Management 3.0: Work Profiles — Designing Your “Personal Brands”

The world of software development showed accelerated growth in the last time, this growth was accompanied by the creation of new roles and the modification of the responsibilities of the existing roles.

Normally in these situations, people must adapt to the role proposed or created by each organization, based on their history and experience.

This leads, in different situations, to people not thinking about the potential they can give to the organization and their colleagues, but rather focusing on adapting those characteristics to those of a particular profile.

As a team leader or a member of an organization, you might ask yourself: How could you motivate people to offer their services without being limited by a rigid and imposed description?

The attempt to answer this question appeared to me when I came across an unusual situation where development teams are concerned. As an Agilist in that team, I had the challenge of achieving the synergy of two types of groups of specialists with different approaches but to create the same product. A team focused on Product Design, with roles such as User Experience Expert, Visual Design, Marketing, and Business Analyst, and another as a technical team focused on construction (Developers, Dev Ops Eng, and QC analyst).

The first obstacle I faced was based on the needs of a project in which stereotypes, standards, and even work practices were a bit different. So I decided to find a way to forget the guidelines of the current profiles and propose to focus on the value and skills that each member can grant. Thinking about what we wanted to achieve as a team.

In this way, I applied a management 3.0 technique, called Work Profiles ( https://management30.com/practice/work-profiles/ ), which helped me answer the question posed at the beginning of this article.

Why Work profiles?

Work profiles propose that each person can briefly describe and propose a set of services and skills, within the context of an organization. It allows each person to adopt job titles that add value and identity to her stamp.

It proposes a simple and creative dynamic, which changes the paradigm regarding the roles and responsibilities posed by organizations. People should not adapt to a particular role, but design a description of the role or profile that will suit them, focusing on their self-knowledge and knowledge of their team or organization needs.

Step we follow

1. The first step was to create an online board in Miro, where the name and a picture of each team member were located.
2. Step two each member had 8 minutes to write a brief description of what they thought they could offer the organization, without emphasizing technical aspects or their usual responsibilities, but instead, I invited them to use their imagination to go further. of your current role.
3. Step 3 I proposed to think about the skills that they considered relevant or in which they felt safe to share with others, and they wanted the organization to know.
4. Step 4, they used their imagination to name that new role or profile, giving freedom to any idea, with the slogan that it should be as far as possible from the roles they currently have. Something interesting happened in this step since someone proposed to name the new roles after invented superheroes.
5. Based on what happened in the previous steps, and taking advantage of the initiatives, I proposed to create step 5, in which they visualize that superhero and create it using an online tool called Superhero Star (https://superherotar.framiq.com/)

As a facilitator I learned to lead people by reflecting on what they can offer to organizations and their colleagues, it predisposes people not only to a greater sense of belonging but also to create a better work environment and productivity.

The team learned that by freeing themselves from the labels, hierarchies, and descriptions of their current profiles, they would go much further, focusing on the value that they could provide in several contexts. This led to generating not only new conversations but also to propose a different way of working, seeing the opportunities for collaboration between profiles.

My next experiment will be to continue using the role visualization resource and its analogy with superheroes, investigating what powers or abilities they think they can give the organization. I will also focus on helping the team explain a little more in the description of their role, but focus on how they imagine their interaction with the other profiles.

Conclusion

Work profiles as dynamics bring us a little closer to having a real picture of the capacities and abilities that people in an organization or team possess. Encouraging each person to visualize what they look like by granting those skills to their peers generated a commitment to their description.

Commonly, these dynamics can´t generate a quick connection with people for their participation, which is a complex issue, and get them to move away from the models, descriptions, seniority, or technicalities imposed by the organizations.

In that case, I recommend you look for spaces within the dynamics that invite members to reflect and visualize themselves as collaborators, but playfully, allowing imagination, creativity, and freedom to express themselves.

I invite you to use Work Profiles whenever you want to support your team or organization in the design of their roles, encouraging each of them to provide that expected value.