Jackson: Your job description is a trap. It’s designed to make you a solid, reliable contributor. But what if the secret to making a real impact, to becoming truly indispensable, is to ignore it completely? Olivia: That is such a provocative way to put it, Jackson, but it’s absolutely the central tension of modern work. We’re handed a map, but the real treasure, the real value, is often completely off the page. Jackson: It feels so counterintuitive. Like, rule number one is 'do your job.' But you're saying the real rule is 'find the real job'? Olivia: Exactly. And that’s the core idea in the fantastic book we're diving into today: Impact Players by Liz Wiseman. It makes perfect sense coming from her—she spent 17 years at Oracle, a hyper-competitive environment, and now her firm advises top tech companies like Apple and Google. She's obsessed with what separates the good from the truly great, not at the CEO level, but for everyone else in the organization. Jackson: Okay, so this isn't for the corner-office folks. This is for the rest of us in the trenches. If my job description is a trap, what am I supposed to be doing instead? Just wander around the office looking for problems to solve? Olivia: In a way, yes! But with a very specific mindset. Wiseman says Impact Players don't just do their assigned job; they do the job that needs to be done. They see the messy, ambiguous, frustrating problems not as a distraction from their work, but as the work itself.

Jackson: That sounds noble, but also incredibly risky. If my manager gives me a task, and I go off and work on something else because I think it's more important... that doesn't sound like a recipe for a good performance review. It sounds like a recipe for getting fired. Olivia: It would be, if you just ignored your work. But the mindset is different. It’s about understanding the bigger picture. There's a perfect story in the book about this. It’s about a guy named Maninder Sawhney at Adobe. Jackson: Adobe, okay. Big company, big stakes. Olivia: Huge stakes. At the time, Adobe's CEO was deeply frustrated. The company had all this customer data, but it was stuck in different silos. No one could get a clear picture of what was happening. Multiple teams had tried to fix it and failed. It was a known, painful, and seemingly unsolvable problem. Jackson: The kind of problem everyone complains about during coffee breaks but nobody wants to touch. Olivia: Precisely. So, Maninder, who was a director of data analytics, was scheduled to present his team's project at a big quarterly business review with the CEO. He gets up there and starts his presentation on managing customer attrition. Jackson: Which sounds like a totally reasonable, important thing for a data analytics director to be working on. He's doing his job. Olivia: He is. But as he's talking, he's reading the room. He can see the CEO’s face, and he realizes, 'This isn't what he cares about. I am solving a problem, but I am not solving his problem. I'm completely off-target.' Jackson: Oh, that's a cold-sweat moment. To realize that in front of the CEO. What did he do? Just power through and hope for the best? Olivia: This is where the Impact Player mindset kicks in. Instead of just finishing his presentation, he paused. He essentially said, 'You know what? I can see this isn't hitting the mark. I think I'm solving the wrong problem. Give me another chance. Let me come back with a plan to solve the real issue here,' which was the unified data view the CEO was so frustrated about. Jackson: Hold on. He basically admitted his own project was irrelevant in the middle of a high-stakes meeting and asked for a do-over on a problem that had stumped multiple teams before him? That is either the bravest move I've ever heard or the most foolish. Olivia: It's the difference between contributing and making an impact. He wasn't just pointing out a problem; he was taking ownership of the solution. He went back, he talked to all the stakeholders, and he came back with a new framework. The CEO commissioned him to lead a cross-functional team to build it. Jackson: And did it work? Olivia: Within six months, the new system was operational. It fundamentally changed how Adobe ran its business and added hundreds of millions of dollars to the company's revenue. Maninder was eventually put in charge of the entire digital media business for the Americas. He didn't just do his job; he saw the real job that needed doing and stepped up to do it. Jackson: That's incredible. But it brings up a concern that some readers have had with this book. This idea of constantly looking for the biggest, messiest problems to solve... doesn't that just lead to burnout? Is 'Impact Player' just a fancy term for 'workaholic'? Olivia: That's a fair and important question. Wiseman addresses this. She argues it's not about working more hours, but about where you direct your energy. Think about it: what's more draining? Spending 50 hours a week on a project you know doesn't really matter, dealing with office politics and what she calls the 'phantom workload' of drama and friction? Or spending 50 hours on a tough, challenging problem that you know will make a huge difference? Impact Players find energy in solving valuable problems. They're not just busy; they're impactful.

