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managers are constantly clashing with other managers because of “dashed-line” organi-
zation structures where their teams do not report directly to them. Some find that their
project team members are routinely pulled off of their projects without warning, or that
their projects are reprioritized and thrown into disarray.
There is a common root cause of most, or all, of these problems. The cause is that the
project manager is told that she has responsibility for her projects, but, though she is held
accountable for their success, she is not given sufficient authority to do her job.

Managers routinely throw around the word “responsibility,” often in the context of a sub-
ordinate “not taking responsibility” for a task. To many of them, “take responsibility for
this task” is synonymous with “go away and don’t bother me until the task is complete.”
This is an unfortunate attitude, and it is a root cause of failed projects and depleted morale
in organizations around the world. A good project manager must have a more sophisti-
cated understanding of responsibility in order to avoid these problems.
A person has responsibility for a task only if he is given sufficient authority to perform the
task and is held accountable for the results. When you assign a task to your project team,
you must ensure that each team member has sufficient authority to perform the task, as
well as an understanding of his or her accountability. For the project to be most effective,
the team members should understand these concepts as well.

Ensure That You Have Authority to Do the Project
A person has authority to perform a task only if he is has adequate control over the
resources necessary to complete the task. Giving a project manager authority to carry out
a project means giving him control over the resources (people, office space, hardware,
software, etc.) required to complete it. Since resources cost money, sufficient budget for
the project must be allocated within the organization.

This does not mean that the project manager must have direct control over these
resources. For example, the team members do not necessarily need to report to him. How-
ever, if they do not report to him, he must have the full cooperation of the direct manager
of each resource assigned to the project, so that he can assign tasks to the team members
directly without having to obtain permission for each task. If there is a single person on

the project whose involvement is not guaranteed from the outset, the project manager
cannot say with certainty that he has all of the resources that he needs to complete the
project. In this case, he does not have sufficient authority to do his job.
In the same way, the project manager does not need to have a corporate credit card to buy
the necessary hardware or software. But he does need to have a guarantee from the per-
son who has the budgetary authority that he will be allowed to obtain these resources.
Without this guarantee, his authority will still be incomplete.

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