Following on from yesterday’s post about supervision, here are some links to Seth Godin on responsibility:
Rules and responsibility
“Use your best judgment.”
Bureaucracies have a very hard time saying this to their staff.
They create an endless series of scripts and rules, procedures that force people to not care. “I’m just doing my job,” which is the precise opposite of, “I see the problem and I’m going to fix it.”
As any organization hits a sufficient size, it will increase rules in order to decrease responsibility. Because they’ve gotten big enough that they no longer trust the people who work for them.
Is that a job you want?
Is that a company you want to hire?
Seth Godin
See also…