The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ““Done!”” pod­cast:

Three sit­u­a­tions to avoid

If it is unclear who the right per­son to ​“take the ball” is, there is a risk that one of three things will happen:

• the wrong per­son attends to the issue and spends time find­ing a solu­tion, but after a while, it turns out that the right per­son who should have tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty was anoth­er col­league who already devel­oped a solu­tion the last time some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pened. Pre­cious time has been wast­ed rein­vent­ing the wheel, so to speak.
• although you agree that some­one needs to solve it, the issue falls between the cracks, because it is not obvi­ous who ​“some­one” is
• you are left with the issue on your hands sim­ply because you were the first per­son to notice or receive it somehow

Who han­dles what?

In most cas­es, you will prob­a­bly work out who should deal with it, but if it takes a while to dis­cuss what line of action to take, both pre­cious time and ener­gy will have been spent. Since few issues are unique, chances are they will come up again. It would save time and ener­gy if you could con­nect the issue to the right per­son quick­ly and with ease. 
 

It is in sit­u­a­tions like these that a con­nec­tion dia­gram that maps out respon­si­bil­i­ties is a fan­tas­tic tool.

Do this

If you find that there is often uncer­tain­ty about who should deal with some­thing that comes up, make a respon­si­bil­i­ty con­nec­tion dia­gram. This could be an illus­tra­tion you keep just for your­self or one you share with your colleagues.

You can keep it sim­ple. For instance, I sug­gest the fol­low­ing two dif­fer­ent variations:

• a new list with one col­umn for key­words and one with the name of the per­son respon­si­ble. As soon as some­thing new comes up and you decide who the right per­son respon­si­ble for that kind of issue is, you add a line to the list, write a key­word describ­ing what the issue is about, and then the name of the per­son in charge.
• the list you already have that describes your respec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ties. If the descrip­tions of respon­si­bil­i­ties need to be enriched with detailed key­words that more pre­cise­ly encap­su­late what more spe­cif­ic issues, prob­lems, or con­cerns you are all respon­si­ble for, add a col­umn, sec­tion, or box next to each respon­si­bil­i­ty in which you can write all the key­words that pro­gres­sive­ly emerge that describe what the respon­si­bil­i­ty or role involves. 
   

The next time a ques­tion, prob­lem, idea, sug­ges­tion, error, or the like aris­es and it is unclear who should take the ball, search the respon­si­bil­i­ty con­nec­tion dia­gram for the appro­pri­ate key­word. If there is already some­thing sim­i­lar to it on the list, you will quick­ly see who to involve to resolve it. If there is not but you find out who is in charge of the mat­ter, lat­er on, add the key­word and the per­son respon­si­ble to the dia­gram so you can find them quick­ly the next time the need arises.

Less has­sle and few­er loose ends

Any­one with a con­nec­tion dia­gram of respon­si­bil­i­ties will eas­i­ly find who to call when unex­pect­ed mat­ters come up — some­thing to be espe­cial­ly grate­ful for when the tem­po is high and time is short. Instead of dupli­ca­tion of effort or the issue being left unat­tend­ed for too long, the mat­ter can be passed on to the right per­son straight away and be resolved quicker.

How do you do it?

How have you made it easy to know who to pass the ball to when you receive things or issues that do not con­cern your area of respon­si­bil­i­ty? Feel free to write to me and share your thoughts. 

(Do you instead have too much on your plate and feel like there’s no way to get every­thing done this week? Make it eas­i­er to del­e­gate!)