One Topic: 1 - Designing the Right Jobs for the Right People, with Joe Moglia
This is the first of what will be an ongoing series called "One Topic." The aim of the series is to bring in a guest and have one good, short discussion on a specific topic. Whether that discussion takes up a few sentences or a few paragraphs (or more) is up to the guest answering the question, but my hope is to create a series of high-quality responses from high-quality people in a variety of different fields.
These responses may take the form of a written response, short podcast episode, or a conversation with me in which I’ll then write a short article on the topic, which is the format of this initial post.
Our first guest is Joe Moglia, former CEO and Chairman of TD Ameritrade, and former head football coach at my alma mater, Coastal Carolina University. There are few people more qualified to give good advice about leadership than Coach Moglia, and I'm excited to have him kick off this series. Our conversation took place over the phone on November 7, 2020. The exact quotes referenced below were dependent upon my typing skill and speed, and while I believe them to be exact if specifically quoted that way, slight errors may be possible.
In a USA Today article from last month, Coach Moglia is quoted as saying: “You design the job for the skillset of the person you have. You don’t create a job and plop somebody into it.” I think this is an incredibly important idea—and contrary to the way many organizations operate—and was the topic I discussed with Coach Moglia.
Everybody has different strengths. And because of that, different people can achieve different things operating out of the same role in an organization. But how you describe that role—the job description—should be different for people with different skillsets.
In our conversation, Moglia used examples from both business and sports. In a business where you have a Chief Financial Officer (CFO), you need certain basic skillsets in accounting, like being a CPA, for example. But you might have a CFO who is very good at strategy, or one who is very good at marketing, and those different skillsets can influence their role as a CFO within an organization.
The example from the sports world was a linebacker coach in football. As Moglia described it:
“You may have a linebacker coach that’s a really great linebacker coach, but that also really has an affinity for understanding what goes on in the kicking game, or recruiting. So to give him or her a little more responsibility with regard to kicking or more responsibility in regard to recruiting—or something else going on in the program—it winds up accomplishing a couple of things. You’re giving him or her something that they probably enjoy doing, and they happen to be good at. That makes them more valuable above and beyond what their basic job is to the organization. And that usually provides more contribution to your overall organization which, again, helps maximize your potential.”
I think much of what Moglia discussed above—the idea of maximizing the potential of people and organizations—falls under the topic of leadership. There’s the saying that management is how one deals with things, and leadership is how one deals with people. And finding ways for people to do what they are good at—and thus, can succeed at—is not just a way to lead an organization to success, but a way to get people to respect and follow that leader down whatever path the future may hold.
Getting people in the right roles for both their own success and that of the group is also heavily influenced by an organization’s culture. And culture may matter more than any other detail in achieving that success. As management guru Peter Drucker is quoted as saying, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” When discussing the roles of people within a group, Coach Moglia also touched upon his time as a head coach with one of the best examples I’ve seen of a leader trying to create the right culture:
“One of the things we used to say at Coastal was that there were two things we do that nobody else in the country does. The first is that we don’t have any rules. Literally, we had no rules. We have a standard, though. And that standard is: Stand on your own two feet. Take responsibility for yourself. Treat others with dignity and respect. Live with the consequences of your actions. There is pretty much nothing in your personal life and professional life that that standard does not affect. That means you don’t make excuses. Once you start making excuses, what you’re doing is you’re subconsciously letting yourself off the hook.”
Thank you Coach Moglia for the time and thoughts.