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A thirty-twelvemonth-one-time midlevel director—let's call her Fatima—is struggling at piece of work, but you wouldn't know it from outward appearances. A star fellow member of her squad in the marketing division of a large multinational foods company, Fatima consistently hits her benchmarks and goals. She invests long hours and has congenital relationships with colleagues that she deeply values. And her senior managers think of her as ane of the company'south high potentials.

Merely outside the office, Fatima (who asked not to be identified by her existent name) would admit that she feels brackish in her job, trapped by the tension between twenty-four hour period-to-day demands and what she really wants to be doing: exploring how the company tin utilize social media in its marketing efforts. Twitter, her cause-marketing blog, and mobile gadgets are her primary passions. She'd similar to look for some other job, but given the slow recovery from the recession, sticking it out seems similar her all-time (and perhaps only) option. "I'm still working hard," she tells a friend. "Merely I'm stuck. Every week, I experience less and less motivated. I'm start to wonder why I wanted this position in the kickoff place."

Audio familiar? Over the past several years, we've spoken with hundreds of people, in a variety of industries and occupations, who, like Fatima, are feeling stuck—that dreaded word again. According to a recent survey of 5,000 U.S. households by The Briefing Board, but 45% of those polled say they are satisfied with their jobs—downwards from about lx% in 1987, the first twelvemonth the survey was conducted.

If you lot're in this state of affairs, and changing roles or companies is unrealistic given the tough economic system, what tin can yous do? A growing body of enquiry suggests that an exercise we call "chore crafting" can be a powerful tool for reenergizing and reimagining your piece of work life. It involves redefining your job to incorporate your motives, strengths, and passions. The practice prompts you to visualize the task, map its elements, and reorganize them to better suit you. In this mode, you can put personal touches on how you run across and do your job, and y'all'll gain a greater sense of control at piece of work—which is peculiarly critical at a time when you're probably working longer and harder and expecting to retire later. Perhaps chore crafting's best feature is that it'southward driven by y'all, not your supervisor.

This exercise involves assessing so altering one or more of the following core aspects of work.

Tasks.

You lot can modify the boundaries of your job by taking on more or fewer tasks, expanding or diminishing their scope, or changing how they are performed. A sales director, for instance, might accept on additional event planning because he likes the challenge of organizing people and logistics.

Relationships.

Yous tin change the nature or extent of your interactions with other people. A managing managing director, for instance, might create mentoring relationships with young associates as a way to connect with and teach those who represent the futurity of the business firm.

Perceptions.

Y'all tin can change how yous retrieve about the purpose of certain aspects of your job; or you tin reframe the job every bit a whole. The director of a nonprofit institution, for instance, might cull to think of his job as 2 split up parts, 1 not peculiarly enjoyable (the pursuit of contributions and grants) and ane very meaningful (creating opportunities for emerging artists). Or the leader of an R&D unit of measurement might come to see her work every bit a style of advancing the science in her field rather than only managing projects.

Our research with a range of organizations—from Fortune 500 companies to small nonprofits—indicates that employees (at all levels, in all kinds of occupations) who try job crafting often end up more engaged and satisfied with their work lives, achieve college levels of functioning in their organizations, and report greater personal resilience.

For their part, organizations take a lot to gain by enabling chore crafting. Almost job-redesign models put the onus on managers to help employees find satisfaction in their work; in reality, leaders rarely have sufficient fourth dimension to devote to this procedure. Job crafting lets managers turn the reins over to employees, empowering them to become "task entrepreneurs." And when pay resource are constrained or promotions incommunicable, job crafting may give companies a different mode to motivate and retain their near talented employees. It tin fifty-fifty help transform poor performers.

Your job comprises a set of building blocks that you tin reconfigure to create more engaging and fulfilling experiences at work.

Despite these benefits, however, job crafting tin can be easy to overlook: Fourth dimension pressures and other constraints may compel you to run across your chore as a fixed list of duties. Or you may be agape of getting mired in office politics, stepping on other people's toes simply because yous're unhappy at piece of work. Job crafting requires—and ultimately engenders—a different listen-ready, still: Your job comprises a prepare of building blocks that yous tin reconfigure to create more engaging and fulfilling experiences at work.

