Decentralizing Responsibility: Creating Nets from Nooses
When responsibility is focused on one person or entity, it's a single rope bearing all the weight. Is that neatly tied knot slowly turning into a noose around the organization's neck? When purposefully twisted into an interconnected web, the resulting net protects against falls and survives considerable stress. Accountability factors into every phase of an organization's operations. Whether it's an administrative function, daily operations, crisis response, or project management, the responsibility falls somewhere. When there's a break in that body of responsibility, someone has to pick up the pieces. It's not only a preoccupation with failure; it's also about stacking the deck of creativity . The bulk of what I've learned about leadership, supervision, administrative duties, and project management is a result of my assignment to my police department's firearms training unit. But as I look back on all the lessons , they seem to circle back t