Imagine that, one day, someone decides to sort through the office mail and distribute the relevant material to the appropriate people. Let’s call this person the Mail Sorter.
Realizing how much people like the service, the Mail Sorter decides to do it the next day. And the next day.
Pretty soon, everyone else in the office begins to outsource their mail-sorting responsibility. They know that the Mail Sorter will take care of it, so they don’t worry about it.
What happens when the Mail Sorter decides that he’s done with his good deed and stops sorting the mail? It was never really his responsibility to sort the mail anyways, so it’s not a problem. Right?
Wrong.
As soon as everyone learns that they can trust the Mail Sorter, it becomes his responsibility to sort the mail – whether this is a formal role or not.
If you’re questioning this, think about the people you rely on each day, and how many of the tasks are done as the product of a formal agreement. It’s probably very few.
Anything I do at home comes from organic roles and responsibility. I got used to taking out the trash, so it became my responsibility to take the trash to the curb every Monday. It’s not a rigid role – we make arrangement if I’m out of town or can’t handle it for some other reason – but it’s clearly my fault if the trash doesn’t go out.
We don’t tend to think about how impactful these types of organic responsibilities are when we get started. We might think that we’re just doing a nice deed, but we have to be aware of two consequences:
- We can quickly get stuck sorting the mail every day
- Occasionally sorting the mail causes more trouble than never sorting it because of the ambiguity that follows
As soon as people get used to having a task taken care of, they begin to absolve responsibility. Which can be dangerous if we aren’t prepared to follow through every time the task comes up.
-Brandon