Challenges around distributed responsibilities can be found in many different environments - being it line or project organizations each with hierarchical settings or settings with little to no formal hierarchy. The less formal an organization is or the more dynamic the environment, the more important is clarity on responsibilities to stay efficient.
This efficiency comes from avoiding irritations due to overlapping responsibilities of roles as much as from avoiding gaps in between responsibilities of roles. And honestly, it starts with clarity on who is having which role and who is going to take which decisions. To define the decision-making processes and responsibilities is one of the crucial parts in complex environments with highly independent teams working together.
Decision-making can be as easy as: “Everyone decides on their own but needs to align with everyone who is affected by the decision.” Nice and simple rule. Very efficient. Very lean. Unfortunately, in dynamic environments it is terribly difficult to just know “who is going to be affected” or “who feels affected”.
The same decision-need raised to different people will most probably end in different decisions. Why? The individual confronted with the decision-need, might involve the obviously affected stakeholders. So far so good. But for alignment they will turn to their trusted individual network. The biggest challenge from this is not necessarily the different result. But, how to communicate taken decisions in a way that ensures all relevant stakeholders learn about it? In addition, how to learn from mistakes?
Yet another difficulty - if responsibilities around decisions are not clearly defined - is the cluster risk. Decisions tend to end up on the desks of persons with special gravity. These are often people either confident or bold enough to take decisions with less people involved. Or it is people high up in the hierarchy. By the way, in organizations on their way to self-organization even former hierarchies will do the trick.
Both mentioned mechanisms can be fine, if it is a conscious decision. But many times, the idea of more self-organization, fast and decentralized decision-making is rather one of delegation. The target is to take decisions where the actual information and expertise is anyways available. Falling back to these gravity persons most often contradicts this intention.
What are the options?
Defining and agreeing on roles and how these collaborate would be my immediate answer. It works very well both in line and project organizations.
Once the overall direction - the compass - is clear, role definitions can help a great deal in clarity on responsibilities including empowerment on decision-making. In classical line organizations you will typically find standard roles which very much sound alike across different companies. There are accountants, customer service representatives, planners, production foremen - you name it. As soon as you start talking about the detailed distribution of responsibilities these roles will show tremendous differences. Do not assume roles are congruent just because the name of the role seems to be clear. And do not trust in it just because everybody confirms that they know what their role is about. You can save yourself (and all involved) a lot of frustration by spending time on clarifying the roles anyways.
Role clarifications and dimensions of responsibility
So, be persistent! Overcome the initial push-back and individually talk to involved persons about their roles. Later, you can summarize the insights and raise clarification needs. You could think of different structures both for the conversations as well as for the documentation of roles.
In projects, I tend to go for clarification of the “R&A” of “RACI” and have a one-page summary of each role. Leaving out the “C&I” only works, if the project meeting structures ensure that the entire team is kept informed and bring in their perspectives via this channel. But for me, that is anyways part of sound project management. To mitigate the risk of missing out on that, our one-page summary includes a section on which other roles the respective role is collaborating with, is supporting or receives support from. In this way, the interconnection of different roles can be made transparent. For the “R&A” part, we like to set up a list of topics per work package or phase of the project. This list clearly states the role’s responsibilities and accountabilities.
In ERP projects we have good experience in accelerating the role clarification by starting off with “template roles” (e.g. for integration manager or test manager). Hopefully 90% should already fit and the specifics of the project can be added as required. Template roles could be derived from former projects in similar environments, or you fall back on standard project management frameworks, like PMI, Prince2, Scrum.
This is how such a one-pager could look like. Nothing fancy, but it does the job:
Outside of projects, I really like the model of 4-dimensions of response-ability. I got to know it during my organizational development and change management qualification at the systemic training institutes of ISB Wiesloch. Using this model is really helpful to nail down the details of a specific role and clarify individual requirements of the person holding the role.
In a “conversation about response-ability” you touch base on 4 dimensions related to the individual and the team/organization:
Note: The model originally was designed to discuss individual responsibilities and to clarify the distribution of responsibilities between individuals. But we have successfully used it for general clarification of roles.
Loose ends?
What are your thoughts on using the 4 dimensions of responsibility in project teams? Or maybe during project staffing or hiring?
With having the single roles clarified, how can you achieve a comprehensive overview on their interdependencies?
Do you have experiences on how to combine it with agile task management?
Do you have experience in using delegation poker in projects to negotiate responsibilities? Maybe there are situations where this can work?
Summing it up, by clarifying the roles you ensure that the project approach is understood by everyone incl. their individual contributions. In line organizations it helps to ensure that everybody has understood the processes they are involved in.
Clarity on roles and responsibilities is key for efficient collaboration of teams. Due to this, it is an essential part of organizational development independent from the environment.
Feel free to comment and share your thoughts.