Responsibility Virus: How To Cure You & Your Company Of The Fear Of Failure

by Roger L. Martin

Your business faces a challenge. The usual management suspects lock themselves in a meeting room and frantically create a plan. The plan is, of course, secret. They try to do everything themselves. They fail. Meanwhile, everybody else sits around waiting to have the problem solved for them by the heroic managers. They don't get the full picture; they don't buy into the plans. Recognize these symptoms? It's the responsibility virus at work. What makes some people in organizations run from blame while others claim credit for everything? Why is it that so many important decisions get left to so few managers? Why do some people always take charge while others simply take orders?

The Responsibility Virus is a cycle of failure driven by people who take too much or too little responsibility for results. Here's how to cure you and your company of the fear of failure. From one of our most original business thinkers comes a diagnosis of the fear of failure that traps all who work in organizations - from the board room to the mail room . Complete with tried and tested tools to help everyone make better choices and decisions, The Responsibility Virus will help you to share the burden of leadership and spread responsibility.

World-class consultant and business school dean Roger Martin leaps outside the box of contemporary management thinking to offer a provocative diagnosis of the problem that infects all too many organizations: the Responsibility Virus.

Drawing upon his years of experience advising companies on strategy, planning and action, Martin shows how most poor decision-making begins at the level of individual behaviour. Because most of us will do anything to win, maintain control, and avoid embarrassment, we constantly adapt our behaviour to those around us. Trapped in this dynamic, we vacillate between taking charge and backing off, causing those around us to vacillate too.

Over-responsible leaders need under-responsible followers. And under-responsible followers need over-responsible leaders. Each provides the energy the other needs to sustain their part of the Virus. The critical reality is that every one of us, in each specific situation, holds the power to stop the Virus in our own hands. All we have to do is refuse the opportunity presented to act over-responsibly or under-responsibly.

With lively case studies based on real experience, Martin lays out the tools that all of us can put into practice as we contemplate business choices and decisions. His sophisticated and impassioned belief in the power of one will be required reading for any of us who think about how we function in organizations, from the boardroom to the mail room. In this book you will find tactics and personal strategies to overcome fear of failure and get everybody willing and able to take decisions for themselves.

Genres: Business, Self Help, Nonfiction, Management

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1990

About the author

Roger Martin is the Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship at the Rotman School of Management and the Premier’s Chair in Productivity & Competitiveness. From 1998 to 2013, he served as Dean. Previously, he spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as co-head of the firm for two years.

His research work is in Integrative Thinking, Business Design, Strategy, Corporate Social Responsibility and Country Competitiveness. He writes extensively and is a regular contributor to: Harvard Business Review’s The Conversation blog, the Financial Times’ Judgment Call column, and the Guardian Sustainable Business. He has written 24 Harvard Business Review articles and published 10 books: Getting Beyond Better (with Sally Osberg); Harvard Business Review Press (HBRP, 2015); Playing to Win (with A.G. Lafley) (HBRP, 2013); Fixing the Game (HBRP, 2011); The Design of Business (HBRP, 2009); The Opposable Mind (HBRP, 2007); The Responsibility Virus (Basic Books, 2002); Canada: What It Is, What It Can Be (with Jim Milway, Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2012); and Diaminds (with Mihnea Moldoveanu, University of Toronto Press, 2009), and The Future of the MBA (with Mihnea Moldoveanu, Oxford University Press, 2008). In addition, he co-edited Rotman on Design (with Karen Christensen, Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2013).

In 2013, Roger placed 3rd on the Thinkers50 list, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers, moving up from 6th in 2011 and 32nd in 2009. In 2010, he was named one of the 27 most influential designers in the world by Business Week. In 2007 he was named a Business Week 'B-School All-Star' for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. Business Week also named him one of seven 'Innovation Gurus' in 2005.

He serves on a number of public service boards: Skoll Foundation, Canadian Credit Management Foundation, Tennis Canada (past chair), and Bridgespan Group (academic advisory board chair).

A Canadian from Wallenstein, Ontario, Roger received his AB from Harvard College, with a concentration in Economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981.

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

it took a bit to figure out how this book applied to me. there are a lot of examples where executive level staff. However the more I read the more I was able to apply it to. work scenarios, committee I am part of and relationships. Ever feel like you are the only one who cares, the only one who does anything in any environment you are in. This is the book to read.

[Olaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't understand why this book is not a must-read for every manager, politician and board-member. The book proposes solutions for the imbalance between over- & under-responsibility of individuals aiming for a shared responsibility within teams and organizations to foster better collaboration, decision-making, and a healthier work environment.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really worth reading to help get a handle, not only on folks in the office or on committees, but on ourselves.

[Wu Yunqi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valuable suggestions by an experienced consultant! It makes me reflect on how to divide responsibility to make teamwork more efficient. It is also the art of communication.

[Kim]

Worth a read. I’m not sure how I want to rate it.

[Mrlunch · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting concept--in the workplace most people either take on too little responsibility or too much, avoiding embarrassment, failure, or preserving the status quo yet stifling innovation and collaboration. But this book could have been half as long and still gotten it's point across. Too long and too repetitive.

[Doc Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was difficult to slog through, but had some good insights into how people interact. The author provides some tools/techniques for dealing with situations where "The Responsibility Virus" has taken hold. Frankly, I think the book could be half the length.

[Alyse · Rating 2 out of 5]

And okay business book. I skimmed the last half. The most intersting this was about the over/under relationship that forms in collaboration. That part I have taken to heart at work.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Responsibility Virus: How Control Freaks, Shrinking Violets--and the Rest of Us--Can Harness the Power of True Partnership by Roger Martin (2002)

[Todd Charron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best book I've read since Peopleware!

[Heather]

Don't judge - recommended by friends. Possibly useful info, but clearly written towards people who have an axe to grind at work!