I learned the difference between being responsible and being accountable long before I ever worked with data. I hadn’t yet turned 23 when I arrived at my first duty assignment as a newly-minted lieutenant. I was the battalion chemical officer, responsible for contingency plans if weapons of mass destruction were ever used. Part of my responsibility was inventorying and maintaining the detection and decontamination equipment for a unit of 400 men. This included some very advanced electronics with low-radioactive isotopes. In today’s dollars all of it could be worth well over a million dollars. If something happened to that equipment, my career was on the line.
I saw the same lesson play out again when I was a manufacturing engineer. In manufacturing, the plant manager owns the line. If scrap rates climb or a shipment misses its window, the conversation starts and ends with that person. The process engineers, the quality technicians, and the operators on the floor are the ones who actually change the set points, quarantine the bad parts, and rewrite the work instructions. They are responsible for the work. The manager is accountable for the result.
Data isn’t any different, though looking at most corporate data org charts, you’d think we were all stuck in a mid-80s Tuesday night primetime loop—constantly asking, “Who’s the boss?” line-item by line-item while Tony Micelli and Angela Bower debate who actually holds the title.
Continue reading “Who’s the Boss?”