Responsibility + Authority Framework
Responsibility and authority must be in equal parts. Otherwise imbalance happens, and most employees end up in Employee Purgatory.
The question it answers
Who have you given responsibility to, but not authority to do what’s necessary to get results?
Use it when
Employees keep coming to you for approval to implement solutions that would help them do their job.
“Got a minute?” meetings eat your day.
A good manager is burning out on an outcome they can’t control.
It’s the wrong tool when
The person hasn’t proven they can handle more yet. Extend authority in stages, not all at once.
The person is in the wrong seat. More authority won’t fix a bad fit (see the Sales Rep Hierarchy).
As a business owner, you’ve probably never noticed the balanced relationship between responsibility and authority. That’s because you have complete control over both. You own the business, which makes you 100 percent responsible for its survival, and you have 100 percent authority to make any decisions that would increase its chances for success.
The people who do notice the relationship of responsibility and authority are those who don’t possess them in equal amounts.
Every case I have ever seen of a responsibility and authority imbalance happens when an employee is given the responsibility of creating a specific outcome, but doesn’t have the authority to do what is necessary to make it happen. This isn’t quite Hell, but it sure is close, so I refer to it as Employee Purgatory. It’s like Sisyphus being responsible for rolling the rock up the hill, but not having the authority to build a platform to store it once he gets there, so it keeps rolling back down.
This type of situation is the fastest path to employee burnout because the stress of responsibility without the authority to ensure competent performance is unbearable.
How to fix it
To uncover where you are giving employees responsibility without authority, just pay attention when they come to you for approval to implement solutions that will help them do their job. Start giving them more authority to solve problems on their own, extending it over time as they prove capable of handling it.
I suggest extending authority in stages so the employee doesn’t end up hanging themselves with too much of it too soon.
Where owners get it wrong
Imagine a marketing director who is responsible for capturing leads on the website for the sales team, but who doesn’t have the authority to fire the incompetent web development team. Every time the marketing director makes a recommendation to the website team they botch it and end up breaking other parts of the website. The marketing director is blamed for the website issues his requests cause and for not generating enough leads, even though he is not able to do anything about it because he lacks authority.
What you walk away with
My favorite way to do this is to ask them, “What do you think you need to do this right?” When they answer with something you approve, say, “Great! Go for it. And you have authority to do this without my input in the future.” You’ll instantly notice that the “got a minute?” meetings drop significantly, and employee attitude will dramatically improve with the added trust you’ve given them.
Related frameworks
Know who's ready for more authority.
The Sales Team MRI shows who on your team is wired to own an outcome, so you know where to extend authority first and where it would backfire. Free for $2M to $20M businesses.
