Nemesis by Job Description
Edition #090
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The Newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
ChatGPT Is the Best Journal I’ve Ever Used
This article by Dan Shipper provides a fascinating perspective on how ChatGPT is an excellent platform for journaling. The power of journaling is known as a personal development practice, but ChatGPT can take it to a different level, and rightly, as Dan puts it, ‘it never gets tired of listening to you’.
Here are some key ideas and thoughts from the article for you to think about:
AI is journaling on steroids. It is transforming journaling by being your coach and therapist.
It can uncover complex patterns in your thinking and provide you with clear narratives.
Can the next generation of journals be converted from monologue to dialogue? ChatGPT can do that as it is getting better at reasoning, interpreting and throwing more light on helping you with new contexts and thoughts.
ChatGPT can even take on different personas and help you by asking the right questions and providing some answers!
Technology always grows on people as they use it more and more. Some may feel it’s not a genuine experience, but it is set to transform these mindsets over time.
Read the article here.
The Career Success Playbook: How to Balance Personal and Professional Ambition
James Bellerjeau has an interesting background. He has studied psychology, law and business and has been a corporate lawyer for an S&P 500 firm. Lawyers are always known to be cold, rational, and driven by fact-based rather than emotional data. James is quite the opposite. He has added a new contra-perspective because of his background and combines it with the power of his contemplative thinking.
Here are some thoughts from the conversations for you to think and reflect on:
To become a leader, think beyond your role.
Stop comparing yourself to others.
Why do you need to define success internally rather than externally?
The best performers ignore job descriptions.
The power of patience and persistence in career success
You can listen to the entire conversation here:
Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Amazon Music
Leadership by Example
In this conversation, Narayana Murthy and T.V. Mohandas Pai share firsthand knowledge on building world-class businesses, assembling contributive boards and setting the highest standards in organisational design and governance.
Here are some ideas from this conversation to think about:
The importance of building confidence in people within India - Create programs that broaden the benefits. Focus on moving from Urban power to Rural power.
The transition to low-tech manufacturing in India and creating jobs for Urban Poor and Rural India - for the illiterates and semi-literates.
India’s work productivity is the lowest in the world. There is a need to change that.
Indian youth need to work hard and improve their work productivity.
As a leader, you must think strategically and execute it with relentless discipline.
You can watch the entire conversation by clicking the above link.
Nemesis by Job Description
The history of job descriptions can be traced back to 100 years when industrialisation was transforming the world. The job description brought rigour and order to organisational structures, roles, etc. JDs were a product of the industrial era and mass production when Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced scientific management, then famously called ‘Taylorism’. It was based on time and motion studies, as most jobs then were repetitive, fixed and static. What percentage of your work today is repetitive, fixed and static? The answer may be near single-digit or near zero. Many HR departments today create JDs, and people looking for jobs ask for JDs, but are they being made right, and are they still relevant in the information or digital era we live in today?
One telling statement James made in the conversation is that ‘Top Performers ignore job descriptions’. This is a powerful and thought-provoking statement. Why do top performers ignore job descriptions?
They innately understand that they require autonomy, mastery, and broader responsibilities to get the job done. They get things done, whatever effort it may take. They take control in their hands.
Job descriptions work well when you assemble disparate known components with a clear engineering blueprint. However, you must go beyond your job description to make things work when you need to ‘integrate’ and ‘orchestrate’ diverse ecosystems and platforms.
Most jobs today need to be done in the background of a certain amount of ambiguity and lack of clarity of how it needs to be done. Hence, sticking to restrictive JDs and hiding behind them is what poor performers tend to do. It is right on paper; nobody can fault them, but they fail in the workbenches of today.
Top performers know today’s jobs require thinking, adaptability and learnability as crucial skills to succeed. They use JDs only as a broad brushstroke of what they may be expected to do in a job role or position.
Top performers know working with people is critical to finding solutions to problems hitherto not solved, and therefore, they are problem solvers, not problem highlighters.
Finally, top performers know you can’t apply an ‘industrial worker’ mindset to an ‘information work’ or a ‘digital era work’ environment.
Top performers know time constraints and processes are not always bottlenecks in today’s jobs. It is conceptual clarity and integrative skills that make the difference in performance.
Mediocre or poor performers see JD as a way to diminish or shirk away from the job they have to do, while top performers see JD as a way to discover jobs to be done.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
How AI can transform journaling from a monologue to a dialogue.
Career success is the fine art of balancing personal and professional ambitions.
‘Low-tech’ manufacturing is a catalyst for India’s growth and GDP by bringing illiterates and semi-literates to the mainstream economy.