Role and responsibility charting and mapping

In many organizations, people are not sure what others are supposed to be doing. There may be a perception that others are not doing their jobs; projects or people may "fall through the cracks;" or there may be duplication of effort as several people work on the same thing. For example, at one college, three different people designed the class schedule, within the same week!

Role charting is used to:

Clear up any confusion about "who does what."

Ensure that for each task, there is a responsible party.

Communicate "who does what" so customers or other staff people are immediately referred to the correct party.

Facilitate additional communication by helping people who need to work together to get to know each other.

Prevent duplication of effort.

Responsibility charting for these purposes, and to clear up responsibility diffusion - the actual lack of responsibility or supervision when too many people are given responsibility for the same thing.

At one organization, many decisions had to be approved by every manager up to the CEO. Each assumed that errors would be caught at the next or previous level, and the CEO himself admitted that he didn't read the forms, he just signed them. Thus, the organization wasted a great deal of time, sent an inappropriate message to its employees, and ended up with less accountability than if people were given responsibility for their own approvals.

Charting roles and responsibilities is not complicated, but the sessions should be planned with and facilitated by an experienced process consultant.

Our role is to help you through the process and to work on the interpersonal issues that can get in the way of effective problem-solving.

Role charting and mapping and responsibility mapping - how they can be used as part of an organizational change management process, with the help of process consulting.