Dear Bob ... How does an employee define his/her position when management is unable to do so? My company recently outsourced its infrastructure. I was part of a group which was split in half, due to the (incorrect) belief that our responsibilities would be divided evenly between our company and the outsourcing provider. We now know that the provider will assume all of the group's former duties, but it's too lat Dear Bob …How does an employee define his/her position when management is unable to do so? My company recently outsourced its infrastructure. I was part of a group which was split in half, due to the (incorrect) belief that our responsibilities would be divided evenly between our company and the outsourcing provider. We now know that the provider will assume all of the group’s former duties, but it’s too late for the rest of us join our transferred colleagues.That leaves a couple of co-workers and I in limbo. Our supervisor is asking us to help define our new roles, but we’re leery of doing so. We hear ideas about “owning processes,” “interfacing between groups” and “being gatekeepers,” but these seem like make-work. We’ve also heard about developing a data architecture or data warehousing, but these desires have no commitment (i.e. budget) attached to them. If we left, there is no way my boss could submit job requisitions to fill our slots, so what are we doing here? However, I tend to see things cynically, so maybe I’m missing something. Your thoughts?– Twisting in the windDear Twisting … Just my opinion: You’re better off defining your own new roles than allowing a supervisor to do it for you.Go back to a concept I wrote about in a very early column: The 70 percent solution. You’re thinking in the right terms when you worry about make-work. The 70 percent solution says that if you aren’t returning at least your salary plus 70 percent to your employer in value, your employer is better off without you.Whether you’re doing so or not is the result of a combination of the value of the work you’re asked to do and how productive and effective you are in doing it. Most employees have control over only half of this equation – the second half. Your supervisor is giving you a chance to control the first half as well. You should take it.That your supervisor invited you to do so is a tip-off – not that your supervisor is especially empathic, generous, or interested in your well-being, although all three are certainly possible. It’s a tip-off that your supervisor doesn’t have a clearly defined picture of how to define positions that provide enough value to clear the 70% hurdle. If you ask your supervisor to handle the task anyway, the odds are pretty good you’ll get a job that looks good on paper but which doesn’t really pass the test.What kind of job should you define for yourselves? Only you can make that decision. A few criteria that might help: * The responsibilities should be much harder to handle off-site. If you could telecommute the job, an outsourcer can also handle it remotely.* The position should require intimate knowledge of your company, how it runs, and/or how all of its systems fit together. If you’re a great Java programmer or figure in-depth knowledge of ITIL will make the difference you’re thinking exactly wrong – those are transportable skills. You’re looking for skills that are hard to replicate.* Some of the role should be highly hands-on – it should require a lot of face-to-face time with business managers and staff. Okay, it’s one way to be hard to handle off-site. But it deserves some additional emphasis. * Something you touched on – the responsibilities shouldn’t require a large capital expenditure. You have to be able to make things happen with existing resources.If you can’t think of any role that fits, you need to pursue a different strategy: Define a role that’s plausible enough to keep you employed long enough to find a job with a different company.– Bob ——– Technology Industry