On Responsibility, community updates, and holiday break

On Responsibility, community updates and holiday break

Sergio Visinoni

Dec 18, 2024

Today's article is a mix of reflections, updates, and tips.

It will be the last post for 2024.

Let's start with a topic I've been reflecting upon lately and my current mental model when reasoning about it.

It touches on the often tricky concept of responsibility.

Reflections on Responsibility

No matter your job or role, you have surely discussed or reasoned about your responsibilities at some point.

Ignoring the subtle difference between accountability and responsibility into the mix, a distinction that doesn't exist in every language, you can find many different definitions of responsibility.

Here are some examples you can find while searching online:

the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone.
"a true leader takes responsibility for their team and helps them achieve goals"

the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.
"the group has claimed responsibility for a string of murders"

to have control and authority over something or someone and the duty of taking care of it, him, or her:
"Paul is directly responsible for the efficient running of the office."

Or again, asking our ubiquitous LLMs, specifically ChatGPT and Claude, you get some variation of the following:

Responsibility is the duty or obligation to act correctly, make decisions, and be accountable for the outcomes. [ChatGPT]1

Responsibility is the moral or legal obligation to act with care, accountability, and integrity in one's duties and commitments. [Claude]

Ignoring the evidence that old-school dictionaries still do a better job than fancy and sophisticated language models in providing a concrete answer, you can see that coming up with a clear definition of responsibility is not trivial.

It's not a surprise that it has been the subject of many philosophical debates and investigations. One that I particularly liked frames the concept as follows:

Responsibility therefore is a concept expressed by a relational system of attribution in terms of an expectation of an action or its result. To be responsible, or to take responsibility for something (or someone), means that somebody is obliged to (against) an addressee for actions, results of actions, tasks and states of affairs, and that he or she has to justify these actions and results before (or in the face of) a judgement, according to standards, criteria, or norms. The responsible person has to justify his or her actions: he or she has to be answerable (‘responsible’ in the narrower sense), i.e. accountable for them.2

Let's accept that creating a perfect definition of responsibility is difficult and often a task that most people—especially in the professional context—believe they don't have time for. Let's also accept that we all have a somewhat intuitive definition we can relate to. We subjectively know what being responsible means, at least according to our internal representation of the concept.

Lately, I've found a more helpful way to think about this concept, one that shifts the focus from the definition to clarifying the scope to which it applies. In its most straightforward formulation, this is how I think about responsibility:

I can only be responsible for my decisions

There, simple.

It's almost too simple.

But let's explore it a bit. The first consequence of applying this definition is that the opposite should also hold:

I can't be responsible for someone else's decisions

The interesting part is that decisions happen at multiple levels and scales. Let's look at examples to clarify how we can use this mental model recursively, like a fractal.

Let's start with the obvious example. Your boss has decided on your behalf.

They have decided that your priority should be X. You can't be responsible and held accountable for the consequences of choosing X over all other possibilities. That wasn't your decision.

But responsibility doesn't end there. At some point in your journey, you have decided to accept your job, a decision for which you are responsible. Moreover, following your boss' direction to focus on priority X, you will likely make plenty of judgment calls regarding how you will execute and deliver. You'll be responsible for all those decisions.

If X turns out to be the wrong priority, that's not your responsibility.

Suppose you poorly execute on X and deliver sub-par results instead, assuming expectations were set clearly. In that case, you will be held responsible for the underwhelming output.

The tricky part will always be solving the attribution problem: Are the results—outcomes—below expectation because of the wrong priority or poor execution? There isn't a simple answer, as every case will require ad hoc investigations.

Let's now look at a different example. You are in charge of a team and decide to delegate certain decisions to your team members.

In technology, we often delegate decisions on technical details and implementations to team experts. Here, the decision we're responsible for is the act of delegation.

Suppose now that the employee did a poor job and came up with suboptimal solutions for the problem. They will still be responsible for their decisions, and you will still be responsible for assigning them the task.

You cannot short-circuit the responsibility chain and assume they are solely at fault. As a leader, you're responsible for the outcomes of your casting decisions, such as a soccer coach is accountable for the consequences of deciding which role each player will take on the field.

Next time you discuss responsibilities with your manager, I recommend approaching responsibility as a consequence of your decisions and seeing if this helps clarify expectations and make the relationship more productive.

Community Announcements and Updates

Members of the recently launched Sudo Make Me a CTO Community are getting more and more value out of it after every session.

The last one wasn't an exception, and here you can see the reaction from the person who volunteered to be offered support and perspectives on a challenging situation they're facing:

It's still a small group, but engagement and the level of support are stellar and definitely beyond my expectations.

The recent promo I launched for people to join us at a reduced price didn't attract many new members. In hindsight, I believe that's down to two main reasons:

I still struggle to communicate the value people will get from joining us. I can see it session after session with all current members, but articulating it for someone who has not seen it in practice isn't trivial. I'm going to think about this during the holiday season. If anyone has tips or recommendations, they are more than welcome.
The timing was not ideal. I shared the promo right around when everyone was compulsively spending all their money and more on black friday deals. I am not a big fan of that trend, so I decided not to piggyback on it. Unfortunately, it still meant competing against every random black friday promo from your local bakery during those weeks.

Once people join us, I know they will see the value, as do all current members. Therefore, I decided to keep the special price available throughout the holidays.

This could be the perfect time to join us for two reasons:

During the holiday break, you have more time to think about personal development, career goals, and changes you might want to implement in your trajectory
The first session in 2025, on January 9th, will see a very special guest joining us for the call: Cate Houston — the author of The Engineering Leader — who I interviewed in a past issue of the newsletter3. Cate will be with us to cover one of the topics she is an expert on: Self-management.

Remember, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. This effectively means you could join us, benefit from a couple of calls in January, and then decide to get a refund if you're unsatisfied. There is no risk on your end except being hooked enough to stay a member.

Please visit this page for more details and to sign up. It contains plenty of information and links to subscribe to the monthly or annual plan. I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

Preparing for the Holiday Season

December has been a crazy month. There has been a peak in activity on many fronts and some development on the client side that I'll share in more detail next year.

Since the beginning of the year, I've been publishing this newsletter weekly. Now, it's time to take a short break. The next article will go live on January 8th.

In the meantime, I'll take time off with the family, read as much as possible, and hack on some projects I'm currently playing with.

I strongly recommend that you all do something similar: take time to invest in intellectually stimulating activities that are not directly related to your many personal or professional obligations.

Specifically, if you're looking to stock up on interesting reads, I recommend you check out these articles where I review the books I've been reading lately. Many of them are highly recommended to anyone working in engineering leadership.