What exactly are your responsibilities?
How would your team members answer this question?
Not being able to answer is a problem.
Not being able to define your responsibilities precisely has negative consequences, regardless of how high the role sits in the hierarchy and of the sphere in question (professional or personal).
Whether the system is a family or a company, being confused about what you are supposed to do as part of the role you hold produces a series of very serious negative effects.
How problems with responsibilities show up
How do you know whether you have a problem with defining responsibilities?
The signals of this problem come from situations that are far more common than people think.
To begin with, being confused about tasks and goals is a symptom of not understanding your own responsibilities.
The first consequence of this confusion is that you end up dealing with something that is not yours to handle: you shift the boundaries of your action and take others' places, improperly taking on some of their tasks.
This improper appropriation, in turn, has very negative consequences.
We speak of micromanagement when a manager (but also a parent or a partner in a couple) who does not know their own responsibilities well takes over someone else's (team members, children, the other partner): by stepping in for the other person, besides creating confusion, they end up reducing that person's room for growth and creativity.
Another frequent situation that stems from confusion about tasks and goals is, conversely, not dealing with what should fall to you by virtue of your role.
It is a form of unconscious default that does the same damage as a conscious one: someone is not doing what they should, and the system pays the consequences.
This happens when you are not clear about your functions, that is, what falls to you and what has to be done in the role you hold (whether professional or personal).
Another signal that brings this problem to the surface is the centralization of responsibilities: ownership and responsibility coincide in the same role (or person), who concentrates every decision and all authority, often creating bottlenecks and dependency that are the direct consequence of not distributing decision-making autonomy and the responsibility that comes with it.
Finally, having areas or processes without anyone responsible for them is certainly a symptom of the problem.
Every role has responsibilities, with no level excluded (not even the lowest): in a productive system, defined and clear responsibilities cannot be missing.
What the research says
The meta-analysis by Susan E. Jackson & Randall S. Schuler (1985), "A Meta-Analysis and Conceptual Critique of Research on Role Ambiguity and Role Conflict in Work Settings," and its re-examination by Travis C. Tubre & Judith M. Collins (2000), "Jackson and Schuler (1985) Revisited: A Meta-Analysis of the Relationships Between Role Ambiguity, Role Conflict, and Job Performance," synthesized hundreds of studies on the subject and show that:
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role ambiguity — not knowing precisely what you are accountable for — is consistently associated with lower satisfaction, lower commitment to the organization and greater tension
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of the two factors, role ambiguity weighs on job performance more than role conflict does
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both are associated with a greater intention to leave and an actually higher turnover rate
How many workers today know exactly what is expected of them, on the other hand, is not measured by independent public surveys: the most widely circulated estimates on this point come from private polling firms and are not reported here.
On top of this there is a phenomenon that observation inside companies records regularly, and that no independent survey measures: the scope of a role expands by accumulation.
Additional tasks arrive after hiring, are not agreed upon and never make it into the job description.
Those who receive them end up feeling that they are doing several jobs at once, and the boundary of what they are accountable for becomes unreadable.
John Darley & Bibb Latané (1968), in "Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility," found that:
- the more the number of people involved increases, the more the sense of individual responsibility decreases
You lose motivation and proactivity when you are not clear about your own responsibility.
You stop adding value to your system; on the contrary, you start to perceive an increase in workload and you lose productivity.
It is a dynamic that observation inside companies records regularly, in businesses of every size.
Confusion about tasks and goals generates dispersion and waste, and this is a problem for the whole system.
What the effects of the problem are
It is fair to ask, then, what effects the problem of not being able to define the responsibilities of a role produces.
There are 6 main ones:
1- a sense of frustration and dissatisfaction: the inner feeling of getting nothing done, of leaving something out, stays alive, weighs on you and does damage… above all because it is rarely attributed to a lack of responsibility.
2- a tendency to shirk responsibility: not being clear about your own responsibility leads to not acting, and therefore to having to use justifications, excuses and blame dynamics. People stop talking about causes and move on to blame, with all the consequences for personal and relational trust that follow, besides making it impossible to improve the process as long as everyone stays tied to the idea of blame.
Complaints also increase: complaining comes precisely from feeling that you have no responsibility; the system is not under your control and you criticize it from an almost external, detached perspective, as if you had no power to step in and improve it.
