At Rayburn, we look for unicorns in the application process who demonstrate they will be agile and eager to grow. We’re upfront with potential employees that we don’t have traditional career paths mapped out with predictable steps and timelines. What we guarantee instead is opportunity.
getty
At my company, Rayburn Electric Cooperative, we believe that job descriptions are just starting points, not final destinations. When I took over this growing company as CEO in 2017, I knew our success wouldn’t come from having people on board who just fulfilled their assigned duties. Our success was dependent on having people willing to grow alongside the organization.
Think about the most valuable people on your own team. In my observation, the MVPs are rarely the ones who stick rigidly to their job descriptions. Instead, they see what needs to be done and step up to do it, no matter if it’s officially “their job” or not. This mindset has transformed our organization from a fairly traditional rural electric cooperative into something more dynamic, innovative, and one that has recently been recognized as one of the best places to work in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area, two years in a row.
This didn’t happen because we discovered some perfect hiring formula or implemented flawless systems. It happened because we deliberately created an environment where people feel trusted enough to push boundaries, to take on new challenges, and to grow in directions that benefited both themselves and our organization. We know that sometimes the most impressive contributions come from the least expected sources.
Let me tell you about Christina. She came to Rayburn with a chemical engineering background not long ago. After stepping away from the workforce to raise her three daughters, she joined our engineering team when she was ready to return to her career. She excelled as one of our engineers, and we immediately saw potential for more.
We moved Christina out of engineering and gave her responsibility for our mapping group and right-of-way management. Like many of our team members, when presented with new challenges, Christina was apprehensive when we suggested that she lead a new department. She said, “But I’ve never managed before.”
My response was the same one I give to everyone in the company: “We’re not going to set you up to fail.”
I emphasized that as long as she was willing to ask questions and accept help, we would do everything possible to ensure her success. Not long after this, we threw what some might call a “grenade” in the middle of our organization, reshuffling responsibilities and adding even more to Christina’s plate. It was a significant departure from the traditional career path someone with an engineering degree might expect. But she’s excelling in ways that bring tremendous value to Rayburn.
She came to me after the shakeup and said, “I’m flattered for the opportunity and that you and the executive team see something in me. However, from the outside looking in, I don’t always understand the changes and why you move who you do. But oddly, it works, and we seem to get stronger and collaborate better.”
Her story is just one example of how we’ve transformed our approach to roles and responsibilities at Rayburn. Nearly a third of our staff are now doing jobs completely different from what they were hired to do—and with greater responsibilities and impact than they had before.
How do we pull this off without a mass exodus? In large part, it has to do with the hiring and onboarding step. We look for those unicorns in the application process who demonstrate they will be agile and eager to grow. We’re upfront with potential employees that we don’t have traditional career paths mapped out with predictable steps and timelines. What we guarantee instead is opportunity. Our doors open in directions they might not anticipate.
This approach creates a positive cycle. New employees might initially have some skepticism—trust but verify, as they say. In company meetings, I sometimes ask for a show of hands: “Who’s doing the job they were originally hired to do?” The response is always revealing. People look around and see their colleagues—people they interact with daily—who have grown into entirely new roles. The proof is there, evidence that while we may not offer a traditional career ladder, we offer something potentially more valuable: a career landscape with multiple paths to growth.
Traditional advancement often means waiting for someone above you to leave or move on, meaning many motivated and capable people never achieve the roles they wish they could have in the time they feel ready for them. So we eliminated the waiting. When we have talented people capable of handling more responsibility and having a significant impact, we expand the box and rethink our organizational structure. We create new positions. We shuffle responsibilities. We look at people’s strengths rather than trying to force them into predefined slots. We’ve moved IT people to compliance, shifted accountants to IT, added a graphics design team to operations, and even created whole new departments like Member Solutions.
Many of our most successful team members are in roles that, two years ago, we would never have predicted would even exist in the company. But by focusing on potential rather than predefined paths, we’ve created a more dynamic, responsive organization—one where people know they’ll continue to grow, make an impact, and be valued for their contributions.
As Christina said, “Company-wide, so many people asked after my promotion, ‘Why you?’ and I didn’t have an answer for that. But after some time and getting familiar with the role, these changes brought a new perspective and fostered new relationships that have created successful teams. We’ve grown and we’ve built respect and trust in one another, learning how our different backgrounds and strengths can come together to support the greater good for the company.”
At Rayburn, we love seeing people discover talents and abilities they didn’t know they had, in large part because we provide space for everyone to grow beyond the boundaries of a job description.
