Crafting Your Career: Transforming a ‘BS’ Job into Your Dream Role

Why We Should Keep “BS” Jobs

Traditional job roles are the backbone of every large organization. They offer a sense of stability and structure, ensuring that every cog in the machine knows its place and function. This clarity is crucial in large organizations where roles need to be defined to prevent chaos and ensure smooth operations. Clear job roles also help mark a path for career growth, signalling to employees the skills they need to develop and fostering deep expertise in their domain. This specialization often translates into efficiency and excellence.

With well-defined boundaries, traditional job roles have been the cornerstone of organizational structures. They offer a perception of predictability in an unpredictable world. In bloated organizations, these roles act as the glue holding the vast machinery together, ensuring that every piece, no matter how small, functions in sync.

These roles are not just about maintaining order. They allow for the cultivation of deep expertise. An individual rooted in a specific role can delve deep, mastering the nuances and subtleties of their domain, becoming not just an employee but a true craftsperson.

Why We Should Lose “BS” Jobs

On the flip side, in more modern organizations, there’s a growing sense that these rigid job structures are more of a hindrance than a help. People in “BS” jobs often add excessive bureaucracy and red tape, delaying decisions due to self-preservation and egos, resulting in more meetings, more emails, more duplication, and ultimately, less meaningful work.

Individuals in “BS” roles often force you to work in silos, never truly allowing cross-functional collaboration due to politics, legacy, and hierarchy. Progressive companies today champion fluid roles, where employees wear multiple hats, seamlessly transitioning between tasks and departments, enabled by new ways of working and culture hacking (which we will come back to later).

Finding Purpose in a “BS” Job

Do I think “BS” jobs exist? 100% hell yes. I’ve had one or two, and I’ve had bosses who seem like they’ve made a career out of it.

So what happens if you find yourself in a “BS” job and want to get out of it?

It often starts with a lot of pondering and identifying which activities in your role bring genuine value and which are redundant. What are your core strengths, passions, and aspirations? If the answers all lead to middle management, then do it again. If you come to the same conclusion, sit with it longer and identify what it is in that role specifically that not only gets you going but is impactful.

Remember the simple question to ask yourself: If I stop this role tomorrow, do things go south very quickly, or do things get better?

Transforming Your Role Out of the “BS” Group

The Art of Job Crafting: Shape and redefine your job to align it with your strengths and passions. Break free from the confines of traditional job descriptions and craft your role around what gives you energy.

Write the Job Description You Love: This may sound simple, but writing the job description you would love to have can help reframe the challenge. It’s like writing a breakup letter to the CEO instead of having an exit interview when you leave a business.

Seek Cross-Functional Collaboration: Engage actively with other departments to break silos and foster collaboration. Unfortunately, sometimes you’re in the shadow of fearful leaders who benefit from you being a best-kept secret. It’s sad but it happens. Break that mould, reach out to other people, and find an internal mentor who can support you and create that safe space for discovery.

Invest in Yourself: Upskill regularly to add more value to your role and stay ahead of the curve. Try to upskill for tomorrow, not the present. By the time you upskill to a standard for now, it will already be dated. Do some speculative future mapping.

Feedback is Gold: Cultivate a culture where feedback is actively sought and valued. While this may feel like a given, I’ve noticed it all depends on the leadership you’re under if this is proactively supported.

The Rub

The debate around “BS jobs” serves as a timely reminder for us to continually assess and redefine our roles. It’s a call to action to look in the mirror and ask ourselves some tough questions now and again: Who are we? What do we do? What value and impact do we have in our roles? And what impact would it have if we stopped overnight?