Distracted from the Mission – A Friday Funny

By Michelle Malay Carter on August 1, 2008 

How much time do you spend a work negotiating and renegotiating with peers and colleagues in order to get your work done?? What if we systematized specifying role relationship accountabilities and authorities into job descriptions, leaving the people free to do their work without the constant relationship strategizing?

Defining Role Relationships
For example:? A human resource manager?has a monitoring role when it comes to recruiting and screening practices.? An analyst has a service giving relationship with the district manager.? Quality has an auditing role when it comes to production.?

Seven Types of Relationships
Elliott Jaques defined 7 types of role relationships within Requisite Organization which?can make employees’ ability to focus on the work at hand a breeze.? Each type of relationship is specified in terms of accountabilities and authorities.? (To see these defined, see Cross Functional Working Relationships in the Mission Minded Management Glossary.)

The?Consequences of Not Defining Relationships
When managers do not pre-think and elucidate role relationships?by clearly defining their direct reports’ accountabilities and authorities in relations to others, we end up acting like contentious siblings having to resort to manipulation, coercion, charisma or flat our bribery.? All of this, of course, distracts everyone from the true mission of the organization.???This is?completely avoidable.

Been There Done That
The video clip below?reminded me of this common waste of time within organizations.? Take 60 seconds out for a smile this Friday.

?


?

I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.? What have you had to resort to in order to get your work done?

Filed Under Accountability, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Requisite Organization, Strategy

Comments

2 Responses to “Distracted from the Mission – A Friday Funny”

  1. Amitai Givertz on August 2nd, 2008 7:01 am

    What a great post! The video is a gem.

    Nice to see you featured on Insightory.com — keep up the exemplary work!

  2. Michelle Malay Carter on August 3rd, 2008 11:45 am

    Thanks Amitai. Will do.

    Regards,

    Michelle