Role Descriptions as Strategic Documents

Every employee has two questions for their manager:

1. What do you need me to do?
2. How am I doing?

If your role descriptions can't answer both — they're not doing their job.

Most companies treat role descriptions as HR paperwork. Something you write once, file away, and dust off when someone quits.

That's the mistake. A role description is a strategic document. Here's what it should do:

✅ Tie tasks and responsibilities to actual organizational goals ✅ Generate real interview questions (right people, right seats) ✅ Give managers a foundation for coaching, not just correcting ✅ Anchor performance reviews in something specific

Here's what turns it into a junk drawer instead:

❌ A grab-bag of tasks built around a person, not a role ❌ Never reviewed or updated (static instead of dynamic) ❌ Loaded with how to do the work — that's what SOPs are for ❌ Never actually used in interviews or reviews ❌ Tasks with no clear link to company goals — if a task doesn't ladder up to why, employees are just doing it because they were told to

So how do you actually build one that holds up?

Not alone, and not from a template.

A role description gets built by an accountable manager working with their own manager — because the level of the work has to be calibrated from above.

Here's a simplified example:

A senior manager is operating at Level 3 — thinking 1-2 years out. They need a new role filled at Level 1 — work that spans 1 day to 3 months.

They don't build that role description alone. They work with the Level 2 manager in between — the one thinking 3-12 months out — to define the new tasks.

Together, they map out "what by when": → Some tasks: done in a week → Some: a month → The longest task: 2 months

That longest task is what defines the actual level of the role.

This isn't guesswork. It's Elliott Jaques' Time Span of Discretion — one of the most underused tools in organizational design. The length of the longest task an employee is trusted to complete without check-in tells you the true level of the work — regardless of title.

Every task on that role description should trace back to a specific strategic objective. If it doesn't, don't be surprised when someone asks: "Why am I doing this?"