3- reduced proactivity: the sense of self-efficacy decreases, along with the value you want to bring to the system.
5- wasted time: when responsibilities are not clear, the risk of devoting yourself to the wrong tasks is high.
6- busyness: by ignoring your responsibilities, you tend to carry out many low-value tasks. You fill your day with lots of tasks, but not with the ones that are due and important, the ones that meet the duties of your role.
Clearly, the only reason it is possible to leave out something important is that you are not aware it concerns your role, that it is part of your responsibilities.
The most common mistakes in solving the problem
Confusion about the responsibilities that belong to a role is, therefore, a very important issue that needs to be solved.
Once a problem has been identified, you can decide to live with it, treating it as a normal feature of the system, or commit to eliminating it through specific improvement actions.
The mere will to solve the problem, however, is not enough: many initiatives produce apparent changes without eliminating the issue at its root.
Among the most common, most accessible and also most advertised solutions for solving the problem of defining the responsibilities of a role are:
1- working more (an instinctive reaction to the feeling of dissatisfaction): in the uncertainty, you choose to stay as active as possible by taking on tasks… but you tend to increase only the part of the work you already know how to do, without making any change that alters the state of disorientation.
2- taking a leadership course (confusing responsibility with an ability – to respond –): you think that responsibility is an ability, but, as you will see further on, it is not.
Moreover, responsibility concerns everyone, not just leaders: a leadership course is, by definition, aimed only at leaders.
Everyone, instead, is involved in the process of responsibility, even children… so courses like these address an incomplete target.
3- defining responsibilities exclusively in terms of results (indicators and projects): it is like seeing a partial reality, not reality as a whole… responsibility is not just about projects and numbers.
Many companies, when facing a problem, tend to choose solutions like these that seem immediate and reassuring.
However, in the case of confusion about the responsibilities of a role, these three options do not lead to a definitive solution.
The reason is that they address the visible phenomenon without acting on the mechanism that generates it. And when the cause stays the same, the problem is bound to come back.
To really change the results, you have to start from the method. That means analyzing the process, understanding how the activities are carried out and identifying the points where the condition that gave rise to the issue was created.
Every business problem is the result of a specific cause. Finding it lets you identify what is missing or not working and introduce corrective actions capable of producing an improvement that lasts over time.
This article tackles the topic of defining the responsibilities of a role by proposing an operational path that works directly on causes, not on effects. It is an approach that can be applied effectively to any organizational problem.
That is why the first step suggested by the method, once the problem has been identified, is always the analysis of the process from which it originated.
Where to look for the cause of the problem: analyzing the process involved
There is a big difference between patching a problem and solving it for good. The difference lies in the method used.
Very often the focus is on finding a solution right away, but without proper analysis there is a risk of acting in the wrong direction and having to deal with the same situation over and over.
That is why problem analysis is the heart of the entire resolution process. When you understand precisely what caused an issue, finding the solution becomes much simpler and more effective.
This is a fundamental skill for anyone who wants to improve the results of their organization or their business. And like any skill, it requires a method to be developed and used correctly.
In reality, the path starts even earlier. Before analyzing a problem, you need to be able to identify it, describe it clearly and assess its importance relative to the other issues present in the system.
If a problem is not recognized, it will never enter the improvement process. It will simply keep generating inefficiencies, costs and difficulties that will be considered inevitable.
That is why Prodability Academy developed the online course "Problem Noting - Fai ordine nei tuoi problemi," to learn how to see, write down and correctly order the problems of a system.
The program was designed to help companies and professionals build an essential skill: identifying problems independently, defining them correctly and deciding which ones to tackle first.
Only after the problem has been made visible and prioritized is it possible to move on to the next phase: identifying at which point in the process lies the cause that gave rise to it.
The phases of the process in which the real cause of confusion about the responsibilities of a role may lie are:
1- delegation at the start of the working relationship (or role onboarding)
2- changes to responsibilities (every time tasks are added or removed)
3- delegation of responsibilities
This article focuses on the phase of the process concerning delegation at the start of the working relationship.
Identifying the real cause of the problem
What can go wrong in the delegation that takes place when a role is started?
