This concerns who’s responsible for what – who has the authority to perform certain actions, take ownership of specific tasks, etc.? In organizations, responsibilities and the level of control are often not clear (cf. difference between Responsibility and Authority). Most often, one has to discover or figure out what level of authority they have.

Proactive people may take more ownership and proceed with actions. Till that moment, a superior intervenes to set some boundaries. Rarely did these boundaries are formed from the beginning. Some people do not care about these blurry boundaries of authority and will delegate all kinds of “accountability” to higher-up managers (in case of situations going wrong). This can be entirely counter-productive and frustrating.

If you are serious about setting boundaries of authority and want to delegate real authority to teams in the company, you should take action to make these boundaries clear.

A great tool to do this exercise is delegation poker by Management 3.0.

Continue reading →