at each step of whatever we're building. But I'm going to be able to say X, amount of people have used this thing, X, Y amount of people have converted. Therefore, our conversion rate is whatever. Like I should be able to know that. And whenever I hear that and it just kind of deflects it, they're just like yeah, well, that team's doing it and they're not saying it, but they're saying it. That's not my job to build these dashboards. Yeah, they're like well, I'm blocked, I'm waiting on the analytics team. I'm like that's not an excuse, Okay, so.
Speaker 2I'm going to, I'm all reverse this on you. What happens if they've done the work and you know that they've? They've gotten their data, they've, they've built their charts, they've put together their presentation, but the data is bad, and you know it. But they don't know it because they're pulling from the source and you say, well, well, this, this data is bad. You should have gone and done a further investigation into the data and saw that it wasn't good and it wasn't usable. Uh, not my job, like truly right. Like that's not the job you hired. You didn't hire them to be data scientists, right, like when?
Speaker 2And then this is the problem. This is the problem, this is the fundamental problem is there's this weird little spectrum of yeah, you could do this and you're just being, you know, pedantic. The time it's taking for you to worry about this and go off and do it is less than the time it would take just to go do it. And also there is the well, if you go and do this, you're basically letting someone else get off the hook and they're never going to do it and you're probably going to just continue to do it again because they suck at their jobs. So then the like, in either case, when you say not my job, it still hurts, right. Like I don't know how to solve for this phrase, I don't know how to do it for this phrase.
Speaker 1I don't know how to do it. It's usually, you know, a resource gap, yes, a skill gap, or a prior or a prioritization issue. Like it's usually one of those three things like if you think about like okay, you've got a team that's got the skill to do it, but they're not prioritization issue you've got the skill or you don't have the skill to do the job, so you're like I don't even know how to like write requirements for good data skill issue. You know you can train that. You can find the gap there. You're like, okay, this person doesn't really know how to build good metrics, to measure kpis. You know we can work on that together.
Speaker 1That's a skill issue and sometimes there's just no one to do it. Probably in you know the startup case where you have it's like we don't have anybody. That's a resource issue, or we don't have the budget to pay for this thing Resource issue and so like it usually comes down to one of the three things. In my opinion, like the examples I've seen, it's like, as a manager, those are what my head goes through and like I asked them, I'm like, okay, there's a team that does this. Did you reach out to them? You should have been able to pull the normal numbers and just like get a general sense, like that's my expectation of you. Skill issue so a combination of the two. It's like prioritization for that team and a skill issue on my own team to understand how to get that data.
Speaker 2So I think these are the three. These are the three pillars that not my job falls into. Nailed it. What do you say instead? So I think, for the first one, people and I'll talk about the people issue, cause I deal with this on a day-to-day basis right, like starting as employee number four. Now we've got over. I don't even know. We're like, we're approaching like 200 or we're past. I don't, I don't keep track.
Speaker 2There were many times when I could say not my job, but truly, who's going to do it if not me? And it's one of the like yeah, I could ask this guy to do it and they probably would, but would they do it as well as me? Like for the success of the company, for the success of myself and my brand and everything around me. When you are small or you don't have the people to fill in, you should not say not my job. Instead, if you can do it, you should. If you can't do it, have a conversation and find someone who can be like I'm just I'm worried that my skillset might not fit to solve for this people problem. But the real solve here is if it becomes a repeatable offense wow, I'm not doing my job a lot. We need to hire for this role. This is eating up a lot of my time. Come with data. You know I spend 25% of my week doing these demo calls. I'm not a sales engineer. We should probably get some SEs at the company.
Speaker 1Yeah, I love that. That's the people problem. The first one, the resource, you know, people problem. I think it's exactly what you just said. It's hey, I understand this needs to be done, so I'm attempting to do it, but you know, I feel like I'm slacking on my current job. So can you help me?
Speaker 1I'm thinking from the employee, not the manager perspective, but your role as an employee is you have to come to your boss and say, hey, I'm struggling to balance this in my working hours because I have to do all this extra work but also my current job. Am I doing too much? Can you help me figure out how to balance these two things? Because I feel like I'm not effectively doing my day job and you're asking me to do extra, and because it could be you set the and I do this.
