Reportability vs Responsibility: people often think they want a new job, but what they want is more responsibility

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 3 mins

Summary: Leveling up your capacity to take on responsibility allows you to: constantly take on new growth areas, potentially prevent you from getting bored in your role and ultimately lead to building a better life for yourself

Overview:

IMO one cannot be given a good life, but one can try to build a good life.
- *aside: I do think we can try to create the conditions where one can build a good life and that we should eg have a strong social safety net.
IMO one path to a good life is taking on responsibility to try and build a good life.
Over time hopefully the responsibility one can shoulder increases.
- I’ve found that shouldering responsibility is not a burden.
- That shouldering responsibility is one path to meaning.
- IMO responsibility * making the world better => meaning.
Are you ready for the best sentence ever: a life without meaning is… meaningless.
One key route for ‘responsibility’ is needing to figure out what you should be doing at your job. Ie part of the ‘job description’ is undefined.
Often the most important ‘professional development’ goal I have for people is to increase the ‘amount of responsibility’ they can take.
Often the strategy I have for organisation structure is to increase the number of ‘high responsibility’ roles.
Jingle: IMO increasing the amount of responsibility one can shoulder, is one key ability one should foster.