Diagramming Your Task

Back at the multinational foods company, Fatima is still frustrated. What would happen if she engaged in job crafting? She's already been reflecting on her dissatisfaction, albeit in no systematic way. Chore crafting would give her the ways to diagram a more platonic—simply still realistic—version of her job, one better aligned with her motives, strengths, and passions.

Beginning, she looks at the present makeup of her task. In her "before diagram," Fatima uses a series of squares to represent the tasks that her job comprises, with larger squares representing time-intensive tasks, and smaller squares tasks to which she devotes less time. (Run across the exhibit "Fatima's Before Diagram.")

One time she has created her before diagram, this midlevel marketing manager immediately sees that she's spending lots of time on tasks that don't engage her passions—for instance, monitoring her team'due south performance, answering questions, and directing market place research—and much less on tasks that are meaningful to her.

Click hither for a larger image of the graphic.

She notices that she's spending lots of time monitoring her squad'due south performance, answering questions, and directing market inquiry. She'due south spending a fair number of hours setting budgets, writing reports, and running meetings. And she's spending very fiddling fourth dimension on critical tasks such as professional person development and designing marketing strategies. These tasks are in the smallest squares. Looking at the full sweep of her job in this style gives Fatima a articulate sense—truly at a glance—of exactly where she is devoting her time and energy.

Next, she concentrates on changes that would increase her appointment at piece of work. This "after diagram" will serve equally the visual programme for her future. (See the exhibit "Fatima'southward After Diagram.")

In Fatima's later diagram, information technology's easier to run into how she tin connect her tasks to her motives, strengths, and passions. For instance, one of her motives is to cultivate meaningful relationships and achieve personal growth. Her strengths include her one-on-one communication skills and technical savvy. And among her passions are teaching others and using and learning about new technology.

Click hither for a larger image of the graphic.

In this later diagram, the sizes of the blocks represent a ameliorate allocation of Fatima's time, free energy, and attending. 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 up together.

She begins by identifying her motives, strengths, and passions—three important considerations in determining which aspects of her job will keep her engaged and inspire higher performance. Each will exist represented past a different color. Her main motives, for example, are cultivating meaningful relationships and achieving personal growth. She plugs these into light-green ovals. Fatima takes stock of her cadre strengths: one-on-one communication and technical savvy. These announced in the blue ovals. And she highlights her passions: teaching others and using and learning new engineering—entered in orange ovals.

So, using her before diagram as a frame of reference, Fatima creates a new set of job blocks whose size represents a amend allotment of her time, free energy, and attention. To take advantage of how well "designing marketing strategies" suits her motives, strengths, and passions, she not only moves information technology from a modest to a medium block just also add "apply social media" to this newly expanded task. To incorporate even more social media into her job, she adds a minor task block to represent "teaching colleagues to employ social media." And for those tasks that do not fit her as well, she makes a note to adapt them (for instance, using "professional development" to "amend public speaking skills").

She draws rectangles effectually groups of tasks that she thinks serve a common purpose or role. For example, she identifies "edifice and using social media expertise" as one role. Framing her roles in this way is meaningful to her because it taps into her fundamental strengths and passions. By rearranging the shapes, Fatima gains a greater appreciation for how the elements of her chore come up together.

A New Outlook

Fatima then moves to the concluding step of the exercise, in which she considers the challenges she will probably confront in making her new job configuration a reality. She would like to apply her technical savvy to assistance other marketing teams and departments take advantage of social media, only she is concerned about encroaching on their work or insulting them past 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 contain social media into them.

Tasks.

She identifies two possibilities: 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 build buzz around the snack food—and reveal to the arrangement the benefits and limitations of reaching out to a new demographic. And past launching a blog, Fatima and her colleagues in Marketing could runway initiatives and communications from members of the Sales division.

Relationships.

