The biggest fallacy I have encountered in corporations is the belief that we can assign responsibilities. Responsibility is by choice – never by assignment.
We can assign accountability, duties, even authority – but not responsibility.
Think of a parent responsible for her child. It’s a “no excuses” kind of responsibility. You can’t force this unto others.
Accountability only lays success or failure at my door. If failure results, I’ll give you reasons why I am not responsible (such as: I did not have authority over the team feeding me late/poor inputs to my work). Accountability does not make me act extraordinarily.
But if I choose to be responsible, I behave as if I own the results.
Needless to say High-Performance Teams exhibit a high sense of responsibility, which they have freely chosen. But how do they motivate members to take responsibility?
The decision to assume responsibility is more emotional than logical: Taking responsibility occurs before we know how or if we control all factors. Logically speaking, assuming responsibility is risky.
Consider the following exchange between a QA Team Leader and team member (TM). From the coaching file:
TM: I am willing to take the responsibility for the quality on this project – but the other people (engineers) have to do their job. They have to follow the process.
Leader: Don’t you think you have a role to play, in helping them follow the process?
TM: How could I? I’m not their boss. I can’t make them follow the process. Maybe you can because you’re a manager – but I can’t. All I can do is check and report if the process is followed or not.
This is a good example of “not taking responsibility”. Truth be told, the team member does not even feel responsible for checking the process. She told us that if the engineers fake it, or hide stuff, she can’t be responsible for accurate quality control. It is logical.
Contrast this with her team leader who chose to be responsible for quality work at the company. Again from the coaching file:
Leader: The way you approach and talk to a person determines whether they will listen to you or not, whether they will follow a process or not.
TM: Are you saying I’m supposed to “make them” want to follow the process?
I spoke at length with this QA Team Leader. She is passionate. She has taken on the responsibility for Quality. Of course, she does not “do” the engineering work. So she uses her skills to motivate the engineers, who might otherwise cut corners.
Nobody could have forced her to “declare herself responsible”. She made that choice.
Often we try replacing responsibility with processes. Then we hold people accountable to follow the process. But many processes are written as if we were machines. They do not account for human errors, they do not account for fatigue. They do not account for a bad manager who demoralizes people. They ignore under-staffing or inexperienced new staff. If all goes perfectly – the machine will work. But we are not machines even if we idealistically hope to be. Responsibility bridges this gap. It drives what we do in the context of the process.
Processes guide us in best practices. But they are not enough. We need a declaration of responsibility.
How do we instill responsibility? Here are a few tips that I have seen work in high-performance teams:
- Discuss with the team how they define responsibility. Where does it stop? Listen for limitations: I am willing to be responsible for X if “they” agree to do “Y”.
- People limit their scope of responsibility to what they feel they can control. Explore how they can “exert control” in ways they have not thought of.
- Do not give them the accountability, if they won’t take the responsibility. You would be surprised how people react when they realize they are only accountable for 1% of the team’s output. Remember, taking responsibility is more emotional than rational. Use it.
- Map accountability for the team. Look for holes. Then ask who wants to take responsibility for that missing accountability.
Example: Team members take responsibility for their work if the necessary inputs show up on time. Thus, there is no accountability for making sure the inputs show up on time. Specifically ask if somebody wants to take the responsibility to make sure the inputs show up.
Above all, as a team leader, choose to be responsible for your team’s output. Do not limit it with external circumstances. That is perhaps the best way to have the team also take responsibility.
Fact of the matter is, imo, we are islands unto ourselves at work truly, and we are members of the “team” because that is the corporate model we are forced to follow…therein lies the problem of “team” vs “individual” responsibility. Corporations are not modeled after human nature – human nature in a competitive environment that is, where each of us is trying to grab the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There is no “team” in that endeavor.
I’m sorry for your experience. I don’t disagree that there is a lot of “corporate talk” that expects teams where none exist. But it is not my experience that teams cannot exist at work. Even if I buy into the “island”, there are often situations where these islands come together because it is in their best interest to be part of a team.
You do raise a good point: I do not think that there is such thing as “team responsibility”. There is of course, “team accountability”. But responsibility is a personal thing, one must declare it for oneself. Teams can only be responsible, because each member took on – by choice – the responsibility of success. That is indeed a powerful – high performance – team.
In my experience, its common to be assigned responsibility for a project while not getting the authority that’s really required to execute on it.
Do you have any suggestions on how to handle that situation?
Your experience mirrors most people I have encountered. You are absolutely correct.
It is true that we are often made accountable without all the authority we need. In fact, I think it is always the case: authority will be limited because it is bound to bump against somebody else’s. So assigning authority correctly is a wild goose chase. My first recommendation is to recognize this fact: nobody can ever be assigned all the authority they need. Success lies outside simple authority.
My second recommendation – you may or may not like it. Decide if you want to be responsible or not. As Isaid, it is your choice and yours alone. If you decide you are responsible, you will discover that you can get what you need – even without the authority. I have observed in multiple companies that people who declare themselves responsible act in a certain way: people want to be around them, people want to help them, people want to be part of their teams etc. It sounds strange but try it: look for somebody at work who makes stuff happen, and chances are the “stuff” that happens is beyond his or her sphere of responsibility.