Who do I depend on?

Yesterday I wrote about Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker and a favorite idea from this book is about managing relationships. He writes most conflicts are actually avoidable misunderstandings. He recommends once per year, and any time there is a major change, that you make a list of everyone you depend on and what you depend on them for. Then make a list of everyone you think depends on you and what they depend on you for. And finally, go talk to each of those people about those lists. You will almost always find a mismatch in both directions. It is a really great process.

“Who do I depend on for what? Who depends on me for what?“

-Peter Drucker

I have never worked anywhere where there was not a mismatch of expectations about responsibilities across departments and teams and it is just as helpful at home. Working overseas, I discovered that Americans understood an Operations Manager’s role to be the unenviable job of making sure the technology infrastructure and processes are effective, efficient, scaling well and to be at work at 3 a.m. if there is an outage.  For my Irish colleagues, an Operations Manager is a Senior Management role that would never be in the weeds of troubleshooting at 3am. All of us were a bit surprised by this discrepancy in understanding. Peter Drucker’s framework helped me spot the pattern faster and make sure I was more proactive about using it.  

Ps Drucker’s Dependencies are summarized on page 34 of the 2024 Planner.