Introduction

Many managers are quick to explain away their poor performance by asserting that they do not have enough authority to carry out their responsibilities. Our experience confirms that managers generally don't have enough authority to carry out their responsibilities, but they have to learn how to fulfill them anyway. On the other hand, many CEOs hesitate to delegate authority to subordinates because they don't appear ready. In the next few pages we will clarify these issues, discuss authority and responsibility, and the reason why we have made this statement, and why it is that the Chief Executive often believes he or she is the only one who cares or worries about the whole organization. We'll also discuss how to change things so the whole organization is best integrated and all parts are working together to help each other achieve the organization's mission and goals.

The Relationship Between Responsibility And Authority

The overall responsibility (Mission) of an organization can be represented by a box (see Figure 1). The definition of what is in the box and what is not in it, is the output from the organization's strategic thinking process. As the organization grows from a one person show, this box quickly becomes too much for one individual to handle. Therefore, this large responsibility box is broken down into smaller responsibility boxes. You might think of these as the responsibilities for various departments in an organization. This process allows each department to specialize and focus on doing its responsibilities well, with the assumption being that if each department does its job the whole organization will automatically do well.

Let us assume that the organization assigns authority to each department so that the department has control over everything in its own area of responsibility. In Figure 2, a circle has been used to designate authority and the box continues to represent a department's or an individual's responsibility. In Figure 2, the circle of authority surrounds all the responsibilities and all is well...so far.

In reality, the situation in Figure 2 does not and cannot exist. Two practical factors undermine its simplicity: authority gaps and change.

Authority Gaps

First of all, the responsibilities of each box are interconnected to all other boxes. Only in a deep Kafkaesque bureaucracy do you find a department in an organization which has no interconnections with other departments. A more realistic view of the four sets of responsibilities is seen in Figure 3. As the large single square is pulled into four squares, it is as if they are covered with molasses (the arrows) which still links the squares together. Tracing the flow of work and paper reveals these interconnections.

By definition, lines of authority should not overlap. If they do, then two people have authority to hire or fire the same person or spend the same budget. In order to draw non-overlapping lines of authority a gap is left between the circles of authority (see Figure 4).

Authority gaps occur in what is often the more complex areas where separate responsibilities must be coordinated and linked together. These authority gaps are more commonly known as the 'cracks' through which things fall.

Change And Adaptation

The second factor which undermines the simplicity of Figure 2 occurs over time as responsibilities evolve and change in response to external forces and internal adaptations. The neat, simple square changes into an amoeba shaped responsibility. At times the person defining the responsibility at the start did not fully realize the complexity of the true shape of the task.

The net result in a practical world is that responsibilities overlap and interconnect between departments yet the lines of authority do not overlap. As the tasks further change over time, the poor fit between authority and responsibility is further enlarged.

Thus, the areas of the organization controlled through an individual's authority are significantly less than the responsibilities that are needed for the organization to succeed. One solution is to regularly realign and update the circles of authority. Since the responsibilities may evolve and change on a weekly or monthly basis, it now becomes necessary to adjust the circles of authority to match the changed responsibilities on a weekly or monthly basis. Not only is this time consuming, but it is ineffective because successful restructuring requires that both the formal (strategy, structure and systems) and the informal (culture, history and personal relations) organization are restructured. At its simplest adjusting authority to match new responsibilities requires updating everyone's budget responsibilities.

It is extraordinarily rare for any organization to understand the technology, much less take the extensive time, to restructure the informal organization. As a result, most formal re structurings have marginal impact on the organization because the old structure continues to be maintained by the informal organization.

Because the responsibilities evolve and often expand outside the lines of authority, we end up with an organization where the lines of authority do not match the responsibilities and a fair number of things start falling into the gaps between departments and individuals. Since it is impractical and ineffective to restructure on a regular basis, most organizations arrive at another solution to this problem largely through default. The CEO takes responsibility for everything that falls through the cracks. In many cases, it is the CEO who is the only person in the organization who has assumed responsibility for the sum total of all the organization's responsibilities.

In a young organization, as specialization occurs and responsibilities and authority are assigned out to individuals or departments, the individuals may remember to work together to achieve the overall organization's responsibilities or purpose. However, as the organization grows there is a natural, normal tendency for the separate responsibilities of departments and individuals to pull apart from one another, and lose sight of the fact that they must interact successfully together. This disintegration is one of the underlying dynamics of the aging process which affects all organizations. It is called silosclerosis as each department retreats into its own silo and focuses more on what is inside than on coordinating across silos.

The Strategic Job Description - SJD

Many organizations invest time and energy in clarifying the organization's overall responsibilities. This is typically includes the organization's vision, values, mission or purpose, goals and strategies. Many CEOs and most strategic consultants believe that this process will magically unite everyone as a team to achieve the organization's purpose. In fact, the process of creating or clarifying an organization's purpose will engender a great deal of focus and harmony among those who participated in creating it.

Unfortunately, the benefits from this activity have a short half-life so that most of the benefits have disappeared three to four months after the organization's strategic planning is completed. Of course, if the CEO was the only person committed to the mission, its ability to impact the various departments and individuals that work together in the organization is largely illusory.

