Either you are authorized, expected, and able to do a thing, or you aren't likely to do it.

 

Status:

 

This is getting a lot better - might need a hundred or so edits over another 20 years of experience before it really crystallizes.  But, notes.

 

Topic/Theorem:

 

Authority, responsibility, and capability (ARC) must be in a specific balance for an organization to function smoothly.  Mismatches in authority, responsibility, and capability normally require communicative solutions to restore a smooth flow of work.

 

There are whole professions to which this problem is endemic (entrepreneurs, project and product managers, etc.) and ba-zillions of pages written on this topic. 

 

What occurred to me when trying to analyze authority and responsibility is:

 

1 People do not understand their own capabilities in the context of what is going on around them.

2 Lack of skill managing ARC is a major source of friction to getting things done as a group.

 

A superstar contributor who completely ignores ARC considerations could easily create so much friction as to be a net drag on the performance of a team.  

 

Scope:

Similar articles that I have read consider authority, responsibility, and accountability, separately - but I find those types of articles less clear and useful than I would like.  Accountability is such a fundamental soft skill that I consider it part of responsibility protocol, and feel safe handling it as such.  Capability, on the other hand, is so often misunderstood and misjudged that it cannot be ignored. 

 

I will argue that, in addition to being the hard bit, capability is philosophically deeper in the context of collaboration than accountability, such that a "healthy collaboration" is an "aligned obligation in solidum" where goals are met by people who communicate when they pick up slack, and raise awareness of slack so that the whole group can achieve it's goals.

 

Further scope limit - communication over process: The negative side-effects of mismatches in authority, responsibility, and capability can often be handled by adding process to an organization.  Process is often blunt, degenerate communication - but it can help - focusing on process vs. outcomes can be important when speed, creativity, and flexibility are not required.   However, my goal here is to identify how communications correlates with understanding of authority, responsibility and capability, not to identify and recommend process or policy fixes.  

 

Axioms:

 

(This is a little densely packed, but I think it's valuable.  Need a visual way to state this.)

 

Assuming everyone has full awareness of everyones own capabilities, responsibilities, and authority in advance of work, we see the following imbalances:

 

Least common:

 

Authority > Responsibility = Can complete work (Known Unpredictable)

Capability > Responsibility = Can complete work (Known Underutilized)

 

Most common:

 

Capability < Responsibility = Cannot complete work (Known Death March with potential learning outcome)

Responsibility > Authority = Cannot complete work (Known Death March)

  

Always:

 

The degree to which one does not know the level of responsibility, capability, or authority that they have, is the degree to which their work product is in doubt. 

 

This doubt can only be removed with communication.  If someone takes full responsibility for something, then they must take full authority to complete it.  Without very specific communication, a leader de-facto leaves zero responsibility or authority to do any given thing by others, unless that responsibility is appropriated. 

 

Examples of ARC in practice:

 

Just a first take at a smattering of potential situations in which those axioms apply (NOTE: I have been the bad guy in several of these):

 

1) You have taken full responsibility for all aspects of an organization, and you dole out tasks to others.  You have granted no exclusive authority - solution: unless you are a perfectly coordinated team of entrepreneurs, pick a lane, create a minimal structure, and take on areas responsibility.  Without explicitly granting authority, choices are limited - employees can assume they are in either a laissez-faire "lord of the flies" culture (a la Valve), or an authoritarian structure, or something else, but they can't feel they have an area of responsibility.  An area of responsibility creates purpose, which is critical to longevity in an organization (and in life, for that matter).  See also: Founders Syndrome.

 

2) You are given responsibility and authority to do something that you are physically and mentally capable of, but may not have the time to complete:  You are not capable of this task - enable appropriation of that task by communicating to others, and update them as to your progress, if any or none, as is useful.  OR - delay the task until you have time to complete it and communicate that delay.  OR - delegate the entire area of responsibility if practical - this is organization-building.

 

3) Someone appropriates a task that you have completed 50% of, duplicating work and wasting your time.  You have a non-communicative co-worker - Their behavior is only appropriate if:

 

a) they had communicated to you, in advance of your work, that they will take on (or delegate) the task if progress is not communicated by you *and* you did not communicate progress. 

 

OR

 

b) they did not know that you had that task. 

 

There may be a few other appropriate corner cases.  If their action was inappropriate, the only solution is to communicate that fact (nicely) or it will happen again.

 

4) You are given responsibility and authority to do something that no one cares is ever done.  You have higher priority tasks that lots of people care are done.  You are wasting your time - the solution is to communicate that this is not something that anyone considers a priority, and that you will be working on higher priority tasks.

 

5) You were given responsibility and authority to complete all work in an area of responsibility as you see fit, and a budget to spend at will to get it done, as long as you track expenditures.  You are 50% complete with a few things, have a contractor working, and are energized by the agency you have been given.  A manager who ALSO has authority over those things tells you and the contractor to STOP WORK - that no work in the area of responsibility is needed.  In reality, you never had authority to get the job done but you were told that you had authority to get it done - This was either a discouraging mis-communication or a breach of trust on the part of the manager - take a few deep breaths - it could be a mistake - don't reply on chat (which is probably where this happened) or email - personally get the manager on video chat or phone ASAP and clarify the meaning, and reasons for, their communication - then clarify the authority situation.

 

Somewhat interesting things to think about:

 

To the extent you understand someone’s intention and capability you know their suitability for a job - as an individual working alone.  With a group, it's way harder - you have to consider all kinds of social dysfunction and soft skills in the business context - and this is incredibly complicated to figure out - dysfunction may only show up as a *chemistry* issue between individuals that comes up in a group. 

 

Communicating authority, responsibility, and capability with kindness, competence, and empathy is a skill that most people just don't excel at.  When hiring someone, backreferences are the only data you can get on their ARC skill - and it's super hard to get. 

 

It is fair to assume that in any group of people, at least one person does not have this skillset.  It is super hard to determine who and how many people in that group are incapable in that way.  

 

This is quite important in the context of a small business or other project that wants to grow and maintain alignment and productivity.  Most startups fail because they don't get user feedback, but that's not the whole story - most startups also go through a lot of personnel changes (often fatal to the business) because they don't have the ARC skill - this often occurs many times before the startup is even "real" and gets a chance to succeed with consumers.  ARC-ignorance is a project-crushing deficiency with few peers.

 

This situation is an argument that given a nascent project, supporting individuals is more likely to achieve real goals than funding groups - it is going to be way easier to figure individuals out and they won't suffer too much from ARC-ignorance. 

 

As a funder of an individual, if you can understand the individuals intentions and capabilities, you just need them to execute.  With an individual you might even be able to make them aware of ARC and train them up a bit so they can collaborate with others in the future.

 

If you are funding a group, you probably won't even bother to figure out what anyones soft skills are - you'll just look at other things and you will get the average type of result that everyone else gets investing in groups of people starting a new thing.