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Volume 06 · People and roles

Give people a job they can actually succeed at.

A title is not a role. A useful role tells someone what outcome they own, which decisions they can make, who helps them, and how they will know they are doing well.

9 connected chaptersMove from decision rights to role design, hiring, support, and fair payment.
Clearer hand-offsReduce the moments when work stalls because nobody knows who can decide.
Stronger people systemsGive good people the tools, training, and expectations to do good work.
A COMMON FRUSTRATION

Someone is blamed for a result they could not control.

A receptionist is “responsible for customer satisfaction.”

A delayed order creates an angry call. The receptionist is expected to fix it, but cannot change the schedule, contact the supplier directly, or offer a practical remedy. The role sounds important, yet it has been set up to fail.

Responsibility needs matching authority. This volume helps you give people both, then make the working relationships around them clear.

THE PEOPLE PATH

Start with the work, then build the role around it.

Match responsibility and authority

Make sure the person who owns an outcome has enough power to influence it.

Separate leadership jobs

Distinguish what belongs to the owner, the chief executive, and the people who run work each day.

Describe the role clearly

Set a purpose, practical measures, checklists, and working relationships that another person can understand.

Help the person grow into it

Recruit deliberately, train well, review fairly, and pay people with care.

START WITH THE PROBLEM

Where is work currently getting stuck?

Chapters 1–2

Fix a role with no real power

Find responsibility without authority, then see what the owner should stop carrying alone.

Start with decision rights Chapters 3–6

Make the team structure make sense

Separate executive, management, frontline, and support work so the business has fewer invisible gaps.

Clarify the structure Chapter 7

Write one role another person can use

Turn a vague job title into a useful agreement about purpose, outcomes, measures, and daily work.

Write the role Chapters 8–9

Bring people in and support them well

Connect hiring, training, performance, and payroll so a new role works in real life.

Build the support around it

A role to repair this week

Choose one recurring problem with an owner-shaped hole in it.

Pick a result that keeps being missed or passed around. Name the person expected to own it, then ask what authority they have today. The gap between those two answers is the best place to begin.

  • The outcomeWhat must reliably happen?
  • The decisionWhat can this person change?
  • The supportWhat help or information do they need?
Start with responsibility and authority