I’d love to!
This proposal is all about sustainability or balance. What I’ve noticed when I’ve walked into teams that are working unsustainably is that there is an imbalance between authority and responsibility. If you have too much responsibility without authority, you can’t get your job done, which leads to stress. Too much authority without associated responsibility makes it easy to cause stress to the people around you.
French has 2 lovely words which capture this nicely - pouvoirs (things you can do, authorities, abilities), and devoirs (things you must do, responsibilities). I mention this because paid time off doesn’t SOUND like an authority in the English sense of the word, but when you think of it as something you CAN do (i.e. decide), then it’s clear it’s a pouvoir.
So what’s my solution? Associate every pouvoir (can do) with one or more devoirs (must dos) and vice versa. When you write this down, it could look something like this:
| pouvoirs (can dos) | devoirs (must dos) |
|---|---|
| Can take 1 week of paid time of between seasons |
|
That’s just a quick example, but essentially I asked myself: what needs to be done to ensure your teammates aren’t suffering from your vacation?
This exercise can be done for for roles in general (if you’re automatically getting paid, there are likely some accountability devoirs that should be attached). You can also do it the other way: for each devoir, what pouvoirs do you need to get the job done?
Why do I feel this is worthwhile? I’ve heard of some role abuse through the PLM group and in ombuds. I’m not sure how widespread this is (I haven’t encountered the issue personally), but it’s certainly concerning, ESPECIALLY if we are planning on beefing up the perks associated with roles.
Given that S3 is shaping up to be a governance check, it could be a perfect time to run an exercise like this.