If you’re having continuing problems getting results from different employees in the same job, the problem may not be with your employees or even with your selection process. Your problem may be how the job is designed!

An article in Harvard Business Review*, found that the inability to get the right results from employees is often due to poor job design.

The article explains that pirates from the 17th century understood a critical point about management and designing jobs: bundling strategic and  operational work together in a job rarely brings optimal results.

There’s a reason why many employees will struggle in a job that has strategic and operational work requirements. Here’s why this job design seldom works: strategic work requires risk taking and innovative thinking while operational work requires conscientiousness and systematic thinking. Pirates understood that it is rare to find individuals who excel at both strategic and operational work.

The article explains that on a pirate ship strategic work included tasks such as target identification, command during battle, and negotiating alliances to form fleets.  Operational work included tasks such as allocating arms, distributing loot, and organizing care for the sick and injured.

What did pirates do differently when they designed jobs for their ships?

They made the captain responsible for strategic duties and the quartermaster responsible for operational duties. This made sense.

Generally, a person who wanted to be a captain of a pirate ship loved the thrill of the battle. This person would probably be impatient with organizing care for the sick.  A quartermaster general, on the other hand, who excelled at organizing care for the sick might be less skilled at leading men into battle.

As we return to the modern world of work, it’s important when different employees fail in a job to correctly assess why the problem keeps occurring. Generally, when employee performance suffers, the reason might include  any of the following:

• Employee did not have the right skills for the job.
• Manager did not have effective interviewing skills.
• Orientation process was ineffective.
• Training was not provided.
• Manager had poor interpersonal skills.
• Employee was not rewarded appropriately.
• Employee was not motivated to perform.
• Compensation was insufficient.

Any of these reasons could be why different employees are failing in the same job, BUT the problem may be simpler.  It may be that the job that you want them to do is not designed inappropriately. If this is the case, then anyone you hire is coming into a difficult situation that will probably leave everyone unhappy.

So, what’s the lesson for you and your team of employees?

If you’re having problems with different people performing the same job, there can be different reasons why this occurs.

Maybe, it is the employee.

Maybe it is something you’re doing.

Or, maybe the job design is the culprit.

Poor job design that arbitrarily combines strategic and operational tasks in a job will likely set up an employee for failure.  It is rare to find individuals who excel at strategic and operational tasks.

Separating strategic and operational tasks, like organizations frequently do at the top level (CEO vs COO), is often a better option.

Your problem may not be the willingness of your team of employees to do the work. The real culprit may be that the job you want an employee to do does not match his or her skill level and interests.

You may be expecting too much of them.

*Column: What 17th-Century Pirates Can Teach Us About Job Design (Harvard Business Review)