Responsibility and Agency - How to build great internal processes

At any company, you’ll end up having to have jobs that “keep the lights on”. This is common and to be expected. Much the same as when you own a home, someone’s gotta do the dishes.

There is a common dysfunction that occurs in companies though, which doesn’t usually happen at home. People end up getting an ever-growing set of responsibilities, without an equivalently growing agency to do them.

When you give someone the responsibility to “run XYZ meeting”, “keep the dishes done”, “Check in on XYZ employees”, or “Know what people are working on”, but then force them to work in a strict way, do routine check-ins and micromanaging, you’re creating a dysfunction that leads to work being done slower, and people being less and less happy.

The fix, keep them in balance. When you ask someone to do a job, or take on a responsibility. Your first goal should not be to “Get them to do it right”. It should be to explain the value of that responsibility to them, and make sure they understand the importance of it. The “How” of delivering that value ought to be almost entirely at the behest of the person you’re giving the responsibility to.

Example - How not to do it

A small delivery company grows to the point where the CEO can no longer keep up with how all the employees are doing. So, they get one of the delivery managers to take on that responsibility and report back to them. In doing so, the CEO sets up a weekly meeting, a template for the delivery manager to fill out. Then, critiques and constantly micromanages the delivery manager to make sure they’re “Following the process” that they laid out. This leads the delivery manager to:

1. Not do the job well
2. Be more annoyed with the CEO than they were before
3. Not understand the “Why” of doing the meetings or employee check-ins
4. Place unnecessary value on “The meeting” rather than actually understanding the value in making sure the employees are happy

Example - The right way to do it!

That same small delivery company grows to the point. And the CEO again gets the delivery manager to try to take over the responsibility of checking on how the employees are doing. But instead of prescribing a process and micromanaging that. The CEO spends the time to explain the value that they gain out of knowing that all the employees are happy. Then, just asks the delivery manager to try to make sure that he’s keeping the CEO up-to-date with the happiness of the employees. The delivery manager is then free to implement or otherwise get that value and understand the employees’ happiness in the way that fits best for them and the CEO.

The key benefits here are:

1. The Manager will need to genuinely figure out how to work out how to understand the employees’ “Happiness”.
2. The Manager will implement a process that they take ownership over and care much more about it.
3. The Manager will take the responsibility more seriously and is less likely to gamify it.

If You’re Scared

If you find the concept of handing off this responsibility with so much freedom scary. You either don’t trust your employees enough, or don’t have someone skilled enough to fulfil the role effectively. The solution isn’t to micromanage, but to solve the people problem!

Core Lesson

Whenever you want to have someone do something. Always be sure to pass on an equal amount of agency so that they can fulfil that request to the best of their ability and your expectations.