![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/554\/2025\/10\/The-Elements-of-Improvement.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nI\u2019ve talked before about how important a sense of \u2018helpfulness\u2019<\/a> is within organisations and I think when you know what you are there to do, and that you are \u2018keen to help\u2019, honestly, so much can be achieved. In my model, the \u201cDefine clear roles and responsibilities\u201d box works hand in hand with \u201cPursue organisational alignment \u2013 Purpose\u201d and \u201cUnderstand customer value\u201d because if you have a good appreciation of what each of these blocks require, you have the foundations of an organisation that knows what it\u2019s there to do, understands what matters to its customers, and has employees who know what their roles are in order to deliver that value and that purpose. (See how genius the model is? Sigh!)<\/p>\n In my role at Cardiff University I\u2019ve been exceptionally fortunate to be able to have the freedom to forge my own career path. I fully appreciate what a luxury this is. Seeing the need for the Business School to develop an engaged Business Community, I\u2019ve been able to create one. This hasn\u2019t been easy at all, but I\u2019ve been exceptionally driven by both a clear sense of purpose and also, an acute sense of who our customers are and what they value. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t a massive stretch to reach upon the conclusion that a Business School must be exceptionally connected to Business, granted, but yet we just didn\u2019t <\/em><\/strong>have the structures and processes there to maximise our proximity to business before we embarked upon the creation of the Executive Education and External Engagement team. I pride myself on being able to spot patterns, spot opportunities, make connections and I had the ability, and well, freedom, to move to meet the opportunities I could see, head on.<\/p>\n But things are changing, and there are suddenly a lot more people around whose job titles are very much aligned to the things that I\u2019ve been working on. \u00a0The necessary pursuit of efficiency has triggered activities such as standardising academic roles across all Schools and Colleges (will my current role be allowed to exist?), plus central teams are now embarking on major attempts to create many forms of standard operating procedure, no doubt to reduce variation and glean economies of scale.<\/p>\n The \u201cdevelop standards and automate where possible\u201d box is looking at me wryly as I write this \u2026 \u00a0oh great, it\u2019s just laughed.<\/p>\n Whilst the \u201cdefine roles and responsibilities box\u201d side of me is hugely supportive and appreciative of the arrival of new positions which finally<\/em><\/strong> recognise hugely important University activities such as flexibility and engagement, suddenly, it\u2019s calling into question whether or not I\u2019m \u2018stepping out of my lane\u2019 by working on things that are now, featured within someone else\u2019s \u2018role and responsibility\u2019 remit?<\/p>\n Whereas there wasn\u2019t anyone previously that I needed to consult before I embarked upon an idea in some area, often, now, there is.<\/p>\n This new state of permission asking is making me question the \u201cDefine clear roles and responsibilities\u201d box altogether.\u00a0 If we have too many roles too defined, where is the room for innovation and initiative?<\/p>\n And when I think about it, the team that we\u2019ve built together, whilst everyone has their areas of specialism and strength, from design, writing, building relationships, attention to detail – we work very much flexibly, pitching in when there\u2019s something big happening, covering each other\u2019s roles when people are off and helping each other out. \u00a0Also, there\u2019s something about having an awareness of what each other does within a multi-disciplinary team, that makes everyone better at their job.\u00a0 I also think it makes teams immensely productive.<\/p>\n What do you do when you find yourself flailing somewhat in the midst of a sea of functionally aligned change? Well, I look to my wonder web for guidance and am comforted by a couple of other boxes on there, both connected to the \u201cdevelop standards and automate where possible\u201d box and both proudly sitting next to each other, side by side:<\/p>\n \u201cGo to where the work is to see and understand\u201d and \u201clearn ability to deal with variation and empower staff\u201d.<\/p>\n These two boxes are critical.\u00a0 Roles can only really be defined by a genuine understanding of what work is actually required \u2013 and that can only happen by truly appreciating what happens on the ground.\u00a0 And this work always works best when staff have been given the sufficient level of autonomy to do what they need to do for their customers.\u00a0 Being able to flex into other roles with fluidity, as and when required, feels quite an important element of how this can be achieved.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s dangerous to just look at the implementation of one box in isolation, in this case, to just deploy \u201cDefine clear roles and responsibilities\u201d.<\/p>\n The whole point of the Elements of Improvement web is that the different boxes absolutely have to work together.\u00a0 \u00a0But perhaps I also need to stress, much more strongly, that people need to be aware of the fact that each of the concepts sitting in their own box, exists on a spectrum \u2013 such as the spectrum of standardisation<\/a>, the spectrum of customisation, and maybe there\u2019s a spectrum of job role autonomy as well.<\/p>\n At one end of this<\/em><\/strong> spectrum, you are tightly confined to working specifically to task, at the other end, you are given the freedom to work on whatever you want to work on. That\u2019s the sort of \u2018highly aligned, loosely coupled\u2019 Netflix model of work that I\u2019ve discussed previously<\/a> and, like all of the other spectrums, where you need to sit on that spectrum should be determined through experimentation, plus, where it needs to be will change over time.<\/p>\n So \u201cDefine clear roles and responsibilities\u201d absolutely has to be considered as having its own spectrum too AS WELL AS, how it connects to other concepts.\u00a0 More than this, I need to make sure how important small, flexible and agile teams are within successful organisations.\u00a0 Toyota is deeply committed to nested cells of small teams, held together by a leader who helps teams to problem solve through coaching.\u00a0 For more information on team size and structure please read this excellent blog by Christoph Roser – On the Team Structure at Toyota \u2013 AllAboutLean.com<\/a><\/p>\n So begads guys, I\u2019m changing the box.<\/p>\n Behold! \u00a0The newly formed \u201cDefine Roles and Responsibilities in Flexible Teams<\/strong>\u201d box.<\/p>\n It\u2019s my model and I\u2019ll change it if I want to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month I talked about the \u201cCall for Help\u201d box within my Elements of Improvement model and this month I want to talk about a box which is giving me […]","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":1290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,3,4,6,11],"tags":[101,98,16,99],"custom_author":[44],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lean","category-organisational-culture","category-productivity","category-service-improvement","category-strategy","tag-autonomy","tag-job-role","tag-lean","tag-spectrum","custom_author-sarah-lethbridge"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/554\/2025\/10\/Inquisitive-owl.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/554\/2025\/10\/Elements-of-Improvement-with-Flexible-Teams.png\")
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