Diffusion of Responsibility—100 Mental Models #075 👽
How Apple uses task ownership to avoid the diffusion of responsibility.
Diffusion of Responsibility: A person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when others are present.
Example:
In 1964, a women in New York, Kitty Genovese, was raped and stabbed to death near several witnesses. Yet nobody came to her aid or called the police, as they thought others would be assisting her and phoning the police.
The Diffusion Of Responsibility problem is also faced by companies. For example, every project at Apple has a Directly Responsible Individual who is held accountable for the progress and completion of a task.
A former Apple employee, Gloria Lin, commented, “When everyone knows that something is important, but no one feels like it’s their responsibility to see it all the way through. In a fast-growing company with tons of activity, important things get left on the table, not because people are irresponsible but just because they’re really busy. The benefit here is more ownership than accountability. When you feel like something is your baby, then you really, really care about how it’s doing. You will obsess over metrics and track down issues and rally people and want to do nice things for them when you achieve something great.”
Wisdom:
“The price of greatness is responsibility.” ― Winston S. Churchill
