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Delegation: Accountability vs. Responsibility

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Case Study: Steve Delegates

Consider the following case.

A small company received a complaint from its key customer. The CEO assigned this problem to Steve, the engineering team leader, and asked him to resolve the problem in two days. Steve delegated the problem to Jessica, one of his engineers.

A week later, when the customer complained that the problem was not yet fixed, the CEO asked Steve to explain the delay. Steve responded: “I do not know how to fix the problem. I delegated the task to Jessica. Has she not fixed this problem? It is her responsibility.”

Yet, Steve was Answerable

The above episode reflects poorly on Steve’s managerial skills. Steve failed to recognize that, although Jessica was responsible for fixing the problem, he was accountable for the problem and its resolution. He was answerable to the CEO; his duty was to resolve the problem through Jessica.

The terms ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’ are near-synonyms; hence, managers tend to use them interchangeably. The distinction is subtle, nonetheless critical, as highlighted in the following table.

Effective Delegation: Distinguish Accountability from Responsibility

Effective Delegation

A primary shortcoming of many managers, especially new managers, is that they do not give clear assignments—they do not explain a problem adequately and/or fail to enumerate expectations on desired outcome and timeline. After delegating a task, they assume they no longer hold ownership over the task. They thus tend to fault their employees, the ones they delegated tasks to, when a problem arises.

One of the keys to effective delegation is to understand the differences between accountability and responsibility. Understand that you are still in charge of getting a delegated task completed and accomplishing the associated mission. Follow-up frequently and ensure completion.

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Inspirational Quotations #181

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No one ever collapsed under the burdens of a single day. It is when the burdens of tomorrow are added to it that it becomes unbearable. Live one day at a time—it’s all that we have that is a certainty anyway.
—Unknown

Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

In your heart must well that sympathy which soothes away all pains from the hearts of others.
—Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Summing up, it is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o’clock.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

Life is too short to waste time blaming someone|else for your failures. No one can make you fail.|Life is never too short to take time to thank someone|else for helping you succeed. Anyone can help you succeed.
—Unknown

Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough.
—Unknown

Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Broaden Your Thinking and Grow on Your Job

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Jeffrey Immelt on Keys to Great Leadership

In an interview in the Fast Company Magazine, General Electric’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt reveals his checklist of leadership skills. Perhaps the most significant of these skills is the understanding perspective on one’s job.

“Understand breadth, depth, and context. The most important thing I’ve learned since becoming CEO is context. It’s how your company fits in with the world and how you respond to it.”

The Problem: A Narrow Outlook of our Work

As I elaborated in a previous blog article, we get busy doing and fail to devote time for deep thinking. We concentrate on the minutiae of our work. We forget that these tasks are a part of a larger canvas–an element of a large value-addition process. If you are a metallurgy scientist, your work may be a part of the large value-addition process of converting raw material into turbine blades for jet engines that power large aircrafts. If you are computer programmer working on a small software module, your work may be a small component of software that enables customers to trade stocks directly from their cell phones.

Call for Action: Understand the Big-Picture

The key to understanding the broader aspects of your work is to make a special effort to learn more than what is in front of your face. In addition to understanding the boss’s description of your task or a work-procedure, you need to ask why you need to do what you have been asked to do. Begin by asking the following questions.

  • How does your organisation make money from what you do? How does your company make money to pay you?
  • How do you fit into the value-addition chain? What are the steps involved? What is the flow of information, money and materials?
  • Who is the end customer? Why does he/she need the product or service your organisation is building? What is the fundamental problem the customer is trying to solve? How does you work solve this problem?
  • How will the customer use with the particular product or service your organisation is developing? What other features can your organisation add to your product or service to help the customer? What else can you do to help the customer?

Employees who understand the broader context of their jobs and embrace the big-picture perspective of the value-addition process are more inclined to grow quickly because, in addition to technical skills, their repertoire includes the wide-ranging commercial viewpoint of the fundamental problems at hand.

