The In-Between Job

By Ragunauth Ramsaroop Excerpt from “From Teller to Director” 10 min read

In 2020, I joined AGM Inc. as Administration Secretary in General Administration.

The title was modest. The role was not — it just took me a while to see it. I have come to think of that year as the in-between job: between the counter and the boardroom, between support and responsibility, between what I already knew and what I needed to learn. It was the shortest-sounding title I have ever held, and it taught me more about how organisations actually work than any position since.

The job itself was straightforward to describe. I answered phones, managed correspondence, prepared briefings, and kept things organised for senior leadership. If you have never done it, it sounds like background work — the kind of role you pass through on the way to something else. It is not background work. It is where the organisation touches the outside world, and where its decisions get written down. I learned both of those facts the way you learn most important things: by being in the room when they became obvious.

The front door

The phone was my first teacher. In any large organisation, the switchboard is the front door, and the person who answers it is the first impression the outside world gets. Every call carried the organisation's reputation with it: a community member with a question, a supplier chasing a payment, a ministry official looking for the right person, a contractor trying to understand why something was delayed.

I learned to listen first — to understand the issue, the caller, and what they actually needed — before deciding who could help. That sounds easy. It is not. Most callers are not clear about what they need, and many are frustrated about something that has already gone wrong. The counter had trained me for exactly this: separate the emotion from the problem, find the real need, and solve it or route it to someone who can. The difference was that now the organisation's name was on the line, not just mine. A call mishandled at the front door is a reputation dent that someone else will have to repair further inside.

The discipline that came out of it was simple: nothing falls through the cracks. If I told a caller I would find an answer, I found it. If a message was for someone else, it reached them, complete, with the context they needed. The follow-through habit I had built at the counter became the standard for every interaction that crossed my desk — because in an administrative role, follow-through is the entire job description, and the people who depend on you notice when it is done well.

The organisation's voice

The second teacher was correspondence. Letters, submissions, and replies went out under the organisation's name, not mine — and that was the lesson. When you write on behalf of an organisation, your accuracy becomes its accuracy. A typo in a letter to a community is not a typo; it is carelessness with someone else's reputation. A document that goes to a ministry incomplete is not an administrative slip; it is a signal about how seriously the organisation takes the relationship.

I had spent five years at the counter learning that every transaction had to balance and every record had to be complete. Here the same standard applied to prose: complete, accurate, and clear enough that the reader did not have to work to understand it. Precision is a form of respect — I believed that before I joined AGM, and the correspondence that crossed my desk proved it daily. The respect showed up in the documents themselves, in the way they were checked and re-checked, and in the way the people receiving them came to trust that what arrived from our office would be right the first time.

Then there were the briefings. I supported senior leaders by making sure their briefings were accurate, their meetings were coordinated, and nothing fell through the cracks. Preparing a briefing taught me what a decision actually needs before it can be made: the background, the options, the risks, the open questions, and the things the decision-maker will be asked about that we had not thought of yet. A briefing that answers yesterday's questions is worthless. A briefing that anticipates tomorrow's is worth more than the meeting itself.

Studying the organisation

The most important work I did that year was not on the phone or at the desk. It was the work of studying the organisation itself.

I learned how decisions got made — who needed to know what, and where things tended to stall. I learned which information moved a decision and which sat in a file. I learned that organisations suffer from silos: operations does not always know what government relations is managing, compliance may not be looped into aviation scheduling, and leadership may need information that sits across three departments. None of this was in my job description. All of it was essential.

I also learned about the business itself. Mining operations, procurement, human resources, aviation logistics, community relations — none of these were in my original job description either, and I set out to understand them anyway. Not because I had a plan for where it would lead, but because the questions I had brought from the agency still needed answering: how does a large organisation actually hold together? How do departments with different mandates and different timelines produce a single outcome? Where do the gaps open, and who closes them?

The answers came slowly, the way they always do: one conversation, one file, one meeting at a time. By the end of that first year I could see the organisation as a system — not perfectly, but well enough to know where the seams were. That knowledge would turn out to be worth more than any single task I completed, because the gaps between departments are where work goes to die, and the person who can close them becomes valuable in a way no job description can capture.

