What’s your b̶o̶x role?
Roles are like boxes. People like boxes. They create, in most, the sense that the world (or house) is tidy.
In companies, you also have boxes. Actually, a lot of different boxes: you can be a CEO, an Accountant, a Developer, or if you want to have a smaller box a Mobile Developer... or even smaller an Android Developer.
Boxes are also what rules LinkedIn profiles and business cards. Basically what everyone adds when creating a LinkedIn profile is… a title for his role: the box where he’s at!
Most people want to have the shiniest box they can, it’s their demonstration of success! That has some curious effects on how people perceive you.
Story ahead:
The first time Web Summit came to Portugal (Lisbon) I applied and got a free ticket (from Open Source).
So I went there, curious to see and learn from what seemed a really promising conference.
Honestly… I didn’t learn a thing, nor enjoyed it much. Still I manage to have some of the most surreal experiences. One of them was at a private party I got invited to, from a company that works with App Stores. Since the conference itself was being so boring — basically vc/money and oil snake oriented — I decided: “well, why not, let’s see if at least this is fun”.
I ended up going with some friends. While there chatting with them something happened multiple times: someone would arrive near us, and start chatting with me, asking all sorts of things, and seeming quite interested in the conversation… until they asked me what was my role at the company.
As soon as I said something that didn’t have “manager”, “head” or something starting with “C” they would simply turn their backs and go. This is not even a metaphor or exaggeration, it really happened.
Sometimes an “aid” of theirs would come and say they were sorry that their CEO, Chairman or whatever has “a special way” with people that quoting “may seem rude but is just their way”…
This would just make things even weirder…
Anyway… now I present myself as an Improver, which has the effect of making those kinds of people confused:
What the hell? What role is that? What… ?!
It’s just hilarious… and it also makes the more interesting ones stay and ask more questions.
Anyway those boxes have a clear effect: they make people have a very narrow scope of action within the company: either it’s within your role or it isn’t… and if it isn’t you’re normally not allowed to do it (either implicitly or explicitly when a “manager” confronts you…since you have stepped outside your box…). I dare to say this is even more common amongst managers that become irate as someone else is entering their “domains”.
But real life shouldn’t be about boxes, it should be about people and their full potential.
So it’s always refreshing to work at Mindera where boxes aren’t the main dish, and you can actually title yourself whatever you want, but more importantly, use your passions to do things from totally “different boxes”.
If you think titles are indispensable as they help to point what people are good at then you are reducing the visibility of skills and capabilities of each person just to their tiny box.
Struggling to see how to make this work? You can instead of boxes have a giant table where each person can have ✓ on an infinite number of skills/capabilities they possess. There you have it, a way to still have your “tidy house” without reducing people to boxes and titles.
Skeptic?
What should be the title of someone that: develops code (mobile and BE), helps teams grow with feedback sessions, takes care of the internships, does tech and cultural interviews, writes articles, helps rethink internal processes, interview students, teachers and teach (when I can) at Mindera School, find spaces for new offices, prepare events and helps with the copyright of campaigns like these:
This is a hard box to name… and I’m not special, nor do assume I’m “the 🦄 that thinks out of the box”.
What’s certain is that I’m out of any kind of box… and I’m not alone 💛!
Ps: After some really nice feedback on this 🤗 some people used the “outside the box” metaphor for what I’m implying. Well that’s not it, and that’s why I used that under quotes.
As Matrix implies very well, there is no s̶p̶o̶o̶n box: that’s the right way to explain it.
