“Liberty means responsibility. That is why men dread it”. (G.B.Shaw). All actions of, either evil or good, are done by individuals. Impurity or purity of heart and mind is exclusive to an individual; no one else is responsible, but the individual. All troubles in life are self-created. Because trouble generates problems, we look for scapegoats, to assign “responsibility”. It is also true, that the brave and the bold managers stand up to be counted upon. They do not shirk responsibility. Responsibility usually dawns upon individuals, who have shoulders trained enough to accept and bears its burden. Responsibility is just not about doing or taking action, it is equally about not doing and inaction. Some leaders/managers love to be fence-sitters. They take and assume no responsibility for failure, but rush in speed to lay claims on any success.
Individuals, whose brain feeds upon negativity have to take full responsibility for the torment they suffer and not try to unload it upon others. Churchill had remarked that “the price of greatness is responsibility”. For every failure we suffer in life, including the work place, we like to place its responsibility at the doorstep of fate, destiny, environment, and never upon oneself; men and mangers ought to learn, to exercise their choice, in creating own responsibility. The neglect of responsibility is dereliction of duty. There is a saying by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean ".
I am aware of a chief executive officer (CEO), who, whenever he is asked to resolve a matter, puts together a two-three man committee and says to them, “please handle”. The consequence of this quality of management is that if the action results in the positive zone, it is his “decision and responsibility” and in case of failure, the crutch is “they failed”. Such managers play by the idiom: “Heads I win, tails you lose”. Deceitful, coincided and uncouth is their behaviour. A wealthy person, who is the owner of large mansions, wrote: “I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty and responsibility in seeking rights one must never forget that they come alongside a duty of care and responsibilities.
In seeking rights with zero responsibility is the definition of a third rate politician. And why the same definition shouldn’t be applied to managers, who take all the perks of an office, but avoid by abdication any responsibility, that goes with the office.
A critically acclaimed author and diarist, who was also a hobby psychoanalyst, wrote in her diary: “I was thinking of my patients and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck, when they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair.” Managers must know that they can pretend to be perennial patients of blaming others or else to take charge of business and say to themselves with unflinching faith, that it is their decisions and hence all outcomes, regardless of the quality of result, shall be their responsibility.
The need for restoration of the pure meaning of responsibility is the requirement. Accepting a job for an assignment is itself an assumption of responsibility.
For the fence-sitter type of managers, it is a boring life, if there is no one to blame or to shift responsibility to. You can bring people towards accepting responsibility, but it is not possible, to instead take upon oneself, someone else’s responsibility. For any manager the past is not a direct responsibility, but future certainly is.
All of us can choose our fate by assuming responsibility – what is better to have your own plan or be part of someone’s else’s plan; being the latter, you are avoiding responsibility, because in the event of failure, you will find someone to blame. The theory of making others responsible by charging them to do assignments that aren’t part of their job description is a delusional thought. Abdication of responsibility does not create better successors. Manager’s introspection must include what part of responsibility he could decide, but failed to move.
Every manager is the child of his own works. Don’t blame tools. Don’t blame those absent. How can anybody blame the foot for falling? They that dance must pay the fiddler. Those who have cure to problems up their sleeves and are reluctant to come forward, should never be pitied for being sick. No manager should ask any member of his team to take responsibility, which he would himself not take readily.
Managers must know that seeking excuses is really the first step towards self-accusation. It is the manager who has the “responsibility” first and then the team members. There is only one leader – he has “Sole Responsibility”. A pot that belongs to many, is ill-stirred and worse-boiled, because everybody’s business is actually nobody’s business.
Upon assumption of any office, the incumbent first and foremost attempts to find what “authority” comes with the office? Unbridled authority creates monsters, so for every office / position, there are codes of governance, irrespective of whether it is in the public sector or the private sector.
The “vested authority” is “checked” by adequate placement of “responsibility” criteria. The constitution of the country or the code of corporate governance is a good example that enshrines the balance, between responsibility and authority. It is another matter and a very sad tale that these documents are put into a shredding machine, at the operating level. So, what we get to see is demonstration of unlimited authority with close to zero responsibility.
A leader/manager is responsible for the organisation's utilisation of time, the available resources, its deployment and has commitment to learn from mistakes, emanating from choices and selection made between alternatives. An enlightened manager would know to share both “authority and responsibility” by empowering his team.
The writer is a freelance columnist