There’s an unspoken truth about career growth: your role isn’t what’s on paper. It’s what you choose to make of it. That’s great news if you’re ready to grow, and a risk if you’re coasting. Because roles don’t really stay static, they either expand, shift, or quietly shrink until the most meaningful parts are done by someone else (or an AI). So the real question is: are you actively designing your role to match your strengths and ambitions? Or passively letting others define it for you?

Let’s break down how to build a system for evolving your role... toward more strategic work, clearer alignment, and stronger impact.

Tip of the Week: Design your role like a product: clarify who it serves and which problems it’s meant to solve.

Side Note: If you’re trying to evolve your role into something more strategic, the right systems make all the difference.

That’s why I created the Effective Workload Management Systems course - a proven framework to help you design repeatable systems, manage visibility, and stay in control of your priorities. It’s been refined with input from over 70,000 Amazonians, and it's helped thousands shift from reactive to intentional. If you're serious about leveling up how you work (and how you're seen) start there.

The Theory Behind

Roles evolve based on the problems they’re designed to solve. Clayton Christensen’s Jobs to Be Done framework teaches us that success comes from understanding what “job” a customer is hiring a product to do. Your role works the same way. Even if your title stays the same, the real value of your work depends on which problems your stakeholders believe you’re solving. Most roles begin tactical - handling things, tasks, and coordination. But the real growth happens when you reframe your job around emerging problems and step in to solve them before someone asks.

Role value lives on a ladder: task, outcome, then insight. Borrowing from marketing’s benefit ladder, the impact of your role can be measured in levels: At the base, you’re completing tasks. In the middle, you’re driving measurable outcomes. At the top, you’re creating clarity, foresight, and influence across teams. The mistake many mid-career professionals make is staying “efficient” at the wrong level. This means over-indexing on flawless execution when their leverage comes from elevating the conversation. Moving up the ladder means asking not just how to do something, but why now, for whom, and what else it unlocks.

Roles are products, and you need to design them that way. Think like a product manager: your role has users (stakeholders), feature sets (skills), and a roadmap (strategic direction). Roles drift when they're unmanaged: when feedback isn’t gathered, when performance isn’t aligned to real needs, or when outcomes aren’t visible. But with the right systems (weekly reviews, feedback loops, visibility rituals), you can redesign the role while still executing in it. That’s how strategic roles get built - not by request, but by iteration.

What I’ve Learned

I’ve redesigned roles more through systems than promotions. My first job at Amazon was as a marketing manager. Most of my work was executional (sending emails, building landing pages, coordinating campaigns). But over time, I started redesigning how that work got done. I automated the emails, replaced polished pages with automated carousel templates. But the key thing is hat I only did this after testing and proving those changes actually yielded very similar results. That’s the key: when you move from tactical to strategic, it can look like you’re doing (or delivering) less, unless you bring data to show you’re actually not. If you don’t, leaders might assume you’ve dropped the ball. hey'll complain about the landing page or email "looking poor". But if you gather the right data, the subjectivity turns into facts, and you start being seen as strategic. I share this because we all have manual work that feels low-value. If you want to stop doing it, don’t just let it go. Prove it’s no longer needed. Test the results, show the impact, and earn the right to move up.

Make It Happen

1. Map what you actually do. List what’s in your job description vs. what you really spend time on. Notice what’s tactical, repetitive, or no longer valuable.

2. Identify strategic priorities around you. What are your org’s biggest goals right now? What’s top-of-mind for leadership? Find the overlap with your skill set.

3. Propose a shift. Find one area to reduce or automate, and one new problem to solve. Share that plan with your manager or team.

4. Track and share results. Don’t just “do” the new work, but document the value it creates. Use data to clarify outcomes, not just effort.

5. Schedule role reviews quarterly. Ask: What’s changed? What do I want to lean into more? Where is my leverage increasing?

6. Invite feedback from your stakeholders. Your role doesn’t evolve in a vacuum. Ask, “What’s one area where you think I could grow my impact?” And listen carefully.

Always iterating,

Jorge Luis Pando

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PS: Wow, you made it all the way down here? You must really care about your personal development! Here are 3 ways I can help you grow even faster:

1. Get My Most Popular Course: Learn the exact system I’ve taught to 70,000+ professionals to take control of emails, meetings, and DMs, and reclaim 150+ hours in your year.

2. Join The Effective Collective: Our private membership is opening soon as invite-only. Get access to two best-seller courses, weekly coaching, and support to level up your performance without burning out.

3. Book Me for Coaching or a Workshop: Need help scaling yourself or your team? I offer 1:1 coaching and custom team sessions to help you work better, not harder.

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