Take the responsibility and run
Posted on June 22, 2009 by Tom
People have no problem taking their own responsibility. When they break something, they confess and pay for the consequences. But when someone else breaks a glass, all fingers are pointed towards someone else, even if that person was in your care.
People make mistakes, that what happens when you grow up, when you learn. The more you learn, the more responsibility you get and that includes leading other people. It’s on our ‘most precious’-list when we look for a new job. But isn’t it in fact ‘freedom’ we want? We don’t actually want to be accountable for what someone else does, that’s too difficult to control, we just want the freedom to do as we please. That has nothing to do with ’responsibility’, we just want to stay kids forever.
If you talk to some teachers it’s infuriating how some parents behave when their kid did something wrong. They don’t show any respect for what teachers are doing, a perfect example of steerless, lazy parenthood. It’s not solely their job to educate your child, that’s yours! Same in business. You can’t expect to demand more responsibility and only enjoy the good part, the freedom. Taking responsibility means other people can screw it up for you and you accept that.
Taking responsibility means trying to figure out how you can minimize that threat. Employ the best people, build-in sufficient (but not too much) control mechanisms, be a good leader, make people aware of the responsibility they have towards you,… What it doesn’t mean is: “take it, hope all goes well and when it doesn’t… run for the hills!” I think Shaggy said it best when he said “It wasn’t me.”
