Responsibility and authority

One of the most common
things that junior managers find difficult is handling situations where their
responsibility does not correspond directly with their authority.

I’ll explain…

In the past, usually
managers were accounted for things that were directly in their line of
authority. It was widely accepted that you can hold a person accountable for
something, only if he has authority over it. This was tolerable in the highly
hierarchical organizations of the past where changes both in the organization
and the environment were minor, although occasionally you would encounter
failures in situations where the responsibility for something was not well
defined and things where falling “between the lines”.

The situation nowadays
is blurry. The business environment changes rapidly (see previous post here), this causes several things, among them: 1.
Organizations become more and more complex. 2. It is almost impossible to
define clear and rigid borders between different roles / positions. To cope
with the rate of change a manager needs to be responsible and cope with many
issues which couldn’t be defined in advance.

It is obvious that even
in the past the definition of responsibility for a certain position should have
been broader then the authority, and that nowadays it is mandatory!

So, how do you convey
this “inconvenient truth” to a fresh, junior manager?

Usually the conversion
goes like this: Senior manager “Do you remember that situation? I think
you should have done that…” Junior manager “How could have I done
it? I am not responsible for that budget, I don’t have the resources required
to take action”.

Being through many

versions of the above mentioned conversation, this is what I usually do in such
situations:

1. I
   start with self examination, trying to understand if I’m behaving as a good
   role model? How do I act in similar situations? Under no circumstances it is
   possible to convey such message if you are not up to it yourself! One other
   benefit I gain from this self examination is the gathering of examples of right
   and wrong from my own personal experience.
2. Usually
   I explain rationally why it is mandatory that responsibility exceeds authority
   (see the three first paragraphs, or just make him or her read this post).
3. Discuss
   the situation at hand and give examples of how I would have dealt with the
   situation given the lack of authority. I think that it is very useful to share
   situations from one’s own experience. Explain how I did act, what was good and
   what was wrong in the actions I’ve taken or avoided taking.

I’ve started this post
writing about junior mangers, but actually the problem is universal. The larger
the manager you become, the larger the gap between your authority and
responsibility. Making this distinction (i.e. that responsibility >
authority) clear is not an easy task. As we develop and grow as mangers we are
able to contains and stretch the gap between authority and responsibility. Or
maybe it is the other way round, the more we are able to stretch the gap between
the responsibility and authority the bigger the situations we can handle and
the larger the mangers we become.

That’s it for today,
awaiting your comments.

HoM