Where the Room to Adjust Sits

Whose job are we using as the baseline for what's manageable?

Gallup's new job quality study found that 52% of managers and leaders met its standard for a quality job, compared with 36% of individual contributors. The standard considers pay, safety, growth, a voice in decisions, and control over work.

That gap doesn't mean managers have easy jobs. It does mean we should be careful about assuming the people making decisions experience the work the same way as the people carrying them out.

A leader may be able to move a deadline, drop a lower priority, or change the approach. An employee working from a fixed schedule or queue may not have any of those options. When the plan changes, "be flexible" asks something very different of each person.

If we want teams that can respond well when things change, we have to look at where the room to adjust actually sits. Before adding a priority, I'd ask what people can move, what they can decide, and what is already fixed for them.

We often talk about resilience as something people bring to work. The way we design the work matters too.

Gallup report: https://www.gallup.com/analytics/691241/american-job-quality-study.aspx