CASE ANALYSIS

CRAFTING A BETTER JOB

1. Background
Fatima a midlevel manager at a multinational foods company, who would seem to be
at the top of her career. Shes consistently making her required benchmarks and goals,
she has built successful relationships with colleagues, and senior management have
identified her as high potential, but she isnt happy with her work. Shed be much
more interested in understanding how her organization can use social media in
marketing efforts. Ideally shed like to quit and find something that better suits her
passions, but in the current economic environment this may not be an option. So she
has decided to proactively reconfigure her current job.
Fatima is part of a movement toward job crafting, which is the process of deliberately
reorganizing your job so that it better fits your motives, strengths, and passions. The
core of job crafting is creating diagrams of day to day activities with a coach. Then
you and the coach collaboratively identify which tasks fit with your personal passions,
and which tend to drain motivation and satisfaction. Next the client and coach work
together to imagine ways to emphasize preferred activities and de-emphasize those
that are less interesting. Many people engaged in job crafting find that upon deeper
consideration, they have more control over their work than they thought.
So how did Fatima craft her job? She first noticed that she was spending too much of
her time monitoring her teams performance and answering team questions, and not
enough time working on the creative projects that inspire her. She then considered
how to modify her relationship with the team so that these activities incorporated her
passion for social media strategies, with team activities more centered around
developing new marketing. She also identified members of her team who might be
able to help her implement these new strategies and directed her interactions with
these individuals toward her new goals. As a result, not only has her engagement in
her work increased, but she has also developed new ideas that are being recognized
and advanced within the organization. In sum, she has found that by actively and
creatively examining her work, she has been able to craft her current job into one that
is truly satisfying.

2. Identifying the problem.

The main issues is Fatima notices that shes spending lots of time on tasks that dont
engage her passions such as monitoring her teams performance, answering questions,
and directing market research. Shes spending a fair number of hours setting budgets,
writing reports, and running meetings. Fatima also spending very little time on critical
tasks such as professional development and designing marketing strategies. These
tasks are in the smallest squares. Looking at the fully sweep of her job in this way
gives Fatima a clear sense at a glance of exactly where she is devoting her time and
energy.
3. Analysis
i.
What are the contributing factors surrounding the case.
The contributing factor surrounding the case is how people tend to evaluate
their work experiences based on feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction
regarding their job, as well as the organization in which they work.
Depression, anxiety, worry, tension, and interpersonal problems can result
from or be made worse by job dissatisfaction. In this case Fatima also have the
problem which is she are not dissatisfaction on her job. Fatima isnt happy
with her work. Fatima feels stagnant in her job, trapped by the tension
between day to day demands and what she want to be doing, exploring how
the company can be use social media in its marketing efforts. Twitter, blog and
mobile gadgets are her main passions. Fatima feel less and less motivated. She
decide to look for another job, but given the slow recovery from the recession,
sticking it out seems like her best option.

ii.

What factors or actions should be discussed?

Then Fatima and the coach collaboratively identify which tasks fit with her
personal passions, and which tend to drain motivation and satisfaction. Next
the client and coach work together to imagine ways to emphasize preferred
activities and de-emphasize those that are less interesting.
2

Fatima before diagram

Once she has created her before diagram, this midlevel marketing manager
immediately sees that shes spending lots of time on tasks that dont engage
her passions for instance, monitoring her teams performance, answering
questions, and directing market research and much less on tasks that are
meaningful to her.

4. Recommendation
In this problem job crafting can be a powerful tool for reenergizing and
reimagining work life. It involves redefining the job to incorporated motives,
strengths and passions. In this way Fatima can put personal touches on how

she see, do her job and she gain a greater sense of control at work which id
especially critical at a time when she probably working longer and harder.

Diagramming Your Job

Fatima is still frustrated. What would happen if she engaged in job crafting?
Shes already been reflecting on her dissatisfaction, and no systematic way.
Job crafting would give her the means to diagram a more ideal but still
realistic version of her job, one better aligned with her motives, strengths, and
passions. She begins by identifying her motives, strengths, and passions. There
are three important considerations in determining which aspects of her job will
keep her engaged and inspire higher performance. Each will be represented by
a different colour. Her main motives, for instance, are cultivating meaningful
relationships and achieving personal growth. She plugs these into green ovals.
Fatima takes stock of her core strengths, one on one communication and
technical savvy. These appear in the blue ovals, and she highlights her
passions which teaching others, using and learning new technology that
entered in orange ovals

Fatima after diagram

In this after diagram, the sizes of the blocks represent a better allocation of
Fatimas time, energy, and attention. The borders around groups of tasks
suggest the common purpose they serve. By rearranging the shapes on the
page, Fatima gains a greater appreciation for how the different elements of her
job come together.
.

