When I do this exercise with teams, there’s usually some pretty big revelations. Such as:

• Most people are doing different things, or more things, than are explicit. 
• People aren’t accountable/responsible for what they, or others, thought they were.
• A whole heap of ‘care’ work is being done without recognition.
• People want to contribute in other ways or learn something new.
• There are gaps that aren’t being filled.
• There are improvements we can make.

So what’s going on? How come we are in this situation?

The rapid rate of change in the workplace, and in the world, means that traditional job descriptions can no longer keep up with what’s really happening day to day.

Traditional job descriptions can help set expectations when recruiting, but are rarely looked at or updated beyond that. Perhaps it is time to rethink this.

It’s usually quite difficult to change what’s included in a job without applying for a new one. People pick up extra responsibilities over time, but these are rarely made explicit, let alone acknowledged or recognised by the organisation. This situation encourages apathy and resistance to change.

Not all job descriptions are created equally. Some allow more autonomy than others, but generally, they restrict agility. Which, in most cases, is the exact opposite of what is needed.

Why do we need agility between roles and autonomy within roles?

You might have witnessed this agility and autonomy when a colleague calls in sick and the team quickly rallies round to fill the temporary gap; people step up, reprioritise their workload, and do what’s needed.

What if we could do this more often and at a meta-level? When we sense something is changing, or we feel stuck, could we pause, look at what we’re all doing and rejig things to make more sense?

Autonomy and agility have a greater impact, beyond moving around resources and priorities: 

• By regularly reflecting on the best way to organise, we strengthen relationships at work. Autonomy and relatedness are two of the foundational human needs for our well-being (Self Determination Theory – Deci and Ryan 2008).
• By providing more interconnectivity and flexibility, we can quickly respond to complexity.
• The process provides ample room for growth and inner development by helping to separate the self from social identity.

Can we change how we distribute work?

There are many ways of distributing work to increase autonomy and agility. Some examples are job shares, working groups, project teams, multi-disciplinary teams, setting up task marketplaces or shifting to Dynamic Roles.

You’re probably already familiar with job shares, and groups or teams set up for a specific purpose. You might not be so familiar with task marketplaces and Dynamic Roles. 

Task marketplaces are often seen in open-source projects, where tasks to be done are listed in a repository and people pick which ones they will do based on their expertise, skills and available time. In many open-source projects, people volunteer their time, so they have full autonomy and agility over which role they play and the tasks they take on.

Dynamic Roles is a way of breaking up what people are doing into discrete roles and being clear about why those roles exist. I explore this concept in more depth below.

There is no right or wrong way of distributing work. It’s about finding the best method for your situation. I often see organisations using a mixture of techniques, usually experimenting on top of existing job descriptions.

How the methods are implemented impacts where they fall on the autonomy/agility graph. For example, a job share where the employees have no control over how the work is distributed between them does not provide autonomy, whereas a job share where the employees can discuss how best to use their strengths and distribute the tasks accordingly provides greater autonomy and job satisfaction.

Given the systems you are working within, what’s the right level of autonomy and agility for you, your team, or your organisation at this moment in time? Where are you currently on this graph, and where would you like to be?

So, what are Dynamic Roles?

My current definition is: 

“A structure that enables complete autonomy within clear guidelines, where individuals steward multiple roles, instead of owning one job description”

Autonomy. Dynamic Roles are light-touch governance, providing a framework for individuals to decide how best to achieve a role’s purpose. Setting goals, rather than controlling how to get there, allows individuals to try multiple and different strategies to reach the desired outcome.

Clear. Clarifying the boundaries between roles makes it easier to know who is accountable for what. It helps identify hidden assumptions or gaps in understanding that, left unsaid, can lead to resentment and conflict.

Multiple roles. There’s a wide variety in the number of roles individuals can steward at one time; I’ve seen anywhere between 1 to 12 roles per person. Often, the smaller the company, the more roles an individual will be stewarding. This makes sense as small organisations have to split many different tasks between fewer people. As organisations scale, staff start to specialise and focus on fewer roles. This specialisation helps with efficiency but often at the loss of agility and personal development. 

The number of roles you identify may also depend on how granular you wish to go and what’s right for your situation. Within a project or team, it can make sense to be more granular, whereas within a company, you may want to be more high-level.

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Let’s look at an example

Imagine a small digital team with a project manager, front-end developer, back-end developer, user researcher, and designer.

Some of the roles required from this group of people might be: accessibility, copywriting, coaching, environmental impact, team care, SEO, facilitation, skills planning, quality assurance, performance engineering, office cleaning, communications, integrations, reflective learning, financial planning, data analysis…

At the moment:

• The environmental impact is slipping through the net, as everyone thinks everyone else is looking at it; there’s no one person accountable.
• The front-end developer is feeling resentful as they spend time on copywriting, and it’s not acknowledged by the rest of the team.
• They all think someone from another team is helping them with integrations, but that person isn’t aware of this expectation. 
• The receptionist has been studying coaching in the evenings, but isn’t aware that this would be of use to the team.

If they used Dynamic Roles, these hidden assumptions and tensions would be visible and hence easier to talk about and resolve. They would identify skill gaps, empower individuals to try new things, and be more intentional about redistributing work including what makes sense to pause or outsource.

