The Responsibility Virus: Stop Taking Charge or Taking Orders and Start Making Critical Decisions [Paperback]

- Michael E. Porter, Bishop Lawrence University Professor, Harvard University

"A triumph. Few management books have ever brought such psychological insight to the question of why good people often struggle in positions of leadership. Roger Martin has changed the management paradigm."
-Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point

"Martin advances a new concept that explains under performance and defensive routines. More importantly, it can be used to generate high organizational performance around difficult issues, and do so in such a way that the solutions not only work, they persevere. The book is full of concrete examples and stories that will grab the readers attention."
- Chris Argyris, James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behaviour at Harvard Business School

"Full of provocative insights that strike so many chords of self-recognition. Martin doesn't just identify a common and deadly management failing but provides the road map to get out of the problem and win."
-Tina Brown

" Martin identifies the roots of the problem [of under or over-responsibility] and comes forward with practical remedies that may just help save some careers and reputations.  He sets out easy to use tools and backs up his arguments with case studies that illustrate perfectly situations which breed the responsibility virus.  This book is brilliant, and well worth studying."  Marketing Business, January 2003

This book is brilliant, and well worth studying."  Marketing Business, January 2003

Your business faces a challenge.   The usual management suspects lock themselves in a meeting room and frantically create a plan. The plan is, of course, secret. They try to do everything themselves. They fail.  Meanwhile, everybody else sits around waiting to have the problem solved for them by the heroic managers. They don't get the full picture; they don't buy into the plans.

Recognize these symptoms?  It's the responsibility virus at work.  

What makes some people in organizations run from blame while others claim credit for everything?  Why is it that so many important decisions get left to so few managers?  Why do some people always take charge while others simply take orders? 

The Responsibility Virus is a cycle of failure driven by people who take too much or too little responsibility for results. 

Here's how to cure you and your company of the fear of failure.

From one of our most original business thinkers comes a diagnosis of the fear of failure that traps all who work in organizations - from the board room to the mail room . Complete with tried and tested tools to help everyone make better choices and decisions, The Responsibility Virus will help you to share the burden of leadership and spread responsibility.

"The Responsibility Virus exposes a set of crucial interpersonal processes that underpin the success or failure of any organization structure. It also helps explain why so many companies fail to make strategic choices. By offering both a compelling framework and intensely practical ways forward, the book makes an important and welcome contribution to basic knowledge about management."  -Michael E. Porter, Bishop Lawrence University Professor, Harvard University

"A triumph. Few management books have ever brought such psychological insight to the question of why good people often struggle in positions of leadership. Roger Martin has changed the management paradigm." - Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point

"Martin advances a new concept that explains under performance and defensive routines. More importantly, it can be used to generate high organizational performance around difficult issues, and do so in such a way that the solutions not only work, they persevere. The book is full of concrete examples and stories that will grab the readers attention."

- Chris Argyris, James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behaviour at Harvard Business School

"Full of provocative insights that strike so many chords of self-recognition. Martin doesn't just identify a common and deadly management failing but provides the road map to get out of the problem and win." -Tina Brown

World-class consultant and business school dean Roger Martin leaps outside the box of contemporary management thinking to offer a provocative diagnosis of the problem that infects all too many organizations: the Responsibility Virus.

Drawing upon his years of experience advising companies on strategy, planning and action,

Martin shows how most poor decision-making begins at the level of individual behaviour. Because most of us will do anything to win, maintain control, and avoid embarrassment, we constantly adapt our behaviour to those around us. Trapped in this dynamic, we vacillate between taking charge and backing off, causing those around us to vacillate too.

Over-responsible leaders need under-responsible followers. And under-responsible followers need over-responsible leaders. Each provides the energy the other needs to sustain their part of the Virus. The critical reality is that every one of us, in each specific situation, holds the power to stop the Virus in our own hands. All we have to do is refuse the opportunity presented to act over-responsibly or under-responsibly.

With lively case studies based on real experience, Martin lays out the tools that all of us can put into practice as we contemplate business choices and decisions. His sophisticated and impassioned belief in the power of one will be required reading for any of us who think about how we function in organizations, from the boardroom to the mail room.

In this book you will find tactics and personal strategies to overcome fear of failure and get everybody willing and able to take decisions for themselves.

"Take-charge leadership is the stuff of Hollywood and history books. In most cases, such heroic leadership not only fails to inspire and engage, it produces passivity and alienation instead. Subordinates just stand back and watch."
- Roger Martin