“Being Responsible” OR “Responsible For”

Response – This is a word with some greater significance both in our personal lives and in the corporate world. This word means your action or what you do when a particular situation arises. There are two types of responses which are triggered by our brain when a particular situation comes first one is purely mechanical or physical way when we say “Hello” when we see or meet or pick up phone – we don’t want to actually say hello or greet the other person from our inner core but our reflexes are being trained to command brain for that output for any personal or professional good or even simply without any reason. The second one is purely psychological which comes from our brain which processes it like if the same call is coming from a friend who is like quite dear to you or you meeting your loved ones – you will say “Hello” or whatever during that moment comes to your mind after hearing his voice it will surely be not an auto reflex, it’s the inner feeling from which you respond to him. So brain works in two direction one is purely mechanical (trained) and another is spontaneous or in other words situational which is highly fluid in nature. P.S. Your “Hello” can sound completely different if the person on the other side is not liked by you.

So idea of illustrating this example is to clearly distinct “Being Responsible” and “Responsible For” phrases. It has a greater significant when you add “For” it automatically becomes dictatorial in nature when you do later you are being responsible and ready to surrender to that situation as a whole and you shall respond exactly as per the situation. You friend calling you and may ask for your help or just take wellbeing of yours that’s not a concern you will actually respond to the situation as is “Good”, “Bad” or whatever. But when you work in professional context and similar situation arises your mind goes on a different tangent you ?actually respond in “Responsible For” mode example if?a customer call you and you are a sales person and the good received are damaged you immediately start looking for a transfer of your responsibility “ This supply chain people screws all the time” “I have emailed thrice and called also” “In fact I have copied you as well” and so on as your brain starts searching for transfer of the responsibility to someone else and just get rid of the situation and run away. So on the face of it you become pseudo "Being Responsible" although you are in actuality in "Responsible For" mode.

In nutshell working wherein nobody can blame you that’s a “Responsible For mode” but organizations would need a “Being responsible mode” wherein your inner core wants to resolve that problem whatsoever difficult or complex it may appear.

Organizations are getting affected by such behaviors and that’s how idea of system and processes must have come wherein any person has to act as per the set process and guidelines so that whichever mode a person works does not affect the outcomes. System and processes can ?certainly solve the problems for sure but one it will be limited and secondly it does it in a purely mechanical format which doesn’t have any passion quotient. If any macro level change happens then that process might become a road breaker or redundant to practice so you need to continuously look for changing and re evaluating processes ; major challenge bigger than the system and process here will be to make that person shift from being ?“Responsible For” mode to “Being Responsible mode” so that rest all things falls in place.

Top management and human resource directors wants every employee of the organization to work in “Being Responsible” mode without understanding or setting the context of getting on “Why” part of getting those behaviors. If really want shift towards passionate working from your employees you need to set the context so that they work in “Being Responsible mode”

Creating the "Why" and "How" is the major challenge and that remains largely un answered.