Take responsibility for decisions

• A decision has not been made until people know:

• The name of the person accountable for carrying it out;

• the deadline;

• the names of the people who will be affected by the decision and therefore have to know about, understand, and approve it—or at least not be strongly opposed to it—and

• the names of the people who have to be informed of the decision, even if they are not directly affected by it.

Take responsibility for decisions

• A decision has not been made until people know:

• The name of the person accountable for carrying it out;

• the deadline;

• the names of the people who will be affected by the decision and therefore have to know about, understand, and approve it—or at least not be strongly opposed to it—and

• the names of the people who have to be informed of the decision, even if they are not directly affected by it.

11. Choosing Responsibilities

A turning point for me in this study came when I happened across a comment from Toni Morrison buried in a 1985 interview: “You see, the point is that freedom is choosing your responsibility. It’s not having no responsibilities; it’s choosing the ones you want.” Morrison’s comment cast a light back over the lives in this study to highlight a crucial ingredient in feeding the inner fire: Freedom does not mean the absence of responsibilities; freedom means that you get to choose your responsibilities.

The key idea here— whether public or private, whether in line with what other people think you should do or not— is the combination of two words: “choosing” and “responsibilities.” My enduring great friend Tom Tierney puts it this way, “What are you doing that meets the ‘but for’ test? What are you getting done that would not otherwise happen ‘but for you’ even if almost no one ever knows about it?”

You and I don’t need to try to be exactly like any of the people in this study. The relevant question, as it pertains to this chapter, is not whom do we want to emulate, but what responsibilities do we feel compelled to choose? All of us, no matter what we do in life, and no matter how the roulette wheel spins, can choose responsibilities beyond ourselves. It doesn’t matter how many people you touch with the responsibilities you choose; it might be many, or it might be only one or a few. What matters is the very act of honoring a self-chosen responsibility.