Just Do Your Bloody Job

Last month I think I was a little bit too cryptic in the title of my newsletter. So this month I’ll be a little more Direct.

If you want to keep your job, get promoted, build your business and have happy customers all you have to do is – do your job.

I seemed to have hit a nerve in the Happyology keynote, when I tell people if they wish to be happy at work and have a happy manager all they have to do is – their job.

Recently after a talk the MD of a large construction company thanked me for my presentation. He had just realised that he and his co-directors had spent the most part of the past year doing nothing more than setting up policies and procedures to ensure that people, just do their jobs.

People complain that we have no leadership, yet when walking into most companies you will find instead of leading, leaders are spending most of their time chastising, disciplining, negotiating with labour, the unions and sitting at the CCMA fighting with people who didn’t do their job. Imagine if that time was actually spent leading the company to new horizons!

I realised just the other day while watching Man United losing to Swansea that the reason they lost was because someone didn’t do his job. His job was to mark a player. He didn’t do his job. The opposition scored and United lost. It’s really the same with any sport, let’s see how the Boks do their jobs in England this month.

So whether it’s textbooks not getting delivered to children in rural areas, no supplies on hospital shelves or no nurses to deliver babies – someone just didn’t do their job.

Getting a divorce? Someone is not doing his job. Someone is not doing her job. Let’s face it when we sign up for a marriage it’s basically a job. The employment contract is pretty simple and read out and agreed to before God and all of your relatives, and hers.

Generally the holy guy will ask you in your position as wife / husband if you will have this woman / man to be your wife / husband, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love her / him, comfort her / him, honor, and keep her / him in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to her / him as long as you both shall live? You reply an emphatic “I will!”, and with that the employment contract is sealed.

For the most part and especially in the beginning it’s a fun job. There is the caring job, the listening job, the sharing job, the time and attention job, a few fun jobs, and all the other jobs that go into running a successful marriage. But then someone stops doing their job or just some of the jobs. That’s why I honestly believe that a more complete job description should accompany all marriage certificates. So when someone stops doing their job (the way they did them before the nuptials) they are in breach of contract and they can be called on to be accountable.

I was once asked if I could record clever messages for a call centre so that the customers would be occupied whilst on hold and waiting for the phone to be answered. My reply was simple; just answer the phone and help the customer immediately. In other words just do your job. Don’t make excuses as to why it can’t be done. Don’t tell me that I don’t realise (I love it when people tell me real-lies), and please don’t try and rationalize (tell me the rational-lies).

You accepted a job and the responsibility. You said “I will do the job”.So do the job! Don’t do it half, don’t do most of it, and don’t have good intentions or mean to do the job – just do your job.

I love the words of Vince Lombardi when he said, “Winning is an all-time thing. You don’t do things right once in awhile you do them right all the time.”

At this point I can see most managers and business owners are literally giving me a standing ovation and offering me s3xu4l favours. But before you hit the send button forwarding this message on to all the section heads to disseminate these words of wisdom, depth and philosophical amazing–ment at the next staff meeting, let’s not get ahead of ourselves shall we!

If you were doing your job your little minions would be doing theirs! People generally don’t do their jobs because there are no consequences. People complain about staff not being accountable and responsible. Lovely words, nice things to say around the boardroom or as a keynote at the company conference.  BUT …

What makes people accountable and responsible,
is knowing that consequences are real and dealt out firmly,
fairly and consistently!

Read that again!

Most leaders and managers should rather go and make chocolate or watches because they are too afraid of holding anybody accountable and they avoid conflict like the Swiss! Research tells us that 80% of people in any form of leadership capacity will avoid conflict and tolerate poor performance instead of confronting it head-on. Half of people in organisations will just merely work around the nonperformance. Non-performing people create a culture of frustration, anger and disappointment. It also creates one person who will be called upon not only to do their own jobs but to continuously do the job of the others who do not perform. In South Africa I think they’re called “the Kippie” or “Kippie the ….”

There are really three basic messages here today:

1. Do your job
2. If you are any form of leader do your job, by getting others do their jobs
3. Hold them accountable & make them responsible

Stop asking me to tell people to be accountable and responsible at your conference. Stop telling people to be accountable and responsible. Hold them accountable and responsible and you will have accountable and responsible people who do their jobs. If the people on the floor are not performing it’s because the manager is not performing. If the manager is not doing his job it’s because his director is not doing his job. This goes on and on until you find where the buck stops. And it normally stops at the person asking other people to be accountable and responsible for their jobs!

Life really isn’t that complicated. Just do your job. Nothing more, nothing less.

Have a great month, now that you’ve wasted 15 minutes reading this nonsense,

Go Do Your Job!