Speaker 1You probably are the same, being a type A person If I'm going to do something and I love to say this line I don't half-ass it, I whole-ass it, and so, even if I don't know it, I'm going to try to do it because I want to be successful, and then my manager's got to run me back to be like okay, I need you to do like 10% of what you did, because this report was super awesome. Not everything we need, and if you need to make back time, don't do nine pages out of those 10, do the one page.
Speaker 2I love that. I think that's the way, and I think you never say not my job in that scenario. Instead, you have a very frank conversation about your skill, if that's the issue, or you bring it up as a hey, this is eating into my ability to perform my current role, like we should probably fill this gap, otherwise it's going to impact our deliverables.
Speaker 1Yeah, and on the skill one because you said the people one, but I think the skill one you know that conversation could be phrased differently If it's part of your day job and you feel like you just aren't being successful. You know you're moving slower than everybody else, or there's a new expectation that, like you just don't feel like is getting the results that you need. Like, let's say, you switch to a different programming language or something and you feel like you're just really struggling to keep up with the team that's working on that. Or you know you're working 60 hours and you're only doing like half the story points. If you work in like agile software development as somebody else, you should probably go to your manager and be like, hey, I'm really trying to learn this. You know, inside my working hours complete my tasks, but, to be honest with you, I feel like I'm not keeping up with the rest of the group.
Speaker 1What if I went to a training, you know, in order to learn more about whatever this is? Because I feel like that could really help that knowledge gap and I could be more productive. And so, like what you said is perfect, bruce, it's like go with a tangible output to say I went to my manager. I didn't say it was a skill issue. I said I acknowledge I'm not moving as quickly. I want to be more productive. So the positive angle of it. And then you gave an option. You said I think this training would help. So you gave the specific resource that you need that you think will help you do better.
Speaker 2And I think by doing that, you did everything you could do.
Speaker 2Here's the thing about that specific approach which I love is, if it's truly not your job, your manager is going to be like, why the heck would we send you to training for something that's not your responsibility? We need to fix this problem. If this is like, if this is doing this much time and effort away from like your, your focus, like I got to go have a conversation with my director because this isn't right. Like we shouldn't be sending you off for training for not your job, Get them to say not your job, right. Like now you've won. If someone else says not your job to you, you've won the game. But I think that's such a good one because it requires budget. It showcases your ability to kind of want to go and do better and do more even though this is not your job. Like really good mental jujitsu to reverse, take down that situation.
Speaker 1Rear naked. Chokehold your manager. That's what you got to do. Yes, thanks, they love the word exactly HR loves when you say that I'm gonna. I love going to hr and telling them hey, my conversation with my employee put them right into a rear naked chokehold they hr loves that.
Speaker 2They do love it. They do love it, actual jujitsu move yeah, and on that note it's.
Three Pillars of Workplace Refusals
Speaker 1You know, I think I actually recently had somebody do this where they wanted to get like a project management certificate, not a product management certificate, and I know what the certificate is and I know people that have gotten it in a different department, and so it makes it interesting for me as the manager. Like they reached out and said, hey, I think I want to go for this certification or whatever, and obviously I want to be supportive, but everything they're going to learn in that is not necessarily their role. So that got my brain thinking. I'm like I need to reach out to this person and we need to have a conversation around. Why do you feel like this would be helpful in your day-to-day? And then I can understand as a manager are they spending a lot of time doing more of project management than product management?
Speaker 1Because, frankly, project management is not their job. I need them to be talking to customers, I need them to be writing requirements. I don't need them to be project management or product managing their projects. That is a whole other department that needs to do that role. So that'll help me, as a manager, understand. Are they spending a lot of time doing something that they shouldn't be doing. And now I need to reach out to the manager of that group so that way they can actually get their team to work and do what they need to be doing. Or is it just a general interest, which in that case, great. But I'll probably point them, I'll deflect them a little bit to the side and say why don't you go for the product owner, product manager certificate? Because I feel like you get a lot of learnings that are directly towards this role and I have budget to support those things. Love it love it.
Speaker 2What was the third pillar?
