The corollary of the principle of responsibility is the clarity of scopes. Everyone should know what he has to do. When things are unclear and people don’t know who does what and when the principle of responsibility is not clearly stated, then the scopes of action overlap. Then games of influence and political infighting start to develop, threatening cooperation between individuals and making the work environment conflictual and unpleasant. In such a climate, everyone has a tendency to see others as a potential adversary. The culture of caring has been stifled.
“Failing to clarify the scopes of responsibility amounts to killing cooperation and generating conflicts.”
It is illusory to think that the players will easily manage to agree on a scope. Failing to clarify the scopes of responsibility amounts to killing cooperation and generating conflicts. Creating a breeding ground conducive to developing caring thus becomes impossible.
Given that nature hates vacuums, individualistic strategies thwart the values of mutual support and the benefit of collective actions advocated by management. Employees end up noticing a profound discrepancy between the messages disseminated by senior executives and what they experience on a daily basis. How can one collaborate if people stab each other in the back to take a colleague’s project?
It takes courage and precision work if one wants clarity of scopes. Courage because roles have to be reexamined and habits have to be surpassed. Precision work because success lies in analyzing in detail the scopes of responsibilities and the relationships between a team leader and his team members plus the interactions between the team and the company’s other stakeholders concerned by the subject.
