Tasks & Responsibilities
Identifying the differences between tasks and responsibilities and how to use them well
Section 1
Work Management
In This Section
1. What Is Work Management?
2. The Spectrum of Self-direction
What Is Work Management?
Work in teams comes in a variety of shapes and sizes including:
• Routine, unscheduled work
• Work that is uncommon
• Work that is internal to the team
• Work involving mainly people outside the team
• Individual work
All of the types of work need to be assigned in some way. When an item of work is assigned the assignee needs to be told what the work is and how it should be done. Determining who is assigned to what work that will be performed in which way is the essence of work management.
The Spectrum of Self-direction
All work is ultimately self-directed. The degree to which an item of work can be said to be self-directed varies. The spectrum of self-direction is wide. At one end is work that is self-defined, and self-assigned. At the other end is work that is specified very tightly and where the assignee is monitored or instructed as the work is done.
Nevertheless, even the least self-directed work requires that the assignee be actively involved in doing it. The assignee may de- termine the rate, quality or other aspects of the work. Therefore work performance is to some degree determined by self- direction.
This chapter is about determining where on the spectrum items of work fall and how to communicate that information to the as- signees in a productive way.
Section 2
Some Definitions
In This Section
1. What Is a Task?
2. What Is a Responsibility?
3. Management By Objective
4. Management By Responsibility?
What Is a Task?
A task is a unit of work that is specific and well-specified.
The word task is often used interchangeably with other words. This can be done without too much confusion, as long as the meaning is clear or can be made clear. Some of those words include:
• Work item
• Goal
• To-do
• Objective
• Activity
The words goal and objective are often defined to be higher level concepts. When a team does that the implication is that something called a goal is less specific and more important than a task. In common usage a task is limited in scope and quite specific. This book occasionally uses “goal” and “task” in this way.
In some situations tasks may have subtasks. Teams define other attributes common to tasks as needed.
What Is a Responsibility?
The word responsibility is frequently used interchangeably with task. However, there is both a common and a dictionary differ- ence between the two. Separating the concepts adds to the clarity of team organization.
In common team usage, the word responsibility tends to indicate either:
• Something less specific and more self-directed, or
• A greater level of accountability
In fact, these are complementary meanings. Often the more self-directed the work, the more stringent the accountability for it.
In dictionary terms, as it applies to teamwork, the word responsi- bility is defined as an
• A duty, or
• An area of authority to act with limited supervision In all of these usages the important commonalities are:
• A substantial degree of self-direction
• Less initial specification, meaning an amount of self-definition
Management By Objective
Management by objective is a commonly advocated way of managing individuals and teams.
In brief, the concept is that workers participate with manage- ment in goal setting and solution identification, and are then measured against the jointly specified outcomes.
The benefits of management by objectives may include:
• Greater clarity in goal setting due to more focus on that activity
• Better performance due to greater engagement of the assign- ees with the work assigned, and more commitment to the out- comes
• Increased quality of solutions and related decision-making due to wider participation and more deliberate process
Management By Responsibility?
Management by responsibility is a less commonly heard concept that is simply a recognition of how teams frequently operate.
At a high level, management by responsibility is when team leaders focus on assigning of areas of responsibility that have well-known performance threshold, but may not have detailed solutions or even a known end state.
For example, a campus facilities manager may assign responsibility for a building's climate control systems to an employee.
He or she may provide limited detail of how the work is to be performed. There might be no end date or deliverable. And the manager may give the employee clear thresholds for the accept- able status of the area of responsibility. This manager could be described as managing by responsibility.
The benefits are similar to those for management by objective. The main difference may include:
• Management monitors levels of ongoing performance, not dis- crete outcomes
• Solutions and decision-making may not improve specifically due to the practice if responsibilities are fully self-directed, rather than problem and solution identification being tackled jointly Using management by responsibility as the primary work man- agement approach is a choice based on management goals. However, in some cases it may be strongly indicated by the cir- cumstances or domain of the work.
Section 3
Task Vs. Responsibility
In This Section
1. Does It Matter?
2. A Simple Example
3. How To Choose
4. Time Matters
5. Perspective Matters
6. Explaining Why Matters
Does It Matter?
There are two questions we should answer about choosing to assign tasks or responsibilities up front:
• Does the choice matter?
• Does it matter what I call it?
The answer to does the choice matter is yes, it does.
How you assign work changes how it is done. Moreover, how you assign one item of work will change how other items of work are done, to some degree. Assigning work contributes to how the team is structured and operates, as well as to the per- formance of the individual.
The word choice also matters. What you call an assignment helps set expectations about it. Using a clearly understood name, most often “task” or “responsibility”, is a cue. If the as- signee understands in advance that a responsibility requires some initiative on their part, when they get a clearly labeled re- sponsibility they know how to approach doing it.
