Defining Roles and Responsibilities

Let's talk about defining roles 💁‍♂️

At an early/growth stage company, it is common for folks to wear multiple hats and take on responsibilities that aren't well-defined or go beyond their title.

But as a company grows, the individual team members need to specialize so they can focus on going deeper in specific areas. Just as importantly, other people at the company need to know who is responsible for different functions of the business.

That's where the Responsibilities Canvas comes in ✏️

This exercise is to help your team think about:

• What are we actually doing?
• What should be we be doing?
• Where do those two diverge?

It's important to define what people are currently doing, while also clearly mapping out the future state that we want to get to.

Each quadrant of the canvas can ultimately be broken down into things we want to continue, start, and stop doing.

In my experience the "stop" section is often the hardest part. It's easy to get used to doing things a certain way or relying on individuals to handle certain functions that could be handed off to others.