Authority, Responsibility, and Accountability

I work for a management consulting firm. One of the tasks we often perform is to evaluate the way a specific process is working in a company. We are asked to recommend changes if it is not working well---and often the issue it is the way it being managed.

As one would expect, any complex process involves multiple people; each with his/her own authority, responsibility, and accountability---authority to make certain decisions and take actions, responsibility to make sure his/her part of the process works well, and accountability for the end results. For a process to work well, these three elements have to be in alignment with each other. So, if you hold a person responsible for a process, and accountable for the results, he/she has to have the authority to make decisions affecting the outcome. These elements not being in alignment is often a reason for the breakdown of the system.

Such a misalignment is the reason for why many systems we encounter in our daily life do not work, both at a micro and macro levels. Take healthcare for example.

If the government has the responsibility for providing free or subsidized healthcare for older people or people of limited means, it has to have the authority to make decisions and impose regulations that would affect the cost of providing such service. That is the way to achieve alignment. And yet, when government tries to suggest, let alone dictate, how to live healthy lives, the staunch advocates on the right start screaming.

When Michelle Obama talks about providing healthy school lunches, the dim witted firebrands start arguing that we are becoming a nanny state and a child has all the rights to eat Twinkies. Of course, when the child becomes obese and develops health problems, it is the government’s responsibility to take care of him. Responsibility but no authority.

Along the same lines, if you want to have the authority to make all the decisions, then it should be you who should be held accountable if something goes wrong. If you want to live a criminal life and get shot, you should not expect the government to pay for fixing you up and send you out so you get shot once again. Authority but no accountability.

Authority, responsibility, and accountability. They need to be in alignment at all times.