responsibility

What the draft defines

An obligation to act and to take decisions in order to reach required outcomes.

This is our statement of the public preview, not a quotation. The term itself stays verbatim; the definition is paraphrased and checked for overlap before it ships.

Why the term is in the draft

Responsibility and accountability are paired but not the same: a person can be responsible for doing the work while another is accountable for the outcome. The draft's group case turns on keeping the pair visible across two boards.

What to do with it in the group

In the boundary map, separate the responsibility for a group decision from the accountability for its outcome. Where the two sit in different entities, write the link down; that link is the evidence an evaluator looks for.

Record the term in the evaluation glossary and use it consistently in the boundary map, the board paper and the report. A group that uses three words for the same role makes its own evaluation harder to read, and the draft's definitions are the cheapest common language available.

Three checks before the term goes in the board paper

• Same word, same meaning. Check that the instrument which gives the controller its right uses this term in the same sense. Where it uses a different word, record the mapping in the glossary rather than switching between them.
• One owner. Name the board or group function that decides what the term means for this group. A definition without an owner drifts the first time two entities interpret it differently.
• A dated example. Put one real example beside the definition: an entity, a decision or a document. A term that cannot be illustrated in the group's own facts is not yet in use.

The other terms in Governance concepts are worth reading together, because the definition of one often depends on another.

Terms in the same group

• 3.3.1 principle
• 3.3.2 accountability
• 3.3.4 delegation
• 3.3.5 constituting documents

All 21 terms Test the definition