How to Avoid Responsibility

If your organization aspires to high performance, it's useful to know who avoids responsibility or the risks of being held accountable. Unless you're astute and alert, you'll eventually be a recipient of responsibility shifted by these shirkers. This little handbook is for you.

And if you're among the unfortunate majority who don't work in high-performance organizations, responsibility-shifting skills are essential to survival. Until you find a job somewhere better, this little handbook is for you.

Here are some popular techniques people use for avoiding responsibility. I've written it as a handbook for shirkers, but it's also useful for those who want to know how shirkers operate.

Telecommute

Working from a remote site makes anyone more difficult to reach, especially in emergencies. Evading responsibility is easier when you aren't there.

Fend it off

The best approach is to have the requestor ask someone else. If that doesn't work, inform the requestor that Mortimer is in charge of such things. Be creative. If all else fails, delegate.

Defer the request

Tell the requestor to come back later. Offer a particular time only if necessary. As time passes, the request might be overtaken by events, or forgotten, or the requestor might find somebody else to take responsibility.

Drag your feet

Accept the request, but send the requestor away with "Leave it on my desk," "Send me email," or even better, "Leave it with Melvin," if Melvin is your assistant. (Remember to use your assistant's actual name.) Leave-it-with-my-assistant is best because it makes you seem more important. Only later, apply the techniques below.

Demand the broomstick of the wicked witch of the West

Tell the requestor that Mortimer must deal with the request first, and after Mortimer does whatever he does, you'll review it. This protects you somewhat in case of later disaster, because you can say that you relied on Mortimer's input. Of course, again, use Mortimer's actual name.

Demand more information

In low-performance cultures,
responsibility-shifting skills
are essential to survival

Ask the requestor for more information — preferably information that takes time to acquire. During that time, you can prepare to use one of these other techniques.

Excuses, excuses

If somehow the request reaches you despite your best efforts, find excuses to delay or to send it back. Be too busy. Play dumb. Make something up. The best excuses involve travel, or people high in the org chart, or travel with people high in the org chart. The requestor must then either find someone else to deal with the request, or go ahead anyway somehow. Either way, you're off the hook.

Probably the most famous master of avoiding responsibility is Major Major Major, a character in Joseph Heller's Catch-22. [Heller 2004]. Major Major avoids all contact with anyone who might want anything. Clever. Sorry, no time for questions, gotta go now.  Top    Next Issue

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Footnotes

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