Matching task assignment to role accountabilities
Over the last few weeks, we have discussed how complexity is a key factor in organization design and the importance of aligning accountability and authority into roles. The last piece of this puzzle is ensuring that employees are clear on these accountabilities and managers ensure they are matching task assignment to role accountabilities accordingly.
Why is this important?
Good organization design distributes work across a business where hundreds or thousands of people do the right work at the right level in order to deliver the strategy. In each of these roles, each business counts on managers to set the right expectations, provide the necessary resources and coaching to help every employee do their work and create the outputs that collectively deliver that strategy.
What happens if employees are unclear about the work and the outputs they are accountable to deliver?
A few years ago, Core International supported a major telecom undergo a reorganization. To understand the strengths and weaknesses of the existing organizational structure we interviewed employees at all levels about their work. One interview that stood out was with a Network Engineering Director who managed the spectrum bid process for the company’s wireless phone system. Periodically the Government of Canada makes spectrum available to encourage competition in the wireless services market, where telcos compete on acquiring spectrum by participating in auctions, with spectrum being awarded to the highest bidder. This all seems straightforward, and the Director was well equipped to do this important job that required her particular knowledge, skills and experience.
However, that Director rather than believing she was accountable for managing the company’s spectrum process, believed she was being held accountable for the long-term impact of the auction including spectrum availability, the telecom’s cost structure, and profitability over the next ten years, affecting her decisions and actions. As a result, this woman was highly stressed, losing sleep and at the time of the interview appeared to be overwhelmed.
She had put crippling pressure upon herself by believing what she was accountable for far exceeded what was required by the role. The “weight” of the role she felt on her shoulders reflected accountabilities that were outside of her role and resided in executive roles. What went wrong? Her manager, the SVP of Network Services had not effectively communicated the scope of her role, and she failed to ask for that clarification.
When people are put into roles or assigned work beyond their capabilities, they become overwhelmed. On the other extreme, if people are in roles or assigned tasks that are below their capabilities, they will eventually become bored and check out. People are most effective in doing work that they value when the complexity of the work matches their current capability level. How do we achieve this “Goldilocks” outcome consistently?
Align task assignment to accountability, authority and capability to do the work.
The weight of the job should align with the level of work, the specific role accountabilities, and the capability of the incumbent to do the work. We achieve this by:
- Designing roles with the right work at the right level.
- Assigning decision authority commensurate to role accountability.
- Selecting people capable of doing the work who possess the skills, knowledge, and interests necessary to be successful in the role.
- Providing people with the direction, coaching and resources they need to deliver tasks they are assigned.
These four elements come together to support employees at all levels within a business to perform their best and maximize their contributions. I wrote about the first three points in my most recent blogs so I will focus on effective task assignment.
Components of clear work assignment
The meat and potatoes of task assignment have not changed over the years. It’s up to the managerial leader (aka the boss) to ensure that individual employees understand their jobs and their work assignments. How do you accomplish this?
- Effective task assignment starts with your role. Understand your role, what work only you can do and what can be delegated. This does not mean holding all of the interesting work for yourself and delegating the work you do not want to do. Understand what work you should not delegate and only you in your role should do, before assigning tasks.
- Delegate appropriately by ensuring that assignment fits the role you are assigning tasks to. Assign tasks that align with your employee’s accountabilities that are both challenging and important.
- Provide context by outlining what the task is, why it is being assigned, and how that task supports department goals and the overall business plan. This step makes clear to the employee how the task supports the company’s strategy.
- Be clear on the specific outcomes -what outcome (quantity, quality) by when.
- Ask for a plan on how that task will be achieved – including resources required. This is where you set the boundaries and limits for the task based on the accountabilities and capabilities of your employee. In the case of the spectrum example, an appropriate task assignment would have been requesting a spectrum auction which included identification of the telecom’s spectrum requirements, the budget estimates to acquire spectrum and decisions required before entering the auction. In this way, the “weight” of the assignment is appropriate for the role it is assigned to.
- Review the plan judging the likelihood of success and provide feedback and coaching to ensure the plan will deliver the desired results.
- Stay informed through regular updates and provide feedback to support the successful completion of the task.
Managers are a critical component of ensuring the right work is done by the right people at the right level. If the organization design is done well with the right work being designed at the right level, and you have hired the right talent then the last step in the process of ensuring that work is done well goes to the manager who assigns the work. Organization design, HR policies and processes, and managerial leadership are parts of the overall management system that ensure the strategy is well executed.
This blog is part of our ongoing series Organizations that Work. To see all of the blogs in the series that have been posted so far, click here.
Every Tuesday over the next few months, we will be posting blogs that take you from the pain of poor organization design, to identifying the root causes, to the benefits of undertaking strategic organization review. We will discuss the steps needed to effectively align your structure and work with your strategy, and we’ll discuss the processes that take out the guess work and help you to get it done. Through it all we will discuss how to lead the change from start to finish.
If you’d like to speak with us about how we can help you on your journey to an organization that works, please follow us on LinkedIn or book a call directly with one of our partners.
Our approach draws on several bodies of work including Stratified Systems Theory, the work of Dr. Elliott Jaques. For more on Dr. Jaques and his work visit the Requisite Organization International Institute at ROII Requisite – ROII Requisite.