A Simple Example
For example, if I am a software developer and my team leader assigns me 5 things as part of a typical week:
• Design a tool to measure performance of 3 critical web pages
• Build the performance tool
• Build a test of the performance tool
• Document the performance tool
• Demonstrate the performance tool to the team
Because those 5 things are relatively specific, and because the assignments are typical, it is likely that I will expect relatively specific instructions for my next tasks in the following week.
But perhaps the following week my assignment is simply to boost performance for all web pages. That broad responsibility is likely to generate some amount of questioning in my mind as to where my relatively specific instructions are.
The mental adjustment I would need to do to reorient myself away from the expectation of more specific task assignments and towards an area of responsibility may be relatively small. However that adjustment is an incremental drag on my perform- ance. Many such small drags add up.
Likewise, if I am usually given broad brush responsibilities, but for some reason one week I am given only relatively specific tasks I may have some adjustment to do before I can perform at my typical level.
Both of these hypothetical situations suggest that people receiv- ing assignments do better if they have expectations for, and practice in accepting, the type of assignment.
How To Choose
When would you want to assign a task versus a responsibility? The main question is, how much self-definition and self direction is right for the work? If a lot is wanted, assign a responsibility. Otherwise, your intent is to assign one or more tasks.
Time Matters
When time is short usually we narrow down the effort to fit. In that case, calling an item of work a responsibility will make less sense to the assignee, regardless of how specifically you define the work. Responsibilities are typically not single activities with limited scope. More often they are longer duration with more un- knowns.
Perspective Matters
Could an assignment look like a task to one person and like a responsibility to another?
Yes. In fact that will frequently be the case. There are at least two reasons for this:
• The person assigned sees more ambiguity in the work than the assigner because they work in the details and face more decision-making than the assigner is aware of
• The work assigned may stretch beyond the assigner's expectations because it takes longer or has longer term implications then originally assumed These two common situations, sometimes combined, may convince the assignee that the work is an ongoing responsibility they have some directive control over.
Frequently, this shift in perspective is a good thing because it encourages greater commitment and accountability with a lighter touch.
Explaining Why Matters
People are affected by changes in teamwork. When a team member receives a type of assignment that is different from re- cent assignments, or perhaps different from any prior assignment, it will tend to raise questions. The questions might in- clude why now, why me, why is this approach better, and so on.
Moreover, the change in type of assignment may result in some level of resistance. Typically a person will not like the two op- tions equally-in general we have a preference.
Perhaps the best way the person assigning can minimize the distraction of these types of questions, and the possibility of resistance, is to clearly state:
• What the expectations are for the assignment
• What circumstances caused this assignment to be a given as a task or as a responsibility
• If this change indicates that going forward more assignments will be of this type, and if so why
Section 4
Implementation
In This Section
1. Some Suggestions
2. Be Very Clear About One-times
3. Separate Feedback From Instructions
4. Using MetaTeam
Some Suggestions
This chapter looked at self-direction and different approaches to work management. It defined tasks and responsibilities as two distinct types of assignment with different benefits.
In this last section we offer a few quick suggestions.
Be Very Clear About One-times
Some responsibilities are performed one time. For example, or- ganizing and running a special convocation of academics might happen once with no repeat expected.
Most do-once responsibilities will clearly not be discrete tasks, However, some may be confused with higher-level goals. Other one-time responsibilities may look a lot like narrow tasks.
As we said, how an assignee understands the type of assign- ment makes a difference in how it is performed. To get the best performance, be clear about how much direction and definition the assignee should expect.
Separate Feedback From Instructions
It is often helpful to separate feedback on job performance from specific instructions about the work in question. Of course you want to provide feedback about work product right there where the work is defined. But feedback that ties into how a person is doing overall may be better delivered in an aligned role or area of responsibility.
Anyone can have a bad day or a bad task. But a person's over- all performance is generally not determined by one day or one task. Roles and responsibilities are the way we define a job, so that is, more often than not, where job feedback belongs. Keep- ing in mind that if feedback on a role considers performance on specific high-level goals or narrow tasks the alignment between the role and the goals or tasks should be made clear.
Using MetaTeam
To use MetaTeam to assign tasks and responsibilities start by doing the following:
• Log in
• Select your team from your My Teams page
• Click the Roles button in the top nav bar. Then click the Responsibilities tab. You should see three default roles listed, or whatever number you have created yourself.
• Click the Add link at the bottom to create new responsibilities.
They show in the matrix as you create them.
• Click a responsibility name to open it. Notice that you can as- sign roles using accountability levels, expected hours and a percent share of the workload. You also see an indication of the way the responsibility is performed, dates and other fields, and collaboration tabs .
For more suggestions, tips and screenshots look in the MetaTeam blog. The RACI and Roles and Responsibilities la- bels are good places to start.
An open responsibility in MetaTeam.
