Play the Workplace Ball Game!

We’ll going to intro­duce to you a pow­er­ful con­cept today that will boost per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity from per­sonal sur­viv­abil­ity.  Per­sonal sur­viv­abil­ity aims to have a neu­tral effect at your end.  Per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity in this sit­u­a­tion is that you han­dled the sit­u­a­tion prop­erly with aware­ness of the respon­si­bil­i­ties and, reduce or elim­i­nate the con­se­quences on your side.  Have you ever won­der why you are always at the end of the food chain of respon­si­bil­ity blame?  Why aren’t the oth­ers being held respon­si­ble for?   Why are you always the victim?

The answer is respon­si­bil­ity.  And we call the con­cept Ball of Respon­si­bil­ity.  At the basic level, you have to have both the aware­ness of Me and Sit­u­a­tion.   We’ve got to think Me at this point of time where you want to know the respon­si­bil­ity (Me fac­tor) that you are hold­ing on when a task is assigned to you and the asso­ci­at­ing con­se­quences in the given Sit­u­a­tion (Sit­u­a­tion factor).

Have you encoun­tered sit­u­a­tions where you are being asked for an opin­ion or to make a deci­sion?  And the deci­sion may have a reper­cus­sion effect if not han­dled prop­erly?  That is respon­si­bil­ity and con­se­quences on the deci­sion make.  When you received an email in your mail­box, you are sup­posed to reply this email but you did not.  Your sender have sent suf­fi­cient grace (warn­ings) and alerted your supe­rior on the delayed respond.  Respon­si­bil­ity is at your end to attend to this email.

Both exam­ples are the Ball of Respon­si­bil­ity thrown into your “court”.   You either attend to it or throw it to some­one else’s “court” (respon­si­bil­ity shift­ing).  The idea behind the Ball of Respon­si­bil­ity is that you analo­gized a task into a respon­si­bil­ity, a deci­sion into a respon­si­bil­ity.  There are con­se­quences to the deci­sion made and that’s your respon­si­bil­ity to ensure it does not sur­face.   Once you deliv­ered the work, your respon­si­bil­ity ends, your con­se­quences removed.  If you do not exer­cise your respon­si­bil­ity, you are liable to the consequences.

Just imag­ine you are in a ball game, say bas­ket­ball.  When you get the bas­ket ball, all eyes will be on you.  You have to either drib­ble near to the net or pass it to your team mate who has a bet­ter chance.  We agree is not that sim­ple like a game of bas­ket­ball.  But it’s some­where there.  Same con­cept, bring it to a work­place, when you are assigned a task, all man­age­ment and stake­holder eyes are all you to deliver results.  You are held respon­si­ble for the out­come.  And when you fail, you are liable for the con­se­quences.  You know when peo­ple are play­ing ball games with you.  They tend to avoid ques­tions or the tasks assigned to them from you.  They would also shun away from respon­si­bil­ity or mak­ing crit­i­cal decisions.

Per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity here is achieved at the sit­u­a­tional level, where we man­aged our respon­si­bil­i­ties and con­se­quences with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing our­selves.  The Me and Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor being man­aged.  The respon­si­bil­ity ball game is a very pow­er­ful con­cept to boost per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity through instill­ing a respon­si­bil­ity and con­se­quences men­tal model. At the same time, if used wrongly, it may seem to oth­ers that you are merely push­ing away work to them (respon­si­bil­ity shift­ing.  We can­not deny a true Win-Win sit­u­a­tion unable to achieve. It will take time and even more sit­u­a­tional aware­ness to reach there.  For a start, we can begin by man­ag­ing our­selves and the consequences.

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