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Inspirational Quotations #180

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You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
—Wayne Gretzky (Canadian Sportsperson)

Be this his praise, if praise be needed, as a father he succeeded.
—Edgar Guest (English-born American Poet)

Freedom to many means immediate betterment, as if by magic. Unless I can meet at least some of these aspirations, my support will wane and my head will roll just as surely as the tickbird follows the rhino.
—Julius Nyerere

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,|My love as deep; the more I give to thee,|The more I have, for both are infinite.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself. Not to whom I want you to be, but to who you are.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

A life without love is like a year without summer.
—Swedish Proverb

More children are punished for copying their parents, than for disobeying them. We should be what we want to see.
—Unknown

Time and money spent in helping men do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
—Ernest Hemingway (American Author)

You’ll never prove you’re too good for a job by not doing your best.
—Ethel Merman (American Actor)

You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
—Wayne Gretzky (Canadian Sportsperson)

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.|The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things;|Knows not the livid loneliness of fear;|Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear|The sound of wings.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

The Time to Think

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In the age of knowledge work, we are all paid to think—to evaluate solution-paths and solve problems creatively. Yet, we get busy doing and fail to devote part of our days for deep thinking.

In today’s workplace, we all have too much to do in too little time with too few resources at hand. This faster pace of work-life coupled with the emphasis on getting things done has come to accentuate busyness. The result is that we lack a sense of control of our time. We do not take the time out to think and plan.

The Tragedy of Our Times

If I had eight hours to chop a tree,
I would spend six hours sharpening my axe.
* Unknown

Jack Trout, author and business leader, explains that with “No Time to Think,” we have become a world of reactors.

With the world of work getting more complex and difficult, and with the demands of people, cell phones, BlackBerrys or just too much communication, having the quiet and time to sort things out and figure what to do is fast disappearing. We have become a world of reactors, not thinkers, at a time when good thinking is so desperately needed.

Publisher-CEO Michael Hyatt advocates “Finding More ‘Head Time.'”

Most of us don’t spend time thinking. We are so busy doing that we have almost forgotten how to think. Yet it is our thinking, more than any other single activity, that influences our outcomes.

The problems we face will not likely be solved by working harder. New gadgets won’t really help either. In fact, I sometimes fear that our many gadgets have only added unnecessary clutter to our lives. What we need is better, more profound thinking.

Call for Action: Book Frequent Quiet-Time

Thinking requires a great deal of time and energy. With frequent interruptions and distractions, dedicating time for deep thinking or intense work can be very challenging. Schedule frequent quiet-times into your day.

During each quiet-time session, completely shut yourself off from your colleagues, from e-mail, phone calls and other distractions. Use this time to focus on challenging or highly-priority tasks. Reserve a conference room in your facility, arrive early at work or work at your local library. Even brief periods of dedicated thinking or work can make your day vastly productive.

In addition to booking frequent quiet time, assess time- and energy-wasters. Filter incoming information, delegate effectively, automate routine tasks, fight-off distractions and frequent interruptions from your colleagues, and, be selective in what meetings you attend.

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Inspirational Quotations #179

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Motivate them, train them, care about them, and make winners out of them… they’ll treat the customers right. And if customers are treated right, they’ll come back.
—J. W. Marriott, Jr. (American Businessperson)

Better is the enemy of good.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.
—Hermann Hesse (German-born Swiss Poet)

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

Fear and guilt are unpleasant bedfellows who disturb our sleep.
—Unknown

There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness, and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that, I have complete control.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Nonchalance is the ability to remain down to earth when everything else is up in the air.
—Earl Wilson

A friendship can weather most silly things and thrive in thin soil – but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small silly presents every so often – just to save it from drying out completely.
—Pam Brown

Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.
—Will Rogers (American Actor)

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.
—Thaddeus Golas

Four Questions for Employee Performance Appraisals

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Peter Drucker is widely regarded as the “Father of Modern Management,” and one of the most influential management philosophers of the modern era. In “The Effective Executive,” Peter Drucker advocates that a manager focus on an employee’s strengths when appraising his/her performance.

Four Questions for Performance Appraisals

Effective executives usually work out their own unique form of performance appraisal. It starts out with a statement of the major contributions expected from a person in his past and present positions and a record of his performance against these goals. Then it asks four questions:

  1. What has he [or she] done well?
  2. What, therefore, is he likely to be able to do well?
  3. What does he have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his strength?
  4. If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person? If yes, why? If no, why?

