Managers as boundary riders

In Australia, a boundary rider is a "a person employed to ride round the fences etc. of a cattle or sheep station and keep them in good order" (Australian Oxford Dictionary).

When I look at organisations I am surprised at how many senior managers make poor boundary riders. Confused? Well maybe I should explain.

There is an old saying that "Good fences make good neighbours", yet in many organisations there are serious problems with the fences or boundaries that senior managers put in place.

Firstly, there is the problem of poorly defined boundaries where no-one seems to know who is responsible for a particular kind of work or for solving problems in a particular area. As a result, the buck is continually passed from one work area to another, searching for someone to stop with. And this leads to some problems being solved poorly or not at all. The orphan problem just can't find a home.

Secondly, there is the problem of overlapping boundaries where more than one work area might perform a particular kind of work but where there are differences of opinion about how that work should be done. As a result inconsistencies arise in the doing of the work and conflict arises when each unit thinks the other is doing it wrong.

Then there is the problem of undefined boundaries. For example a number of work areas may share a bucket of work in some way, but no controls have been put in place so as to be able to tell: how much work is being done by each work area, the timeliness with which each work area completes the work, the quality of the work and so on. As a result, no-one has genuine overall responsibility and lack of performance by one work area is hidden in the mass of work being performed by the others.

Finally, there is the problem of breached boundaries, where one work unit invades and interferes with the work that another unit does have clear responsibility for, and nothing is done to stop this interference. (Instead of 'passing the buck' this could perhaps be called 'stealing the buck')

The problems that this failure to adequately define boundaries cause could not be any worse if senior managers deliberately set out to cause them: conflict, resentment, poor performance and passing the buck.

Senior managers need to become better boundary riders, to check out the fences that they have put in place and make sure that they are performing effectively in helping the organisation achieve its purposes.

Otherwise energy that could be expended in making progress is instead expended on problems of the organisations own making, problems that would not even exist if a modicum of thought was given to what work should be done where and by whom, and making sure that no work was 'orphaned'.

In the end people cannot be held accountable if they don't know what they are responsible for.