A new outlook
Fatima then moves to the final step of the exercise, in which she considers the
challenges she will probably face in making her new job configuration a
reality. She would like to use her technical savvy to help other marketing
teams and departments take advantage of social media, but she is concerned
about encroaching on their work or insulting them by offering her expertise,
with her after diagram in hand Fatima takes another look at the list of projects
sitting in her in box and begins to consider how to incorporate social media
into them.

Tasks
She identifies two possibilities such as a new snack food aimed at teens and a
cross company initiative to improve communication between marketing and
sales. Fatima thinks a campaign involving Facebook and twitter could help
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build buzz around the snack food and reveal to the organization the benefits
and limitations of reaching out to a new demographic and by launching a blog,
Fatima and her colleagues in marketing could track initiatives and
communications from members of the sales division.

Relationships
Fatima recognizes, that shell need support to establish the technological
presence she envisions for these two projects. She must build or refocus her
ties to others in the company in order to learn about the best ways to move
forward. She recalls that Steve Porter is constantly fiddling with the latest
gadgets in weekly interdepartmental meetings and that he is known for the
clever ways he uses social media to keep salespeople in the loop. She decides
to approach him for help. Within a month, Steves and her own employees
support has unleashed a wave of interest in and knowledge about how to put
technology closer to the heart of the divisions work. Her initiatives have
become testing grounds for using social media to accomplish other important
goals. Fatima has been recognized as the driver of these programs and finds
that managers from other divisions are coming to her to learn more about how
they might use her ideas in their own projects all of which is encouraging her
to be bolder in introducing new ideas and technology.

Perceptions
Rather than thinking of her work as a daily slog, she begins to see herself as an
innovator at the intersection of marketing and technology and she views
herself as an entrepreneurial pioneer unafraid of experiments that could bridge
those worlds. She also recognizes that rather than taking her away from her
prescribed goals, her passion for deploying technology in pursuit of these
objectives gives her a more fulfilling way to approach them.

5. Conclusion

This case related to the chapter three in attitude and job satisfaction which that you
can see Fatima are not satisfaction in her job and she decide to quit her job but then
she has decided to proactively reconfigure her current job. Fatima try to identifying
her motives, strengths and passions in determining which aspects of her job will keep
her engaged and inspire higher performance. She has found that by actively and
creatively examining her work, she has been able to craft her current job into one that
is truly satisfying. I have learn in this case that if we are not satisfied with our jobs
doesnt mean we should quit the job or find another job but we have to identify the
problem. We can use Fatima as example how she reconfigure her current job and
moving toward job crafting which employees define the meaning of their work and
their work identities is relevant across a broad range of job situations. As a result, not
only has her engagement in her work increased, but she has also developed new ideas
that are being recognized and advanced within the organization, and she also has
found that by actively and creatively examining her work, she has been able to craft
her current job into one that is truly satisfying. So make sure that you are shaping
your job, not letting your job shape you. Yes I think the reader should do more
references to gain more knowledge so the reader knows what the writer wants to
convey.

6. References
Sources: Based on A. Wrizesniewski, J.M. Berg, and J.E. Dutton, Turn the Job You Have into
the Job You Want, Harvard Business Review (June 2010), PP. 144-117, A. Wrizesniewski and
J.E. Dutton, Crafting a Job : Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their work,
Academy of Management Review 26 (2010), pp. 179-201, and J Caplan, Hate Your Job?
Heres How to Reshape It, Time (December 4, 2009), www.time.com.
A version of this article appeared in the June 2010 issue of Harvard
Business Review. Amy Wrzesniewski (amy.wrzesniewski@yale.edu) is an
associate professor of organizational behaviour at the Yale School of
Management. Justin M. Berg (bergj@wharton.upenn.edu) is a doctoral
student at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School.