The Confluence of Responsibility and Authority

“Never give real responsibility without giving the corresponding authority”

One of the significant problems in business management is the assignment of a meaningful responsibility to an individual or group without providing them with the authority necessary to execute that task. In too many cases, leadership provides an objective to a person, but forces that individual to go through others to get the necessary resources, or worse, to make critical decisions as to the path taken to achieve the objective.

The separation of responsibility and authority is damaging to an organization in a number of critical ways. First, it completely eliminates accountability — at least, reasonable and valid accountability. When the responsible party has no authority, then the outcome was not in their control: “If I’d only had this person helping me, or these resources that I needed available”. Accountability should always lie in the person who is in control of the necessary tools.

An exception to this is when the limits on resources are expressly provided as a part of the assignment. In those cases, it should always be discussed with the responsible party, and their response — as to their expectation of success, or their concerns regarding specific resource shortfalls — should be noted and factored into any evaluation. As an example:

“We need to have final plans for those offices in the General Contractors’ offices by Friday afternoon” “Understood. What is my budget for furniture and fixtures?”

“We need it to come in at $85 per square foot, and hold 12 offices”

“Based on what you’ve told me that you need, I need at least $110 per square foot to provide the workspaces” “We only have $85. Do the best that you can”

In that case, any evaluation regarding the completed plans cannot reasonably hold the planner responsible for less than the desired outcome. Evaluation of their creativity in living within the given means is possible, but to complain that they failed to achieve your desired aesthetic or functionality has to be tempered with the knowledge that they had already declared that objective unachievable. Your choice, as the assigner of the task, is to either live with the lowered expectation or to assign the task to someone else who believes the resources are sufficient.

When you assign a responsibility but withhold significant authority, you create an environment where accountability is constricted, and sometimes eliminated. The rebuttal to a negative evaluation is reasonably going to focus on “I wasn’t allowed to do the task the way that I believed it needed to be done…” or “I wasn’t given the help that I told you was necessary to get that job done on time.” When a rebuttal is reasonable, it deteriorates the relationship between parties and creates corrosive negativity in morale and production.

In another way, management should use the connection between responsibility and authority as a critical checkpoint. If you are uncomfortable providing the individual or group with the necessary authority to control the outcome, it is an important indicator of a need to review your choice for that responsibility. If a party isn’t capable of making good decisions or allocating resources, are they the right party to be given that responsibility in the first place? More than likely, the answer will confirm the reluctance… and the provision of that responsibility will be improperly selected.

In every way, an alignment between responsibility and authority is a critical component of solid management and organization building. A matching trajectory of increasing responsibility with additional authority creates the strongest possible team, with all of the parties clearly understanding the correlation between their accomplishments and their professional progress.