There is an old management principle that sounds almost too simple to be useful: if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Yet its simplicity is precisely what makes it powerful. Beneath the familiar phrase lies a difficult question about responsibility: when we recognize that something is not working, what obligation do we have to help make it better?

The question extends well beyond business. It applies to governments, universities, public institutions, and almost any organization in which outcomes depend on people working together. Indeed, it may be more relevant today than ever because many of the problems confronting institutions are becoming more complex, interconnected, and difficult to assign to a single person or department.

Modern organizations are deliberately designed to divide responsibility. Corporations have sales, marketing, finance, operations, and human resources. Governments have ministries, agencies, and different levels of administration. Universities have faculties, departments, and administrative functions. Such divisions are necessary because specialization makes large institutions manageable. But the same structures can create an unintended consequence: each part of the system becomes preoccupied with its own responsibilities while assuming that problems affecting the whole belong primarily to somebody else.

This is how an organization can become remarkably busy without becoming more effective. Everyone attends meetings, prepares reports, meets individual targets, and performs their assigned duties, yet the problem that matters most to customers, citizens, or other stakeholders remains unresolved.

Consider a company that is losing market share. Sales may argue that the product is no longer competitive. Marketing may believe that sales execution is inadequate. Finance may point to declining margins, while operations may blame supply constraints. Senior management may conclude that the market itself has become more difficult. Every explanation may contain some truth because complex problems rarely have a single cause. The difficulty begins when explaining the problem becomes a substitute for addressing it.

A similar dynamic occurs in government. A public problem may involve several ministries, agencies, and levels of administration, each possessing only part of the authority or resources required to address it. One institution says the matter belongs to another, the second points to the first, and jurisdictional boundaries gradually become barriers to action. Yet citizens do not experience government according to organizational charts. They experience whether public transport works, whether schools educate effectively, whether healthcare is accessible, whether infrastructure is reliable, and whether public services respond to their needs. From the citizen's perspective, it matters little which institution technically owns the problem. What matters is whether the system works.

This is where the principle becomes more than a lesson in personal responsibility. It becomes a question of systems thinking. A complex organization is not simply a collection of independent units but an interconnected system in which the behavior of one part affects the others. Some of the most difficult problems, therefore, exist precisely in the spaces between organizational boundaries. Nobody may have complete ownership of the issue, yet several people may have some influence over its outcome.

This distinction between authority and influence is important. We tend to associate responsibility with position: the person at the top is responsible, while those lower down are expected to execute. But influence does not always follow hierarchy. An employee close to customers may see a change in behaviour long before it appears in a management report. A civil servant dealing directly with citizens may recognize that a procedure is creating unnecessary hardship before senior policymakers become aware of its consequences. A teacher may understand a problem in education through daily interaction with students that is invisible in national statistics.

Formal authority determines what we are entitled to decide; influence determines what we may be able to change. The two overlap, but they are not the same.

This is why the more useful question is not simply, “whose responsibility is this?” but, “what influence do I have over this situation?” That shift may appear subtle, but it changes our relationship with the problem. Instead of standing outside it and waiting for the formally responsible person to act, we begin to consider what contribution we can make, what others can contribute, and how different parts of the system might work together.

This does not mean everyone should interfere in everything. Organizations need clear responsibilities, expertise, and boundaries. Nor does it mean criticism is undesirable. Healthy institutions need people who are prepared to identify uncomfortable problems, challenge assumptions, and question decisions. The distinction is between constructive dissent and passive criticism. Constructive dissent identifies what is not working and contributes to a better alternative; passive criticism identifies what is not working and explains why somebody else is responsible. The former creates the possibility of learning, while the latter can create a culture of blame.

The problem becomes even more serious in uncertain environments. We often assume that better information will eventually lead to better decisions, but uncertainty does not disappear simply because we collect more information. Herbert Simon's concept of bounded rationality reminds us that decision-makers operate with limited information, limited time, and limited cognitive capacity. In complex environments, waiting for complete knowledge can therefore become a form of inaction.

Good judgement is not about eliminating uncertainty. It is about making the best decision possible with the information available, understanding the risks and remaining willing to change course when circumstances change.

This also means that being part of the solution does not guarantee that we will be right. A new business initiative may fail. A public policy may produce unintended consequences. An organizational transformation may encounter resistance. An experiment designed to improve a service may not deliver the expected result. Failure does not necessarily mean that taking responsibility was a mistake.

In fact, institutions can become more dysfunctional when people are punished more severely for making a reasonable mistake than for doing nothing. When that happens, people learn to protect themselves. They seek additional approvals, commission more studies, circulate more papers, and wait for someone higher in the hierarchy to make the decision. The organization becomes increasingly sophisticated at explaining why action is difficult, while accountability gradually moves upwards until nobody truly owns the outcome.

This is not prudence. It is paralysis disguised as risk management.

The alternative is not reckless initiative but responsible agency: recognizing the limits of one's authority while acting within one's sphere of influence, making a reasoned judgement, accepting accountability for the consequences, and learning from what happens next. Such behaviour is essential to organizational learning because institutions cannot adapt if their members are unwilling to experiment, reflect and adjust.

The principle is particularly relevant to government because many public challenges are inherently systemic. Economic development, education, healthcare, environmental sustainability, infrastructure, and technological transformation cannot be solved by a single ministry acting in isolation. Governments need businesses, universities, and civil society; businesses depend on regulators, infrastructure, and educated talent; universities need meaningful relationships with industry and government.

The quality of a system therefore depends not only on the capability of its individual institutions but also on the quality of the connections between them. When responsibility is fragmented, collaboration becomes a form of leadership.

Perhaps this is the aspect of responsibility that we most often overlook. We tend to think vertically: who is above me, who is below me and who ultimately has authority? Complex problems require us to think horizontally as well. Who else is affected? Who possesses knowledge that I do not? Who can influence another part of the system? Where can cooperation produce an outcome that none of us could achieve independently?

The strongest institutions are not necessarily those in which everyone stays rigidly within their own boundaries. They are those in which people understand their responsibilities while also recognising their interdependence.

This requires a cultural shift from “not my problem” to “what can I contribute?”

The difference may seem modest, but its consequences can be substantial. An employee can improve a process without controlling the entire organisation. A civil servant can improve a public service without rewriting the policy that created it. A manager can bring different departments together to resolve a problem that none could solve independently. None of these actions guarantees success, but each creates the possibility of progress.

Ultimately, the enduring value of the principle is not that everyone should become responsible for everything. That would be neither practical nor desirable. Its value lies in reminding us that formal responsibility and meaningful agency are not always the same thing. There will always be problems beyond our control and decisions that properly belong to somebody else. But between complete responsibility and complete helplessness lies a much larger space: the space of influence.

That is where meaningful leadership often begins.

Whether we are running a company, working in government, managing a public institution, or simply participating in a community, perhaps we should ask ourselves a more uncomfortable question whenever something is going wrong. Not merely, “who is responsible?” but, “Given what I know, what I can influence, and the position I occupy, what am I prepared to do about it?”

The answer may not solve the problem immediately, and it may not even prove to be correct. But it changes our relationship with the problem. Instead of being an observer waiting for somebody else to act, we become a participant in the outcome.

And sometimes, that is where the solution begins.

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Rudolf Tjandra is a senior executive with more than three decades of leadership experience in Indonesia’s consumer health and nutrition industries and a scholar-practitioner in strategy and leadership.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author.

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