46. THE RESPONSIBILITY CYCLE...
* Enacting something means that people have to take responsibility. They can only do this if they understand what’s involved.
* The Responsibility Cycle is an eight-point process to make sure that ideas and projects actually get done.
* Start with What? What are we doing here? Assuming this is satisfactorily answered, then the rationale is explained in the Why? section.
* The cycle moves on to ask how, when, and where the idea will be enacted, and crucially, who exactly will be doing what.
* Once all these elements have been thought through in a satisfactory way, the person or team responsible for making the idea happen needs to keep interested parties informed.
* Are we there yet? Requires a sensible mechanism for updating people on progress, and What happened? is the final report, or possibly even a postmortem.
EXERCISE: Choose an idea that needs to happen. Write down the eight questions. Answer each in sequence with a maximum of one sentence. If you cannot generate a satisfactory answer to a question, do not continue with the others. Instead consider how to get round the problem, or whether to abandon or rethink the entire idea.