Responsibility

Responsibility names the duty to carry out work, and organisations need the term precisely because it is not accountability. The separation lets a company delegate execution widely without losing the single point that answers for the result. For a director or owner, the practical value is clarity: when a task moves between teams, the duty moves with it, while accountability stays put. Without this distinction, every handover becomes a place where outcomes can quietly get lost.

Responsibilities live in job descriptions, procedures, service agreements and the R column of a RACI matrix, where several roles can legitimately share the same task. Example: in a recovery exercise, the infrastructure team is responsible for restoring servers, the applications team for bringing systems back, the communications team for customer messages, while the accountable service owner tracks the whole timeline against the recovery objective. Each responsible party reports completion; the owner answers for the total result. Written this way, the plan survives staff turnover, because duties attach to roles rather than to individuals.

The typical mistake is believing that listing many responsible parties covers accountability, when in fact a long R column with an empty A is how tasks get done and outcomes still fail. The reverse error also occurs: loading one person with responsibilities as a substitute for giving them authority and resources. Responsibility can be delegated and shared; the answer for the outcome cannot. ERGP module M1, Resilience governance and the board, treats this pairing as a foundation of governance design.