Why Responsibility, Collaboration, and Incentives Are the Triple Challenge of Management

Responsibility and Execution

In an enterprise, responsibility refers to a position‑based system that defines duties, authority, and performance standards for assessment and rewards. While each department and role has clear duties, responsibility alone does not guarantee effective collaboration or goal achievement.

Common issues include cross‑role conflicts, shirking, responsibility vacuums, and low management efficiency. To achieve clear responsibility and effective execution, three aspects are considered.

1. Responsibility Awareness

Placing employees at different levels into a unified responsibility system is a major management challenge. Some argue that only two levels—owners and frontline staff—have a complete sense of responsibility, while middle managers often become "sub‑contractors" passing tasks down without true ownership.

Managers must adopt a "partner" mindset, aligning actions with company strategy and execution efficiency, and a "service" mindset, serving both owners and employees.

2. Execution Effectiveness

Five reasons for poor execution are identified: employees do not know what to do, how to do it, encounter friction, lack awareness of benefits, and see no consequences for poor performance.

1. Not knowing what to do – unclear or misaligned responsibilities lead to confusion.

2. Not knowing how to do it – often due to unclear instructions or lack of skills; tools and methods matter more than motivation.

3. Encountering friction – mainly a coordination and process issue (discussed later).

4. Not seeing benefits – addressed in the incentives section.

5. No penalties for poor work – also covered in the incentives section.

3. Relationship Between Goals and Responsibility

Three Lenovo‑style principles help align goals and responsibilities: strong purpose, regular retrospectives, and phased goal implementation.

Strong purpose – every role must understand its purpose and how it ties to strategic objectives.

Retrospective – regularly summarize successes and failures to build team capability.

Phased goals – break objectives into linked sub‑goals to maintain momentum and morale.

Collaboration and Process

Collaboration difficulties often manifest as the "smooth execution" problem. Departments may pursue independent goals, creating conflicts and inefficiencies. Most collaboration relies on personal initiative rather than systematic processes.

Why Collaboration Is Hard

Departments focus on their own performance metrics, leading to "cleaning one's own doorstep" behavior.

Specialized silos create "department walls" that prioritize expertise over organizational goals.

Employees lose independent thinking when managers become mere task distributors.

Improving Collaboration Efficiency

Systematic, process‑driven approaches are essential. Technology is the primary productivity driver for building integrated, systematic workflows that clarify responsibilities, define internal customers, and reduce internal friction.

When an organization functions like a well‑engineered machine—large and small "engines" aligning with overall strategy—it can withstand market or policy shocks.

Incentives and Evaluation

Without clear incentives, employees lack motivation, and the organization stalls. Effective incentives go beyond simple monetary rewards; they must drive continuous improvement and value creation.

Good Incentives Sustain Enterprise Vitality

Incentives should address both material needs and higher‑order motivations, encouraging teams to strive for greater achievements rather than merely distributing existing resources.

Fair Evaluation Is a Prerequisite for Incentives

Fair performance evaluation ensures incentives work. Managers at every level must own the assessment of their direct reports, using clear criteria, structured processes, and balanced feedback.

Define clear managerial assessment responsibilities.

Implement a scientific performance review procedure covering task completion, qualitative analysis, development plans, and employee feedback.

Recognize that performance evaluation is central but not the sole focus of management.

Case studies such as Sony’s performance‑centric decline and successful examples like Samsung illustrate that performance management must be balanced with responsibility, collaboration, and strategic alignment.

Conclusion

Professional managers must continuously learn management thinking, transform knowledge into capability and action, and apply systematic, collaborative, and incentive‑aligned practices to achieve sustainable growth.

Source: Li Da’an