Volunteering as a Way to Delegate Authority and Take Responsibility with Less Resistance
- Carmit Shaked
- Sep 1, 2004
- 2 min read
For various activities related to knowledge management and innovation, people who will participate and fill different roles in the establishment and maintenance are needed. A person is needed to serve as the site manager for an intranet site or portal. For a knowledge community, a person is needed to lead and manage the community, and sometimes even two people who complement each other, a site manager and a community leader. For a steering committee, a chairperson is needed to manage the team, and so on. However, the activities required for implementation don't always necessitate appointing a dedicated person who will be entrusted and responsible for it. Sometimes we want the users themselves or the team participants to participate in the establishment and building, and be partners in the activity, both in raising ideas and taking responsibility for implementing and executing the ideas in practice.
However, here we encounter a problem – people are afraid to raise ideas and hesitate to volunteer for various reasons, such as:
The one suggesting an idea fears that they will be responsible for its implementation (like in the case of the "kitbag question" from army days...);
People fear being seen as "suckers" in the eyes of the group;
It's always the same handful of people volunteering, and others don't.
People don't want to contribute and be involved, preferring to "keep their heads down."
So here's a technique that may promote the spirit of volunteering while reducing/removing the fears and obstacles along the way:
When holding discussions in teams such as a steering team, site establishment team, project team, innovation team, community improvement team, etc., first ask for solution proposals and ideas for discussion without volunteering anyone. Create a list of ideas and proposals, and only at the end of the discussion, ask each individual or pair to choose which topics they will promote towards the next meeting.
This way, aversion to raising ideas and creating solutions is avoided because the inventor is not necessarily volunteered to implement what they proposed; the volunteering is free and comes from the people who choose the topic of volunteering rather than having the topic "dumped" on them; in the end, often, those who suggested ideas volunteer themselves to implement them because they identify with this idea and therefore suggested it in the first place.
Bottom line: Everyone feels equal, everyone contributes, everyone is involved, and no one feels like a "sucker" compared to others.
And by the way, this tip also applies to other areas.
Good luck!
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