Olivia: And that idea of taking ownership, even when it's not your job, scales up from a corporate boardroom to literally changing the world. It's about this second key practice Wiseman identifies: on-demand leadership. Jackson: On-demand leadership. It sounds like a streaming service for management. What does it mean? Olivia: It means you don't need a title to lead. It's about seeing a leadership vacuum and stepping into it, for as long as you're needed. The most powerful story she uses to illustrate this has nothing to do with business. It takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1976, during the height of The Troubles. Jackson: Whoa. Okay, we are a long way from Adobe's data problems. Olivia: A long way. The city was torn apart by violent conflict. People were living in constant fear. The story centers on a 33-year-old mother of two named Betty Williams. She was an office receptionist. Just an ordinary person trying to survive. Jackson: Not a politician, not an activist. A receptionist. Olivia: Exactly. One afternoon, she witnessed a horrific event. A getaway car with an IRA member at the wheel was shot by a British soldier. The car spun out of control and plowed into a family on the sidewalk, killing three young children. Jackson: Oh, that's just gut-wrenching. Olivia: Betty Williams saw it happen. And in that moment, something inside her snapped. She was done being a bystander. She, this ordinary office worker, started walking through her Protestant neighborhood with a petition for peace. Then she organized a small march of 200 women. At that march, she met Mairéad Corrigan, the aunt of the children who had been killed. Jackson: Wow. So two women, united by this tragedy. Olivia: They joined forces. Their next march had 10,000 women, both Catholic and Protestant, marching together to the children's graves. They faced threats, people threw stones and bottles at them, but they kept going. They founded an organization called the Peace People. And the following year, Betty Williams and Mairéad Corrigan were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Jackson: From office receptionist to Nobel laureate. That's... I don't even have words for that. That's not about getting a promotion. That's about pure, raw conviction. But Wiseman argues this same principle applies in the office. How does that even translate? Most of our 'ambient problems' are things like a clunky expense report system, not a civil war. Olivia: The scale is different, but the principle is identical. It's about seeing a problem that everyone complains about but no one owns, and choosing to lead. Wiseman tells another story about Paul Forgey at Target. The customer return process was a mess, split across five different departments. No one owned it, so the customer experience was terrible. Jackson: I can definitely relate to that kind of problem. The ones that fall through the cracks between teams. Olivia: Right. Paul's job was just to analyze his part of the process. But he saw the leadership vacuum. He called a meeting with managers from all five departments, even though he had no authority over them. He kicked it off not with a spreadsheet, but with a mock press release from the future, describing a seamless, amazing return experience. He enrolled them in a vision. Jackson: He gave them a 'why'. He didn't just point out the problem; he painted a picture of the solution. Olivia: Exactly. And once that cross-functional team was up and running and had a leader, Paul stepped back. He wasn't trying to grab power. He was just trying to solve the problem. That's the core of on-demand leadership: Step Up, Enroll Others, and then, crucially, Step Back. Jackson: That's the part people forget, right? The graceful exit. It’s not a power grab; it's a temporary stewardship. You're just holding the space until the right structure is in place. Olivia: You've got it. It's about making things better, not about making yourself the permanent boss of everything. You provide the activation energy and then let the team run with it.

Jackson: So whether it's a broken data model at Adobe, a clunky return process at Target, or a broken society in Belfast, the pattern is the same. An Impact Player sees the mess, feels a sense of responsibility, and steps in. They don't wait to be asked. Olivia: Exactly. And the book's most powerful, and perhaps controversial, message is that this is a choice. It's a mindset you can cultivate. Wiseman's research found that managers value these players up to ten times more than under-contributors. And it’s not about working more hours; it’s about directing your energy to where it creates the most value. The 'phantom workload' of office politics, of navigating ambiguity, of dealing with drama—that is often more draining than tackling a real, messy problem head-on. Jackson: That’s a fantastic point. We think of the 'hard work' as the project itself, but the emotional labor of a dysfunctional environment is the real energy vampire. So, the challenge for all of us this week, then, could be to find one 'ambient problem'—something everyone in your work or even your family complains about but no one owns—and just ask one question: 'What would it take to fix this?' You don't have to solve it yourself. Just start the conversation. Olivia: I love that. It's a small step that embodies the whole mindset. And we'd love to hear what you come up with. Find us on our social channels and tell us about the 'ambient problems' you're seeing. Let's see what we can stir up together. Jackson: It’s a powerful idea. Don't just do your job. Find the real job, and then, maybe, lead the charge. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.