Speaker 1you either have a people or budget, people or budgets? A resource issue resource right, is there a team or not a team? Is their budget is or not budget? You have skill, right? That's the second one and then the third one um, oh shoot, are we both blanking on it? Play this back, craig. Craig, roll back the tape. Roll back the tape. If only this could happen. This is why we need ai, craig. We need an ai version of you tape. Roll it. He's not doing, it's gonna come yeah, nothing's happening.
Speaker 2Nothing's happening. Craig is drinking pepsi, giving me the. I got it yeah, I got.
Speaker 1It came back. I can use my brain. Sometimes I'm not fully good to do this. It's a prioritization issue prioritization.
Speaker 2That's the third pillar. Yeah, it's my favorite element prioritization is it?
Speaker 1yeah, I think it's a pr on the periodic table.
Speaker 2Maybe number 336 sounds right yeah, right next to pepsi, yeah my favorite one.
Speaker 1Um, yeah, that one is interesting. It's like is it a? Hey, you're not getting your stuff done? And then they're like, well, you know, that part's not my job, or is it? You know, I reached out, or I I have a bad expectation of my employee as a manager and they're coming to me saying, sorry, that thing didn't get done, you know not my job. And then is it? I guess I'm trying to think through the different scenarios, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2So I mean I'm thinking like from a, from a marketing perspective. You know we're looking to create some new assets, some new video assets, and it's like, well, my team does written, we do written assets here, but like video is the highest priority right now. Like we need a lot of video and we only have got one guy who's working on it. Can your team help? It's the highest priority. Like, yeah, it does fall a little bit under skill and resource, but like it's, it's when you might have those things, but not enough, because the priority shifts.
Speaker 2I think your your example of learning a different language in coding is also really good, because chances are someone was hired because oh, oh, yeah, I'm proficient in Java, but this new project using Python, I mean, I'm still, I was hired to write Java and we still have things to work on in Java. But like, yeah, it would help if I learned Python for our overall you know, efficiency and speed. So, like you can, kind of prioritization is almost like the offset for the other two, where it might not be a permanent problem, but you could definitely see someone being like, well, it's not my job to write, yeah, python I, I wasn't hired for that. I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1So yeah, go find someone who can write like yeah, going back to the analytics example I was getting, and the perfect example was, yeah, they reached out to this team. We have a whole team, so there is no resource issue here, like there's a team who does these things. And, you know, my employee came to me like, well, I don't have a dashboard, I'm blocked by this team and it's a prioritization issue of the other team and maybe, to your point, that is the offset, because maybe they need more resources to support all the work. I don't know their deal that to support all the work. I don't know their deal.
Speaker 2That's their thing to figure out, but for me I'm like, well, it's a priority for us.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, they're really awful. The worst, they should get fired. Lay them off, you know, pip them, pip them all. But it's like it's a priority for us and I don't know everything else going on over there. So it does feel like, hey, is this more important than the stuff they're currently working on? Maybe not, and that's kind of my role as a manager to go talk to them and be like hey, you know, we really rely on your team to create these dashboards so that we ensure, as we're building things and launching them, we know if they're successful or not, and we need your team support. And so it's kind of both.
Speaker 1It's like well, I'm going to train my team to know enough to get the high level numbers so we can know if we're going in the right direction or if something, detrimentally, is wrong.
Speaker 1And then I'm also going to reach out to that manager to be like hey, let's talk about like how you can better support my team, and maybe it is a budget resource issue. And they're like well, we just can't balance everything and we talk about the prioritization of everything. And they're like yeah, you're right, like you've got a lot of high priorities you need to put in a staffing request and my project is happy to help pay for a contractor in the meantime to do the work and that'll help with the prioritization issue on that team, because I can't control resources for that team. I can only help try to prioritize my work and help support them to get their own resources. So it is really interesting to think about it from that angle because I think it does kind of work as an offset but at the same time it's almost like in bigger organizations how you figure out what the true issue is. Yep.
Speaker 2I think it's interesting because prioritizations are probably the reason why not my jobs happen as often as they do. It's usually like the people problem. That's a startup issue. That's a growing pain, the skill issue, probably caused by prioritization. Right Like you were hired because you were skillful and now you're struggling because priorities have changed and what you were hired for is no longer the job you're expected to do, or there has been additional things added to your job that you were not hired for and not my job. No, that's reprioritization. It is your job actually.