Fatima recognizes, of class, that she'll demand back up to establish the technological presence she envisions for these ii projects. She must build or refocus her ties to others in the company in social club to learn about the all-time ways to move forward. She recalls that Steve Porter is constantly piffling with the latest gadgets in weekly interdepartmental meetings and that he is known for the clever means he uses social media to keep salespeople in the loop. She decides to approach him for assist. Within a month, Steve's and her own employees' support has unleashed a wave of interest in and cognition almost how to put technology closer to the heart of the partitioning's piece of work. Her initiatives have get testing grounds for using social media to accomplish other of import goals. Fatima has been recognized every bit 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 equally a daily slog, she begins to come across 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, to her pleasure, recognizes that rather than taking her abroad from her prescribed goals, her passion for deploying technology in pursuit of these objectives gives her a more fulfilling mode to approach them.

Ivan's Story

In some other company, in another part of the world, Ivan Carter is defenseless between a rock and a hard place. But the source of angst for this 45-year-former operations director at a global function products company is quite unlike from Fatima's. He'due south a solid B player with a dedicated and successful team. Ivan leads a group that serves Latin America, and he reports to both the head of global operations and the head of the Latin America group. His human relationship with the latter is keen, but the operations head is often nonresponsive or even hostile when Ivan needs information or support. All his efforts to strengthen the relationship have been met with silence. He likes his job, just he often leaves the office with his tum in knots.

Ivan knows he can either accept the reality of his toxic relationship with the head of operations or change his situation. So, during his next phone coming together with the head of Latin America, he pushes a bit to explore what interests her near most the role of the operations group in that region. She sees the group as becoming more critical for cost savings as economic recovery drags on—a major focus for the CEO, equally well. Ivan spots an opportunity. He can build on what is already a good relationship past directing more of his efforts to special projects that will relieve coin in that region. Sensing a risk to arts and crafts his chore, Ivan focuses more and more of his fourth dimension and energy on this attribute of his piece of work, which wins him exposure and credit equally the projects he takes on create significant savings for the company. As a bonus, he spends more than time interacting with the Latin America head while coming together his responsibilities to the operations head without having to interact with him as much. After several months, Ivan learns that the Latin America head has recommended him highly to others in the C-suite.

Fatima focused first on tasks and and then on relationships. By centering his chore crafting primarily on relationships (the ones that energized rather then depleted him), Ivan was able to figure out how to change his job for the meliorate.

The Limits of Job Crafting

Not all chore crafting is beneficial. Information technology can be stressful if as a result you take on too much or modify tasks without understanding your manager'southward goals. Since job crafting is something you can do on your own, it's of import to be open about the process. Your managing director may even exist able to assistance you place opportunities for redistributing tasks in complementary means. After all, one person'southward dreaded consignment may be another's favorite.

To win support for your job crafting, focus on creating value for others, building trust, and identifying the people who will accommodate you.

To win others' support for your job crafting, do these three things:

  • Focus on deploying an individual or organizational strength that will create value for others. For instance, Fatima positioned her piece of work to raise what other teams were doing, while Ivan found a way to help come across the objectives of the Latin America group.
  • Build trust with others (typically your supervisor). Fatima assured her supervisor that she wouldn't permit tasks slide and that some of her newer tasks could become central to the organization. Ivan was careful to align his efforts with his part, edifice trust with the caput of the Latin America group.
  • Straight your job-crafting efforts toward the people who are most probable to suit y'all. Fatima reached out to Steve Porter because he was interested in her plans to bring applied science into the heart of her job tasks. Ivan realized that his fourth dimension would be wasted pursuing a toxic relationship and instead focused on a more promising one.

Job crafting is a elementary visual framework that tin can assistance yous make meaningful and lasting changes in your task—in good economies and bad. Only information technology all has to kickoff with taking a step back from the daily grind and realizing that you actually have the ability to reconfigure the elements of your work.

The lesser line? Make certain that y'all are shaping your job, not letting your chore shape you.

A version of this article appeared in the June 2010 consequence of Harvard Business Review.