Because of this short half-life and because no broad range, long-term planning has any real impact until it is converted into Monday morning actions, we created the concept of the Strategic Job Description. Its purpose is to create a structural glue which integrates the organization's separate departmental and individual responsibility into a total team effort. Unless the CEO pushes this integration down, he or she will likely be the sole integrating force in the organization.

Your Strategic Job Description

Everyone in the organization has the same Strategic Job Description. It includes three elements, listed in order of priority.

1. Your first priority and responsibility is to achieve the organization's purpose. In other words, you in particular are responsible for everything—vision, values, mission, goals and strategies.

2. Your second priority and responsibility is to help others achieve the organization's purpose.

3. Your third priority and responsibility is to carry out your job function.

What Are You Accountable For?

With a Strategic Job Description you are 100 percent accountable for the third priority, you are partially accountable for the second priority and you are even less accountable for the first priority. Figure 5 more clearly points out how your accountability declines as the priorities increase.

Your First Priority: What It Means To Be Responsible For Everything

There are four different ways that you can take responsibility at work. For instance, when you walk into work and see a new problem or opportunity sitting on your desk you could:

1. Fix it yourself.

2. Conclude that you need to get help in finding a good solution or in implementing the solution.

3. Conclude that you are not the best person to solve it or even be involved in solving it, even though you have taken responsibility for this problem. In this case you must see that it gets attention from others who then solve the problem.

4. Conclude that neither you nor any other individual you have contacted in the organization has an interest or commitment in solving the problem. In this case, it is your job to make sure that all of your peers agree to not pay any further attention to this problem.

Clarifying Everyone's Second Priority

Now that each department knows its second priority is helping other departments achieve the organization's purpose, it is possible to clarify the purpose of each department. Here is the summary of the steps:

1. Each department makes a list of other departments it thinks it should be helping or serving within the organization.

2. This information is shared, discussed, fine-tuned and eventually agreed upon by all the department heads.

3. Each department now makes a list of the needs of the other departments which it is helping or serving.

4. This list of needs is discussed, fine-tuned and eventually agreed upon by the department heads. It is important at this stage to be clear that if department A is being asked to help meet a particular need of department B that doing so will help department B support the overall purpose of the organization or support another department in its support of the overall purpose of the organization.

5. As each department's needs from the other departments are clarified, it may be necessary to discuss priorities and resources unless all of the needs can be met with ease. If the needs from all of the internal customers cannot be met by a particular department, two options are available:
   • Ask that department what it will take to meet the needs of all its internal customers, and then decide if the organization can provide "what it will take."

   • Set priorities among all the needs and decide which ones will not be met. It is important that this is done in a team setting with full discussion so that everyone is in agreement about what needs are going to be met, and what needs will not be met. This must be done to avoid continuous complaining about lack of needs being met.

6. When the needs for each internal customer are agreed upon they are then rated. Each department now gives a list of the needs it has agreed to meet for each department it is serving. It then asks each department to rate how well those needs have been met in the past. A simple zero to ten rating is adequate in most cases with ten being high. A ten signifies that the department is totally satisfied with the service it has been getting over the last three to six months. It is valuable to involve the direct recipients of the service in the rating process. In other words, if the department head is not the direct recipient of the service, it is inappropriate for him or her to do the rating.

This data now provides specific input for each department on areas where it should work to improve meeting internal customers' needs. It may turn out that additional resources and/or re negotiation of priorities is needed if dramatic changes in the level of needs are desired.

Aligning The Accountability System

The final step in this process is critical in order to energize the actual changes which have been outlined so far. A quarterly review session should be held in which each element of the Strategic Job Description is evaluated. You can evaluate the first priority of achieving the organization's purpose by reviewing whether the organization achieved its planned goals and improvements during the quarter. This implies that the organization's purpose has been converted into specific and measurable quarterly milestones and targets.

The second priority in the Strategic Job Description can be assessed by each department sending out a list of the needs it agreed to meet for each other department and have the other departments give them a zero to ten rating for the past three months.

The third element in the Strategic Job Description is evaluated by comparing how well each department performed based on its planned departmental milestones and targets for that quarter.

This whole review process can be completed in four to eight hours including an action planning session on what each department will do over the next quarter in order to correct any deficiencies between planned and actual in the first quarter. Most organizations will require an outside facilitator skilled in this process in order to make it efficient and effective. After several quarters of practice, the organization should be able to conduct these sessions on its own.

The input from each of these quarterly sessions can now be used to allocate incentives to each department. These incentives can then be further allocated to individuals within that department.

Individualizing The Strategic Job Description

The preceding discussions have focused on the strategic interaction between departments. It is also possible to apply the same process to the individuals within any department. In most cases, however, it is useful to make progress on the relationship between departments before working on the relationships between individuals within departments. The only major exception would be in an organization where the departments have very little significant interaction. In this case, you would first focus on Strategic Job Descriptions at the individual level within a department.

Facilitation

Although the above six-step process is fairly straight forward, negotiating insight to commitment between the various departments can become complex and confusing. A skilled facilitator can vastly increase the speed of the process and deepen its effectiveness.