Speaker 1I agree. There's one more angle that's interesting.
Speaker 1I actually think and maybe this is controversial, I'm curious on your perspective From a manager perspective, telling your team that's not your job is actually a positive thing yes, agree I, maybe that's all it goes yeah, yeah, because, like I, I work for an organization that you can very easily start doing everyone else's job, working way more hours, you know, not really doing what you're supposed to be doing, prioritization, and I know there's an organization that does that. So when I know if my team's doing something like you, have somebody on your team who is a project manager, like this is their job and there's a balance, it's like in crunch time in companies or big launches or something like the lines get blurred between the jobs and it's like I don't want to hear, if this is our number one priority for our company, that it's not someone's job. Someone take a bias for action and do it, regardless of who it is.
Speaker 2Someone's got to get it done.
Speaker 1Bias for action.
Speaker 2My goodness.
Speaker 1You've got to have a bias for action.
Speaker 2Do you have a master's?
Speaker 1I didn't know about, got to get my MBA Harvard Business School. Okay, wow, wow, impressive. Like crunch time, you got to like blur those lines. It's like that's not the right contextual time to be like sorry, not my job, it's like that doesn't matter. Like we got to launch in two days.
Speaker 2All hands on deck.
Speaker 1Yeah, all hands on deck, it doesn't matter, I'll do it myself. And sometimes it's like I tell my team this it's like we'll happily jump in there and code with the engineering team. You probably don't want that as the engineering team. So how else can we help? You know, can we test stuff. You know if you do a build, can we play around with it. Try to see if we can break anything to help the QE team.
Speaker 1And I think like that's the contextually wrong time to use sorry, not my job. It's like you're jeopardizing something that's important to the company. You can't do that. However, there is a right time to do it where, if you have organizations and departments and people that are dedicated to roles, if you are going to make your team work really well in their craft and going to contribute the skill set that the organization desperately needs to the highest ability, you can't have them doing other people's jobs. And I didn't believe this when I first became a manager. I was like, no, just do whatever needs to be done, it doesn't matter. Blur the lines always.
Speaker 1And over time, like I've realized, it's more about telling your team like how do you leverage your partners to get work done if they're not doing their role, and you should talk to me about it if you feel like you're doing someone else's role, so we can figure out the appropriate time to break the cog in the machine if we need to. So much as to, I've had team members come to me and say, hey, clark, if I don't do this thing right now, it's going to fail. And sometimes the answer is, hey, this is not that important. I know you think everything's important. It's okay. Like I really appreciate how much you care about this. This right now, is a good time to basically let the cog in the machine break so that way the pressure gets put on the right team, so they fix their issue, because we can't fix it for them and we've had conversations. They aren't addressing the issue. So now's the time to let things fail and hopefully it'll bring awareness to the gaps that we have that have been escalated and haven't been solved.
Speaker 2And so I think that's the balance of the manager I love this because I agree wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2As a manager, I find myself whenever I notice my team is doing something or being asked to do something that is not their job, especially if it's by someone whose job it is to do the thing, that's like, oh, I get to go have a conversation, this is going to be fun. Why aren't you doing this and asking my team to do it? That is your job, not theirs, and it's so good for a manager to do that for you? Like and I think that is the alternative to this is you never say not my job, but absolutely get your manager to say it on your behalf? Right, like that's the secret to this fight, because it's going to put the other person on if it is a resource issue.
Speaker 2And there's like, why isn't you know janine over there doing her job? Like why is she asking you to do it? Like it's it's never going to work with peer going after peer. It's got to be manager. Either needs to go talk to janine or janine's manager and be like what the heck is going on and why is she not able to do this thing? She's being asked to do, um, and that's that's the power of it. Right, like there is some power to not my job, but it's only when you don't say it, it's when someone else says it on your behalf.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely yeah. It's really interesting to like think about you know both perspectives from the individual side, like how you approach your management team to do it on your behalf. And then for the manager side of like how you the right and wrong times to allow for it or not allow for it. How do you coach your team to do it at the right times? Because, yeah, if it's like super critical and everyone's just saying, well, sorry, we got to let the cog in the machine break, it's like no, no no.