Call for Action

Strong performance motivates outstanding performers. Therefore, managers must make it a priority to understand each employee’s motivation and strengths and provide objective, fair and consistent appreciation to keep him/her fully engaged.

Managers, however, often fail to realize the prospect of enhancing employee performance by targeting their efforts on each employee’s strengths. They often resort to deliberating over an employee’s shortcomings, and, thus attempt to develop abilities not inline with the employee’s strengths.

Address the above four questions when preparing the performance appraisal of an employee. These questions enable you, the manager, to reinforce the strengths of the employee and guide a career that focusses on his/her strengths.

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Inspirational Quotations #178

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Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work – the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside – the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within – that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick – the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed. Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation – the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

If you call one thing good, you must call its opposite bad. If you think it wonderful to make a big profit in your business, you will also think it terrible if you incur a large loss. The idea is to live above the opposites.
—Vernon Howard

What a luxury it is to spend time with old friends … talking, as old friends should talk, about nothing, about everything.
—Lillian Hellman (American Playwright)

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.
—Kurt Vonnegut (American Novelist)

If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
—Buddhist Teaching

Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.
—Henry Clay (American Politician)

Resumé Tips #2: The One-page Résumé Rule

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Your résumé is your personal advertisement. The purpose of a résumé, therefore, is to sell you, not to describe you. In order to grab a recruiter’s interest and create a positive impression within a few seconds, your résumé should be comprehensive and tidy.

One-page résumés are appropriate for college candidates (entry-level candidates, to be more specific,) and candidates with less than ten years of work experience. Such candidates rarely have substantial accomplishments to justify a résumé of more than a page in length.

More-experienced candidates may use two pages to describe their accomplishments. Even here, one-page résumés are recommended. Recruiters will survey the second page only if the contents of the first page are appealing.

A one-page résumé acknowledges the importance of a recruiter’s time. A two-page résumé is a sign of disregard.

Compact your Résumé

Follow these guidelines to consolidate your résumé content into one page.

  • Comprehension is crucial. Recruiters hate wordy résumés. They first glance through the organization of a résumé and quickly skim over particulars in key sections. A strong, comprehensive presentation is consequently appealing.
  • Avoid a tell-it-all résumé. Avoid the common mistake of providing too many details. Leave some details for discussion in a potential interview.
  • Restrict accomplishments under each position held to two or three bullet points only. Weed out unimportant details. Use phrases if necessary.
  • Do not cram. Do not reduce page margins and font-sizes or eliminate white space. Résumés crowded with information are hard to read.

Conclusion

A one-page résumé is usually long enough to present all the essential information concisely and captivatingly. It can easily engage a recruiter and convince him/her that your background merits further consideration.

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  2. Resumé Tips #3: References Not Necessary
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  4. Resumé Tips #5: Résumé or Curriculum Vitae?
  5. Resumé Tips #6: Avoid Clichéd Superlatives and Proclamations

Do You Deserve a Raise?

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Do You Deserve a Raise

CNNMoney offers a self-survey to help you understand if you deserve a raise. Here are the six questions in the survey.

  1. If you left the company, how easy or hard would it be for the company to replace you?
  2. To what extent do you have abilities or possess knowledge that most others—both inside and outside the company—do not have?
  3. If your company had to eliminate departments, what would happen to yours?
  4. Is your department respected by other parts of the company?
  5. How much does your business or division contribute to the profitability of the company?
  6. Does it look as if your business will grow or shrink in coming years?

Call for Action

In preparing to ask for a raise or a promotion, or in preparing for a performance review, you need a strong understanding of arguments supporting your desired outcome and counter-points your boss (and other approvers) may raise. The above survey questions from CNNMoney can help you start gathering your thoughts.

The key yardstick that your boss will use to appraise you is the significance of your efforts to the organisation and the perceived promise/potential you hold. Review any expectations that your boss laid-out during prior discussions. Prepare a self-evaluation by documenting your accomplishments against these expectations and their significance to the goals of the organisation. Collect evidence: try to quantify and be precise as possible. Maintain a journal of all your achievements and summarize your journal in your self-evaluation.