Your Job Is Not Your Job Mon, Aug 22, 2016

What you do for your job isn't just what you do, it's the goal you pursue with the team around you.

I don't often read LinkedIn articles, but the one I recently stumbled across by LinkedIn VP, Fred Kofman, was kind of a game changer.

If you think about your work as an ends far beyond the means, the entire concept of your daily work is transformed. At the end of the day, it's not just making belts that make us who we are, it's pushing the envelope and innovating and redefining a simple fashion accessory that's been around for centuries. The value in our actions is found in the overall contribution to the endgame.

Fred uses soccer as an example: if you're a defender and your team is down by a goal with 90 seconds left, you're likely not going to sit back in the goalie's box to play defense - even though, technically, your position is as a defender. Why? Because the overall goal is to win, and in that moment the team needs you to go on the offensive to have a better chance of scoring a goal and, ultimately, winning.

Your job description helps to describe how you contribute to the overall goal, but the goals of the team as a whole are paramount. "Your value as a player is your contribution to your team's success. If you think that your job is anything else than helping your team to win, you will lower your value and limit your career," wrote Kofman.

So how would your daily job, your resume and your career aspirations change if you focused on the end goal instead of the daily role?