Speaker 1We got to launch this product because we promised customers it'd be out by this day. It's like I will help and I think that's like the good example to set. It's like I'm not, as a manager, berating you for saying not my job. It's hey, I understand. Like pressures are high right now. Everybody's working long hours. How can I help you? Like what can I do to assist, because it's that important. And so I think that's like if you're a manager, you've got to understand that if it's crunch time, you can't just say do the extra work, stop complaining about it. It's if your team's coming to you and they're expressing that they're doing other people's jobs, but you know it's crunch time You've got to lean in a little bit and say how do I help, take on things to help get this priority done for the organization?
Speaker 2Agreed and I think that's that's it right, like that's the. That's the way to round this out is approach the situation not from a point of not ignorance. What is it? Stubbornness or insolence? Approach it from problem solving and get your manager to not your job on your behalf. This is how you grow. This is how you do it. Um, you got any?
Speaker 1other thoughts. Clark, no, no, that was, I agree. I think we pretty much covered it.
All Hands Meetings: A Naval Misnomer
Speaker 2Okay, I need to make a really quick pivot. Okay, because you said you said all hands on deck and then I thought all hands. Those are those meetings. You know, everyone has all hands meetings. All hands, all hands, two words. We couldn't say all hands on deck, we call them the all hands meetings. Now, clark, all hands, all hands. Hold your hands up, Start with feet and with hands. Listen, I got a question for you, clark.
Speaker 2How often would you say an all hands meeting is a crisis that needs everyone to help with? Never. How often would your all-hands meetings fulfill that description? Never, never. You say Never. You say Well, would you be shocked to know that in you know pirate terms, aka naval terms, all-hands-on-deck is a crier signal used on board ship, typically in an emergency, to indicate that all members are to go to deck. All members of a team are required. It is a crisis that needs everyone's help. Typically, a Navy vessel's crew is divided into watches, so the crew rotation between being on duty and sleeping and eating does not require an all-hands situation. So my question to you is how did we F this up so badly that we just call our monthly, quarterly, whateverly, the entire company's meeting? Why doesn't it just call the company meeting, company check-in, quarterly check-in All hands, can we?
Speaker 2do nothing right.
Speaker 1It's an unnecessary escalation.
Speaker 2It's so unnecessary I refuse to participate in All Hands ever again, unless it's an actual crisis or emergency.
Speaker 1Let me ask you this. Ask me Should you ever attend a pre-planned months ahead? All Hands.
Speaker 2Excuse me, the heck you say.
Speaker 1Never. I'm about to get aggressive Clark. I'm about to get real aggressive.
Speaker 2We just read you, bless you. Did you just say a pre-planned month before all hands, meeting, meeting it?
Speaker 1hits your calendar how do you?
Speaker 2react I would burn this company's headquarters to the ground. There would be nothing left but armrests. Fire retardant armrests is all that would remain of this building. The rest would be gone.
Speaker 1If that ever happens, I think you reply all immediately and you copy and paste the definition from the naval terms.
Speaker 2Is this a naval crisis for emergency? Is this truly worthy of all hands on deck?
Speaker 1How do you know that you're going to need all hands on that specific day three months from now? That you're going to need all hands on that specific day three months from now? The answer is you don't. Here's the definition of an all hands. I suggest you cancel this meeting and change the name. That's how you respond.
Speaker 2Retitle it Company quarterly check-in. All hands, get out of here. All hands, I'm done, I'm tired. Feet next, only feet, great that is ridiculous.
Speaker 1I mean I agree, my company does a town hall. I like that.
Speaker 2I like a town hall. Town hall is great. Town hall makes sense because the town comes together in a central location to talk through issues. Town hall is great. Town hall is such a better-fitting description than All Hands Agreed, the All Hands meeting.
Speaker 1All Hands should be emergencies. Only, like you, should get an invite hours before the day before to be like, drop everything. You need to be at this meeting tomorrow.
Speaker 2That is an appropriate use of the term. I would accept this meeting. I would say, okay, all Hands on deck. That is an appropriate use of the term. I would accept this meeting. I would say, okay, all hands on deck, let's go. Everyone get there. It's do or die. The ship is sinking. There are pirates on the horizon. Starboard side, starboard. Hit the poop deck. Aft Bow. Damn the torpedoes. We're going down.
