Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:

Job descriptions often combine several related but operationally different functions because having one person cover them can make economic sense. The question is whether that calculation takes into account the actual work, its volume, competing priorities and the capacity one person has to deliver all of it well.

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I have been looking at job descriptions recently and as I read through what is required I hear myself voicing out loud…

How many jobs are they expecting this one
person to do?

Take a Corporate Communications Specialist role I came across recently. The person is expected to manage and grow the organisation’s social and digital community, create content, execute marketing and public relations initiatives, maintain stakeholder relationships, develop social media strategy and understand online marketing, SEO and search engine marketing.

Then there is a Membership & Marketing Manager role. That person is expected to drive membership growth, retention and engagement, lead marketing and communications, develop marketing strategies and campaigns, manage digital and social media platforms, oversee communications and marketing initiatives, strengthen the organisation’s value proposition and brand, and collaborate across teams on programmes, campaigns and events.

And then there is a Commercial Marketing Advisor role. Here, one person is expected to contribute to strategy and market insight, translate strategy into campaign calendars, improve the customer journey, manage social media, plan paid digital campaigns, oversee outdoor advertising and traditional media, manage website updates and landing pages, conduct audience segmentation, support branding and internal communications, develop performance dashboards, analyse results, make recommendations, train local teams and support organisations internationally.

Every individual requirement can be defended which is precisely why roles can grow this way.

Marketing connects to communications. Communications connects to social media. Social media requires content. Content may require a website. Marketing performance requires analytics. Growth requires business development or membership development. All of it requires stakeholder engagement.

There is an obvious logic to the accumulation.

There is also an economic logic.

Organisations have limited budgets. Headcount is expensive. Smaller organisations especially may have little choice but to combine functions. If one capable person can cover several related areas, that can represent very good value.

So I understand the desire and perhaps the thinking that “we’ll get more bang for our buck.”

My question is whether we are considering all the variables necessary for the ‘more bang for your buck’ equation to remain true.

When I look at these descriptions, I am not simply seeing long lists of responsibilities… I am seeing different kinds of work.

Strategy requires thinking time. Content creation requires production time. Social media requires frequency and responsiveness. Stakeholder management requires relationship time. Campaign execution requires coordination. Analytics requires attention to data. Business development requires sustained follow-up. Events have deadlines that will happily consume everything around them.

One person may possess all of those capabilities. That does not tell us whether one person has the capacity to exercise all of them at the volume, frequency and standard the organisation expects.

This is where I think the problem begins.

If we design the role primarily around how much capability we can obtain for one salary, we may never adequately determine how much work is sitting inside each responsibility.

“Manage social media” could mean three posts a week or several platforms requiring daily content, community management, video production and reporting.

“Lead marketing” could mean setting direction with agencies and internal support, or being the strategist, copywriter, campaign manager, designer liaison, media planner and analyst.

“Drive business development” sounds like one line on a page. In practice, it can be a job.

The job description rarely tells us the volume hiding inside the verbs.

When several substantial functions are combined, they begin competing with one another.

• The urgent can consume the important.
• Execution can crowd out strategy.
• A campaign deadline can displace relationship development.
• An event can absorb the week that was supposed to be used for planning.

Reporting still needs to happen, and social media still has to be fed. Yet when performance is reviewed, every responsibility remains on the table.

So in reality, an apparent economical decision can become an expensive one in ways that are not always visible and easy to see.

The Costs we don’t See

Work gets delayed. Some responsibilities receive only surface attention. Opportunities are missed. Specialist work may eventually have to be outsourced anyway. The employee becomes stretched across competing priorities. And if expectations are not met, we may conclude that we hired the wrong person when part of the problem was how the role was designed.

None of this means organisations should stop creating broad role – however it does mean that before putting the job description together, we may need to examine the work much more closely.

1. What outcomes does this role exist to produce?
2. What functions are required to produce them?
3. How much work sits inside each function?
4. Which responsibilities are continuous and which are occasional?
5. Which require specialist depth?
6. What must the person own, what can they coordinate, and what can be supported elsewhere?
7. What resources and authority will they have?

And perhaps the uncomfortable but absolutely necessary question:

If everything on this list cannot be done well at the same time, what takes priority?

That question changes the exercise, because the objective is no longer to fit as much as possible into one job description, but to design a role that has a reasonable chance of producing what the organisation actually needs.

There will always be economic constraints. There will always be organisations that need people who can wear several hats, but one salary covering several functions is only economical if the work can actually be delivered.

Sometimes what looks like a hiring or performance problem really starts with the way the role itself was designed. We are looking for the right person to succeed in a role that has not been designed realistically.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

Take a job description in your organisation and look past the title. Identify the distinct functions contained within it and consider the actual volume, frequency and level of work attached to each one.

Then ask: How many jobs are hiding in this one description, and have we designed the role around what one person can realistically deliver, or around how much we would like one salary to cover?

About Giselle

Most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.

I’m Giselle Hudson — The Pre-Fixer. I help leaders see the real problem before they act, in my writing and in my work. I don’t fix; I pre-fix. Most advisers jump to solutions before they’ve found the real problem. I find it first — the part that isn’t fully visible yet. Once we see that clearly, everything else falls into place, and confident, right action can follow.

Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations — helping leaders make sense of complexity before they commit significant time and money to the wrong thing.

What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?