From the moment you take on a role, you also take on the related responsibilities, whether you are aware of it or not: becoming a partner, a manager or a parent means acquiring the functions and responsibilities proper to that role.
There are problems with defining responsibilities when there is low awareness of the types of responsibility and when there is no proven process for defining responsibilities.
So, if the real cause is something missing, what fills this gap are 3 operational solutions to apply when a role is taken on, through delegation at the start of the working relationship.
The operational solutions
The proposed solutions develop an executional method and therefore work on how a role is taken on.
To create a method for delegation at the start of the working relationship, you need to apply 3 solutions that are also rules to follow.
Solution 1 — Define clearly what a responsibility is
This first solution is fundamental, even if it seems simplistic: we use the term responsibility assuming that we really know what it means.
But what do we mean by "being responsible for something or someone"?
In the world of management, and of the courses used as a common solution to the problem we are discussing, an imprecise meaning of the concept of responsibility has spread.
People talk about response-ability = the ability to respond: a very recent use of the word that has drifted away from its origin.
"Responsibility" comes from the Latin "respondere," whose meaning is "the obligation to answer for one's actions and to take charge of them": the word is made up of "re," meaning "response/return," and "spondere," which means "to promise solemnly, to pledge solemnly."
So responsibility is not an ability but a duty.
We need to acknowledge that every role entails duties: any role, personal or professional, in any hierarchical position, from the CEO to the child.
Solution 2 — Define a procedure for establishing responsibilities
How are responsibilities defined?
Through a precise three-phase procedure:
1- first divide the roles, clarifying which role is held by whom: responsibilities are not assigned to people but to roles, so a duty will be assigned to the sales manager, not to Giovanni
2- for each role, define the counterpart: with whom, and with how many counterparts, value is exchanged
3- define the responsibilities of each role
There are always 4 responsibilities (for any type of role).
In every role and for every counterpart, you are accountable for Results and Problems.
So, to define the responsibilities of a role, you need to ask the question "what must I be accountable for?":
1- the cause of problems: for every problem there is a cause, and a role is responsible for that cause; to identify these causes, you have to ask which problems each role is accountable for.
2- direct results (those proper to the role you take on)
3- indirect results (those of others for whom the role is responsible)
4- the effects of problems (who pays, who is accountable for the effects)
To understand how this procedure is applied, just think, for example, of a waiter and go through the points of the procedure to define their responsibilities:
1- role: waiter
2- define their counterpart: Dining room manager
3- define the waiter's responsibilities, by defining the four types of responsibility:
- cause of problems: customer dissatisfaction problems related to the service
- direct results: no. of 5-star reviews we receive
- indirect results: no. of 5-star reviews of the trainee waiter assigned to them for a period
- effects of problems: cost of dishes made wrong because of an ordering error
A role has responsibilities to answer for to each counterpart: it is accountable for causes, results and effects.
Solution 3 — Schedule a monthly or quarterly report on your responsibilities
For each responsibility, you need to measure performance (how it went) over a regular, recurring period of time, analyzing what the role answered for dutifully and precisely and what it did not answer for.
Responsibility is not about the how but about the what, and it is not a way of responding but a duty.
Many problems at work, as in the family, come from ignoring the duties associated with the role you take on: duties that fall on the role, not on the person, from the moment they take on the position.
Being aware that there are duties, and that if something goes wrong there is probably first of all a problem of default due to a lack of awareness of the functions and responsibilities of a role, brings great order and clarity to begin solving the resulting problems.
These are three operational rules to introduce into everyday business life to generate immediate improvements and counter problems that, over time, produce significant consequences.
The key to a definitive solution is following a method that lets you understand the problem in depth and turn the analysis into effective action.
Sources and references
Jackson, S. E., & Schuler, R. S. (1985) "A Meta-Analysis and Conceptual Critique of Research on Role Ambiguity and Role Conflict in Work Settings", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 36(1), 16-78 — https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(85)90020-2
Tubre, T. C., & Collins, J. M. (2000) "Jackson and Schuler (1985) Revisited: A Meta-Analysis of the Relationships Between Role Ambiguity, Role Conflict, and Job Performance", Journal of Management, 26(1), 155-169 — https://doi.org/10.1177/014920630002600104
Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968) "Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377-383 — https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025589