Speaker 1Why do I just have a lingering feeling that this is somehow going to end up in the periodic table again, just from you using this vernaculum? Vernaculum, that's the element. It's like vernacular, but it's the element. On the table.
Speaker 2It's the element for words. You know what words are made out of Vernaculum Vernacular.
Speaker 1Vernacular came from the periodic table Vernaculum V-E, if you will when we're finished recording.
Speaker 2you know what I have on my desktop Podcastium.
Speaker 1Everything deserves to be a no. In it, it's true, all handsium.
Speaker 2All handsium, not my jobium.
Speaker 1Oh well, I think. In short, to summarize this whole entire podcast, it's don't say not my job, would you agree? Like this whole podcast could have been like 10 seconds, just say hey, just don't say, not my job.
Speaker 1Just don't say not my job, just don't. And in general and maybe maybe this goes against human nature I'm all about it, I don't think, I don't even think to me. It's a waste of time, even though you're blowing off some steam. It's a waste of time to be joking around with everyone else and being like, oh yeah, not my job, like there's an underlying issue and by you not doing something about it, you're wasting everyone's time Like you're sitting. This is the reason for unneeded meetings.
Speaker 2It has become a saying to me and this could be my own bias for inaction at play, but when I hear someone say it, I think less of them and I'll never forget it. It goes forever in my little brain box.
Final Thoughts and Podcast Wrap-Up
Speaker 1I think oh yeah, they said not my job. Yikes, I agree. I'm going to give you a pro tip. If you're listening, are you ready? Pro tip it. The people who climb and successfully climb the corporate ladder don't say not my job. No, they figure out, they identify the need and if it's that critical, they do it and that's typically how they get promoted. You know what I say to that. You want to go back to podiatry or I think that does it.
Speaker 2I think we're good. I think we're great.
Speaker 1I think we've gone head to feet to toes.
Speaker 2Head to toes, head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes, eyes and ears and mouth and nose.
Speaker 1Head, shoulders, knees and toes.
Speaker 2Knees and toes. If you want to play along with us, join the Discord Discordium. Inside of there we have protons and electrons, but specifically we have a channel called what Do you Meme where you can make a meme of our previous episode. Please use meme format for our own mouth parts. We're going to describe the meme with our words. We don't have any. We need some.
Speaker 1We need you to go on the what.
Speaker 2You Meme channel and create a meme for the Not my Job episode. Do it Best, meme wins Go. We also have is it me or is it corporate? A channel where you can forward, slash, confess and tell us your anonymous confession and we will tell you whether or not it is a you problem or a corporate problem. The discord general is great. You can join it by clicking on the link tree in the show. Notes get in there, get discording it notes get in there, get discording. It's a good place. We've got good people. We also have the ability for you to go off and buy baby onesies. You want to buy cool swag from us? You can check out our website. You can share this podcast with your friends. You can do so much. You can do so much of corporate strategy beyond just listen to this in your podcast feed.
Speaker 1But most importantly is review and share, if you can, yeah we need a, we need me beyond just listen to this in your podcast feed. But most importantly is review and share if you can. Yeah, we need a, we need meme-ium, we need review-ium, we need share-ium it's.
Speaker 2I mean, half of those are real. I'm I'm convinced. Two of the three. This is a trick.
Speaker 1There's not one right one in there. This is a trick. There's not only one, they're actually all three real.
Speaker 2Yeah, I knew it, okay. Hey, if someone asks you to do chemistry, what do you tell them?
Speaker 1I don't know, I didn't even my brain just shut down when you said that.
Speaker 2Hey Clark, I know it's Thursday, but can you just go and whip us up some hydrogen chloride please?
Speaker 1We need it desperately right now If someone asks me for chemistry, I'm immediately grabbing a roll of Mentos in a Coke bottle. Chemistry First thing that came to mind. You know what?
Speaker 2I do. What's that? I look them square in the eyes and say not my job. I'm Bruce and I'm Clark and you're on mute. We will see you next week, it's the wrong button.
Speaker 1That was incredible. You just leave and it's just me and Craig.