I should be honest about the texture of that year, because it is easy to romanticise it in retrospect. Most days were ordinary. There were weeks when the most important thing I did was make sure a single meeting happened on time with the right people in the room, or that a letter was correct in every particular before it went out. None of it was dramatic. But I had learned by then — at the counter, where the drama was also absent — that the ordinary work is the work. A year of ordinary work done carefully is how an organisation comes to trust you with the extraordinary.

Stepping into the gaps

This is the part I want to be honest about, because it is the part people romanticise. When I saw gaps, I stepped into them — but not by making grand offers. I did it in the ordinary way: I drafted documents that needed drafting. I followed up on commitments that others had forgotten. I offered to help before being asked, and I said yes when the answer could have been "that's not my job," because it usually was not my job.

The first hard assignments were rarely glamorous. They were the briefings with the shortest deadlines, the follow-ups that had to be chased across departments, the correspondence that had to be right the first time because there was no time for a second. What made them hard was that they mattered, and what made them worth doing was that they were the places where the organisation actually got things done. I showed up prepared, said yes to the hard assignments, and delivered before I expected to be recognised.

Over time, something shifted. People began to associate my name with reliability. When someone needed a document tracked down, a commitment followed up, or a briefing made right, my name came up. That is not a title. It is better than a title — it is a reputation, and it was built the same way the counter had taught me to build one: one kept promise at a time.

Preparation and delivery

The pattern that carried me through that year — and through every year since — was preparation first, delivery second.

I learned early that walking into a meeting with a ministry official or a senior executive without preparation is a form of professional negligence. So I built the habit properly: before any significant engagement, understand the objective, review the background, anticipate the questions, and prepare the responses. This sounds obvious. It is also uncommon. Many professionals rely on thinking on their feet. I prefer thinking beforehand.

Preparation is the quietest form of confidence. When people see that you have done the work, they treat you differently. They share more. They ask your opinion. They give you harder problems — the kind that lead to growth. At the counter, preparation had meant knowing the day's priorities before the doors opened. At the agency, it had meant knowing the client's business before the review meeting. At AGM, it meant knowing the organisation's position before the question was asked. Same habit. Three industries. One way of working.

The shift to ownership

That year also began the shift that separated my later roles from my earlier ones: I stopped thinking about completing tasks and started thinking about owning outcomes.

A task is "send the regulatory submission." An outcome is "the regulator has what they need, understands our position, and the process moves forward." The difference is follow-through, communication, and problem-solving after the initial step. It is the difference between doing your part and being responsible for the result. And it is the difference, I would learn, between a support role and a leadership role — because leadership is ultimately about taking responsibility for results you cannot control alone.

I did not fully understand that at the time. I understood it the way you understand a lesson you have not been tested on yet. The test came sooner than I expected.

The first promotion

In 2021, I moved into the Corporate and Social, Compliance and Government Relations function as Liaison Superintendent in the Social Responsibility Department. It was the first of five promotions in five years at AGM, and the promotion came after the performance, not before it — which is the only way I have ever known promotions to work.

The new role came with something I had not had before: direct ownership. Regulatory submissions, stakeholder correspondence, cross-departmental follow-through — these were no longer things I supported; they were things I was responsible for. It was the move from administrative support into operational responsibility, and it changed the meaning of every lesson the counter had taught me. Accuracy was no longer about my drawer. It was about documents that left the building and entered regulatory processes. Service was no longer about a customer across a counter. It was about institutions and communities whose trust the organisation depended on.

I did not feel ready. I felt prepared — and there is a difference, and it is worth a chapter of its own. Because owning the paper trail is where the counter lessons stopped being habits and started being a discipline. The first time your name sits on a document that enters a regulatory process, you understand why accuracy was never really about the drawer.

The next chapter is about that paper trail, and what it means to own it.

Key Points

The in-between job is where you learn how decisions actually get made — study the organisation, not just your task list.
The front door matters: every call, letter, and briefing carries the organisation's reputation, and follow-through is the entire job.
Step into the gaps — draft what needs drafting, follow up what was forgotten, say yes before being asked.
Preparation is the quietest form of confidence; walking into a meeting unprepared is professional negligence.
Own outcomes, not tasks: the difference between completing your part and being responsible for the result.
Promotions recognise responsibility already carried — the promotion came after the performance, not before it.