Whether you’re improving your own work or helping others improve theirs,* it pays to spend time talking about who is responsible for what – and what you hope people will take responsibility for as they grow into their roles.
There are layers of responsibility.
1) Given all the necessary inputs…
Do you take responsibility for getting your job done?
2) If an input is missing…
- Do you shrug your shoulders and put down your tools?
- Or do you take responsibility for passing the problem to the relevant person – a colleague, supplier, manager?
- Do you take responsibility for chasing up the solution?
- If needed, will you work with the relevant person to make it easier for them to fix it?
- Will you give thought to whether this problem is likely to happen again – and think about what you can do on your side to fix it (by, say, allowing more time in your process)?
- Will you take responsibility for the breakdown in communication or process – by talking about it, asking for help, trying something new?
3) If the inputs are fine and the process is working…
- Will you ask how it could be done better?
- Will you think about whether you could entirely replace the process, or do away with it entirely?
4) Above and beyond the level of processes…
- Will you take responsibility not just for the defined outcomes of the process, but for what those outcomes are actually supposed to achieve?
- Will you set an example of excellence in the quality of your work…
- Including how you treat people while you do it, both in and outside your organisation?
- Will you take a degree of responsibility for other people do these things – that is, for setting and improving the culture?**
Basic competence in a defined task is just the start – taking that as given, members of your team become more valuable the further down this list they go.
There’s a world of difference between managing someone where you responsibility for their work, and working with someone who takes responsibility to make sure the right things get done in the right way – and helps you and others to do the same. Find more of those people.
*it’s usually best to think about both at once
**No-one likes a meddler, but most of the time most of us make the mistake of not taking enough responsibility for making things better.