Not My Job
The four words that tell your team you already left.
I bet you have said it at least once. I know I have heard it more times than I can count.
“That is not part of my job.”
Sometimes it comes out exactly like that. Sometimes it is quieter. A request lands on someone, it is not strictly theirs, and they look away. They do not answer. They keep doing what they were already doing and let the problem find someone else. That silence reads the same way the spoken version does. It tells the team you are not really on it.
In a lot of industries that answer is normal. In ours it is still common too. But in broadcasting it does more damage than people realize, and most of the damage lands on the person saying it.
Here is why.
The job description gets you hired. It does not get you promoted.
It is true that we are hired for specific tasks. There is a role, there is a rate, there is a list of what you are responsible for. None of that is wrong.
But if you want to grow, you have to be willing to go past the edge of that list. Not to do everyone else’s work. To show that you can help solve a problem when it shows up in front of you. To show that you can support the team in the moment, not only inside the box your title draws around you.
The people who grow in this business are the ones who do not need a request to be perfectly inside their lane before they help.
A story from 2017.
A few years back I was working with a group of camera operators who had come to the US from another country.
Where they came from, the camera operator did not pull his own cable. Someone else did that. So when they got to a gig here, where it is normal for the operator to run his own cable from the JBT-box to his position, a couple of them gave the answer.
“That is not part of my job.”
And technically, they were right. It was not part of the role they were used to. It was not what they had been trained to do back home.
But they were here. And here, it was part of what we needed. We were not asking for much. Run a cable a few feet from the box to the camera position. One or two positions. That was it.
It was not hard. It was not unfair. It was not beyond what anyone in that crew could do.
But the answer told us everything. Not about cable. About some people in the team.
We finished the assignment we had with them, and after that we kept the operators who were willing to help under that circumstance. The others we did not bring back.
It was never about the cable.
We win together or we lose together.
Broadcasting, content creation, production. None of it is a solo act. If the team fails, we all fail. If the team wins, we all win. And if one person decides their corner of the field is the only part they will touch, that gap does not stay invisible. It creates a problem for everyone else, and sooner or later a finger points at the person who would not help.
To be clear, this is not about doing things you do not know how to do, or taking on work you are not paid for until it becomes unfair. That is a different conversation. It is about the moments when you could help, or could ask for help, and instead you hide behind “that is not my job.”
Why this matters more now than it used to.
In edition #157, on May 31st, I wrote about the shift happening in our industry, and how diversifying beyond our specialization or established role is a must these days.
The people who hide behind “not my department,” the ones who will not take ownership of anything outside the exact letter of their role, are the easiest people in the room to replace. Technology does not say “that is not my job.” It does not ignore the request. It does not walk away from the thing sitting on the table.
If your defining trait at work is the careful refusal to step one inch outside your lane, you have described, almost perfectly, the job that gets automated first.
The people who stay are the ones who take ownership. The ones who pick up the thing in front of them, help when they can, and ask for help when they cannot.
One line I keep coming back to
“Not my job” is the easiest sentence in the room to replace with software.
The job description tells you what you were hired to do. It does not tell you who you are on a team.
When was the last time you heard “it’s not my job”?
See you next week.
Oscar S.