Practical Considerations When Using The Strategic Job Description

Let us take an example of a word processor who is working under a Strategic Job Description. She now knows that she should be responsive to the requests for word processing from departments other than her own based on the second priority of the Strategic Job Description. In fact, during peak times she may end up doing so much work for other departments that she is in danger of not getting her own work done.

This is very frustrating for an employee who knows her own performance evaluation, promotions and raises depend upon how she does her own work, not how she did work for other departments. Thus, a narrow view of SJD will only create frustration and confusion.

It is important to remember that the purpose of a Strategic Job Description is to move each individual and each department away from overly focusing on their work and forgetting to help others to achieve the organization's purpose. Implementing Strategic Job Descriptions will often create other problems which now need to be solved.

The purpose of the Strategic Job Description was to change the Culture and create more of a common team effort. In doing this it will surface any lack of resources or focus within the organization necessary to achieve the organization's purpose. It is now essential for the organization to begin a strategic problem solving effort which zeros in on balancing focus and resources. Unfocused organizations will be resource impoverished. This can be corrected with more resources or more focus.

Thus, when the word processor is having too many demands to do word processing for other departments, it is necessary to sit down and ask questions along the following line:

• Are all the requests for word processing necessary?

• Do they all support the organization's purpose?

• Is it necessary for all of the work to be word processed or can it be hand written?

• If we cannot reduce the word processing work load, is it possible to smooth out the peaks and valleys in the workload by better setting the priorities and due dates?

• If all the work is necessary, and the peaks and valleys are as smooth as they can become and you still have not eliminated the problem, you must then choose between hiring more or faster word processors, institutionalizing overtime, subcontracting some of the work out, reducing the quality of the work or reducing the amount of word-processing.

Core Team

Implementing strategic job descriptions is best when performed by a Core Team as distinguished from a management team (refer to Chapter 12, Responsible Managers Get Results by the author for more on the rationale and design of core teams). Strategic job descriptions are not a rehash of the matrix organization. With strategic job descriptions, there is still only one boss. The goals is to change the corporate culture, not restructure it, to create the following:

1. A culture of helping.

2. A culture of awareness of the impact of your work on other departments.

3. A culture that initiates strategic problem solving when priorities are in conflict.

Many years ago large businesses solved the gap in Figure 4 by creating matrix organizations in which a person would report to two or more bosses. This strategy generally pulled people in too many directions and ultimately failed.

Delegating "I"

Ichak Adizes 1 has reduced all of the necessary functions in a healthy organization into four broad roles. The Producing (P) results role focuses on doing things. The Administering (A) role focuses on running the systems which do things. The Entrepreneuring (E) role focuses on designing organization's vision, mission, values, goals and, structure systems, then adapting to changes in the organization's environment. The Integrating (I) role focuses on connecting all parts of the organization together into a functioning whole.

Almost all traditional approaches to delegation focus on delegating P (doing the work) and A (running the system). It is much less common to see E delegated (redesigning and updating the work and systems). The failure to delegate E forces most organizations to age because as they increase in size and complexity while their ability to create and adapt is diluted dramatically.

Once the delegating of E is begun it will increase the disharmony between departments in an organization since each department now is likely to move in new and different directions. Thus, it is necessary to simultaneously begin the delegation of I to integrate and connect the normal responsibilities with their proactive changes due to "E"ing. It is the delegation of I which is outlined below. Failure to delegate I will put a lid on the delegation of E because the CEO cannot maintain all of the I or integration of the E that is occurring in the organization. Since many CEOs do not have the time to be all places at once they cannot integrate all of the potential E in the organization. When the E gets out of hand, the CEO quite naturally puts the lid back on and says "enough."

Even for the organization which has not made a conscious effort to delegate E, the delegation of I is a practical and effective way of increasing everyone's responsibility for the total organization as opposed to having the CEO be the only one who feels and acts on the sense of responsibility to what the whole organization is doing. The use of the Strategic Job Description and the Internal Departmental Missions are very practical ways of making each element of the organization aware of how it interconnects and must continue to interconnect and coordinate with all other relevant elements in the organization.

Many company presidents end up being the only one who thinks creatively about the business, and the only person who worries about the overall organization. This occurs naturally and normally because all of the ways that we design our organizations are focused on the P and the A elements; so that is exactly what we get: P and A. It is rare to find an organization which also includes design elements that foster E and I. If you apply the technologies outlined in this management briefing it will take you a good part of the way towards designing I into your organization.

Update

This article was written in 1990. We now have an elegant example of its implementation in South West Airlines. This 33 year old business has been profitable for 32 straight years and has grown at 15 to 20 percent a year every year. More significantly the value of SWA is four times the combined value of all other U.S. airlines in 2003. Hmmmm! SWA uses the same equipment, follows the same regulations (although it has never had a crash), uses the same departments as all other airlines. It is also slightly more unionized than any other US carrier.

Why is it more efficient? Why is it profitable? Why is it the only major carrier that did not ask the U.S. government for financial relief after 9/11?

The answer is the simplest form is the use of strategic job descriptions. Research on SWA reports this in depth.