Clear authority and powers are prerequisites for discussing someone’s responsibility. In most organizations, clear responsibility is defined at the lowest, executive level and at the highest, that of the director or president of the company. Problems arise at the level of middle management and are reflected in insufficient or unclear powers. Managers who lack authority, instead of making decisions for which they are responsible, are forced to ask their superiors. In delivering or conveying ‘sad news’, their main managerial tool becomes their voice, and the key to their success, besides the tone of their voice, is the sense of the right moment to address their superior.
Responsible people in irresponsible organizations cannot be responsible, and irresponsible people in responsible organizations must be. Instead of a discussion with an editor who would rightly intervene in this sentence, I will explain to both him and you one of the many reasons why it is necessary to clearly define authority, powers, and the responsibilities that arise from them in organizations.
‘Responsibility is a person’s relationship to their work and is a consequence of their upbringing, attitudes, and worldview,’ is a sentence I have often heard from those who deal with people and their adaptation or maladaptation to their environment. And I disagree with it when we talk about the business environment if it does not have the following continuation: ‘(…) and the prerequisite for discussing someone’s responsibility is that it is clearly defined what needs to be done, which we call authority, and that they are given the right to make a decision within their defined authority, which we call power.’
Authority Without Power At the level of executors, that is, operational tasks, things are simple: for example, the authority of a waiter is to take an order, serve the guest, and charge for the drink; the authority of a bank clerk is to dispense money, receive payments; the authority of a technician is to repair something on the machine, make a part according to a drawing… All this implies that a person knows their job, that is, that they record who drinks what, count the money, perform an operation that they were generally not taught in school, but through observation and imitation, they have mastered it (some faster, some slower). What would happen in cases where people in such tasks lack authority? Well, they would have to go to their immediate superior and ask: ‘May I ask what they would like to drink?’; ‘May I accept this payment?’; ‘May I turn on the lathe?’… And you do not have to be overly imaginative to envision such situations, but you need to be quite unimaginative for them not to bring a slight smile to your face.
However, if we raise our gaze to the next hierarchical level, we will see a person who, besides their own job, organizes someone else’s, and that bright smile becomes business sour. Authority increases, but it is generally not accompanied by greater powers. And so it goes up: increasing authority and an increasing lack of powers that should accompany it; increasingly frequent situations where it becomes clear that there is someone above whom I must ask if I can decide. Up to the top where things are simplified again, at least from the perspective of organizational responsibility.
At the top of the hierarchy, there is no one above to ask, all powers are concentrated there, and therefore all responsibility. At the top of organizations and at the level of operational tasks, ‘responsibility is indeed a person’s relationship to their own work and is a consequence of their upbringing, attitudes, and worldview’ because authority and powers are clearly defined. And at those positions, we can talk about a responsible relationship to work, regardless of whether it is about serving the client properly or concluding a business contract with large amounts. And at those positions, we can call people to responsibility, regardless of whether it means that a satisfied client leaves our ‘store’ or that we achieve the set business plan.
Let us return to those who are in that organizational sandwich in the middle, which is why they are called middle management. In shallow organizational structures, they hide under the name ‘chiefs’ and due to insufficient powers, their job is often to bring sad news to wise leadership, embodied in one person. If they hide under the name ‘production chief’, then with a sad voice they cautiously report that ‘that machine has broken down’. If they are sales chiefs, again with a sad voice they cautiously report that ‘that client has not yet paid’. They differ by which department they head, but they share the commonality that over time they develop the ability to assess when is the right moment to announce the ‘sad news’ and to adjust the tone of their voice to the gravity of the situation they are obliged to report on.
