Responsibility Taken
Responsibility is a phenomenon not easily defined. It’s the act of deliberately taking on all of the consequences of specific actions designed to achieve a specific goal. I’d say it’s about the opposite of the “rules” that I described in my previous post as you have to take responsibility - it’s not enforced on you and can be abdicated at any time.
I remember group assignments well in college. The professor gives an assignment, but he doesn’t give responsibility. Obviously, if your group doesn’t complete it, you could all fail the class. But in that way, your failure is a kind-of “shrugging off” of responsibility. You fail through entropy. This method of failure is easy because you didn’t lose anything of yourself because you never gave anything. You aren’t any better or worse off then you were before.
However, if you take it upon yourselves to split up the work and set realistic, manageable goals, you’ve taken a piece of that responsibility on yourselves. The hard part, for me at least, was allowing others their part. You never know if others are taking something as you’ve taken it. Are they really working on their assignments as you’re working on it? And in their minds, the same thought occurs.
The trickiest phenomenon from this scenario is that you have to build a model of your teammates and act in accordance that model. You might believe that they’re dilligently working on their part, and that’d drive you to ensure that you can give the best that you can. Or you might believe that your teammates are slacking off - giving you an excuse to do the same.
I’d almost argue that neither of the above thoughts are useful because you’re painting your actions with another’s brush. What does it matter what your teammate is actually doing? You’ve taken the responsibility on yourself to provide the best solution for your part of the work. And you’ve ensured that, in the future, the group will share notes. If your teammates don’t bring what they promised, or don’t even show up to the meeting, there’s no use in giving up. Go ahead and take on their responsibility as well and finish as planned. The reward in that case will be even greater - even if it requires more work on your part. The fact that your teammates will also receive “credit” is also not necessarily a reward on their part. Like completely ignoring the assignment and failing, they’ve simply given in to entropy and allowed themselves to be lifted.
The beauty of accepting responsibility is that the result for you will always be better because you’re willing to give a piece of yourself toward a positive outcome. The fact that your teammates abdicated their responsibility is unfortunate, but you obviously didn’t need them anyway. But what if those around you have the same attitude toward responsibility? Well, the work would have gotten done with less effort for each person involved, and everybody would have shared in the reward.
One example of this that I like to roll around in my head is the shopping cart theory1. When you go to the grocery store, you’d rather there not be random shopping carts strewn about - in the middle of the lanes, in parking spots, etc. Seeing this happen makes you more likely to abandon your own cart willy-nilly whenever you’ve made it back to your car with your goods. And even if you were good enough to return the cart, you’re still suffering the consequences. As such, it’s a good test of social cohesion in a neighborhood, and also a good test of responsibility “stickiness”. When everybody returns the shopping cart, everybody is better off for it. If even one person fails to perform this duty, many people could suffer a slight inconvenience.
That being said, taking ownership of the consequences of your actions generally leads to a better outcome - even if it’s just a marginal improvement. If we all succomb to entropy, nothing new gets built, and if we all act mindlessly, we’re supporting a system that we wouldn’t necessarily would have supported if we were acting properly. My favorite word to use toward this end is “deliberate”. Make sure that when you act, you act deliberately.