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Distributing work in a more dynamic way isn’t just about structure; it requires these fundamental shifts in how people think:

• Stewardship, over ownership: Roles aren’t owned, they are stewarded. A concept beautifully explained by Sam Slade (a social designer) in her book Going Horizontal. Thinking about how we might steward a role helps to separate ourselves from the role. We are purely looking after it for the organisation, and at any moment, we might notice that someone else is better placed to steward it, instead of us.

• Invitation, over allocation: Role distribution isn’t decided by one person. Given all the information we have gathered as a group, we can invite and nominate others to steward a role – it’s up to them if they take it on.

• Participating, over managing: Managing can be a catch-all term for many activities. If it involves controlling or measuring another human, then it’s probably getting in the way of autonomy and personal growth. Think instead, what does the role need to do? Perhaps mentoring, inspiring, facilitating, providing…

Why do teams organise in this way?

• Provide clarity and accountability by making ‘who is doing what’ more explicit. 
• Reduce conflict by creating clear boundaries between what each person is accountable for.
• Identify spare capacity by moving effort to where it is needed most.
• Reduce bottlenecks by shifting decisions to those best positioned to make them.
• Enable people to reach their full potential by not restricting them to boxes and labels in an org chart.
• Encourage autonomy and connection, which in turn increase engagement and happiness
• Provide a flexible structure to enable emergence and growth in response to constant change.

What do Dynamic Roles look like?

The aim is to keep them clear, simple and short. As a minimum, try to include the following:

• Title: 1 or 2 words, memorable, describes what instead of who
• Purpose: 1 sentence. Why does it matter? What’s the overall result of doing this well?
• Outcomes: 2-5 broad statements specific to the role. Each describes the expected outcome, not the tasks, the role is accountable for.

Here are some example roles (likely stewarded by different people, but possibly one person in a small organisation!): 

As you develop the roles over time, you may start to find other information useful, such as:

• Steward: Who is currently stewarding this role?
• Metrics: To help the steward assess how well things are going.
• Timeframe: How long someone stewards the role for.
• Size estimate: What’s the expected time investment?
• Connections: How is it connected with other roles, groups and/or circles?
• Offers: Who can help or teach the current steward? Who is interested in learning about the role?
• Status: Is it active or paused?

Only capture genuinely useful information; the roles need to stay quick and easy to read and update.

How they work

It’s great progress if you capture just the titles of all the roles within a team. So, congratulate yourselves if you get this far. Over time, you can add the details you need for the roles to be used in a way that best supports your organisation or team.

The important part of Dynamic Roles is that they are dynamic; meaning the stewards and roles, change and flex as needed. This provides the agility and autonomy we seek.

The best way to do this is to regularly review the roles as a team, and ask yourselves these questions:

• Do we still need these roles?
• Are there new roles we need?
• Should we distribute roles differently? Is someone else better placed to steward a role? Should we split or merge roles?
• What’s the big picture look like? Does this make sense right now?

Whilst doing this, you are balancing the needs of the organisation and the needs of the individuals involved. This can be a vulnerable discussion. People naturally feel attached to some roles, as they can be part of their identity and job security.

The more ‘safe’ participants feel, the more they and the organisation will gain from the process. However, safety isn’t a precursor; the process itself can help increase trust and safety over time.

A note about accountability

One of the aims of using Dynamic Roles is to be clear who is accountable for what; however, there is a distinction between accountability and responsibility that may be helpful to clarify.

Accountable = being able to account for a situation

Responsible = being able to respond to a situation

• A role sits with the accountable person, and others help them to account.
• One or more people can be responsible for doing the work. 
• When the same person is accountable and responsible, it reduces the knowledge gap and, by doing so, increases agility, autonomy, and ultimately effectiveness.

Ideally, a role is stewarded by one person so the accountability is clear. Where many people steward the same role, you might be able to split the roles by capturing the difference, e.g. selling in different regions, supporting different customers or sectors. Sometimes it’s not possible and there is collective accountability, e.g. trustees accountable for a charity complying with the law. 

I prefer ‘helping to account’ instead of ‘holding to account’, so that the steward is supported to reach the outcomes, rather than scolded. A great way of helping to account is to use Confirmation Practices, developed by Andy Brogan, a public services consultant. Confirmation Practices can be used for individual and collective accountability, as explained by Helen Sanderson from Wellbeing Teams, in this video about confirmation practices for happier teams.

Tips for success

If you want to start experimenting with Dynamic Roles:

• Start with a small project or team
• Start with those who are interested
• Be clear about ‘why’ you are trying this approach and what you are hoping to achieve
• Don’t aim for perfection; gather a little information about the roles and refine it with time
• Don’t link roles to salary
• Be clear that job security isn’t being discussed
• Don’t underestimate the value of slowing down to listen, observe and learn about each other.
• Note: most of the work happens between the meetings, as ideas and thoughts percolate over time.

Dynamic Roles is one way to distribute work; I hope this helps you consider what’s best for your situation. If you can embrace the principles of invitation, stewardship and participation, you’ll already have changed things for the better 🙂

If you’d like to know more about Dynamic Roles, I’m happy to have a no-commitment call to help you think things through.

I can also share how we’ve implemented them at Sutton Community Farm over the last three years, what we’ve learnt and if it’s the right approach for you.

*The image of people wearing multiple hats, was created using Google Gemini Nano Banana. It struggled to create an image without the men wearing the top hats. I didn’t want to use more energy creating additional images, so I’ve left it at this one, even though it’s not quite what I wanted.