# Heroic Responsibility

*Meta:* [*Heroic responsibility*](https://www.lesswrong.com/w/heroic-responsibility) *is a standard concept on LessWrong. I was surprised to find that we don't have a post explaining it to people not already deep in the cultural context, so I wrote this one.*

Suppose I decide to start a business - specifically a car dealership. 

One day there's a problem: we sold a car with a bad thingamabob. The customer calls up the sales department, which hands it off to the legal department, which hands it off to the garage, which can't find a replacement part so they hand it back to the legal department, which then hands it back off to the finance department, which goes back to the garage. It's a big ol' hot potato. It's not really any specific person's job to handle this sort of problem, and nobody wants to deal with it.

One of the earliest lessons of entrepreneurship is: as the business owner/manager, this sort of thing is my job. When it's not any other specific person's job, it's mine. Because if it doesn't get done, it's my business which will lose money. I can delegate it, I can make it somebody else' job, but I'm still the one responsible for that first step of taking ownership of the unowned problem.

Let's take it a step further.

Suppose I hire Bob to handle our ads. For whatever reason, some days Bob just... doesn't send out any ads. As the business owner/manager, that too is my problem.

It is my job to make sure Bob does his job. If Bob isn't doing his job, it's my job to get him to do it, or to get someone else to do it. Doesn't matter whether it's "fair", doesn't matter whether it's "Bob's fault" that the ads didn't go out. It's my business which bears the consequences, so it's my job to make sure it gets fixed. If the problem is owned by someone who will not in fact solve it, then it's my job to take over ownership of that problem.

Let's take it another step further.

Suppose, rather than Bob, I hire an ad agency to handle our ads. For whatever reason, some days the agency just... doesn't send out any ads. I look into it, and find that the agency's customer support desk hands off the problem to IT who hands it off to legal who hands it back to sales who then sends it back to IT. Another big ol' hot potato, but now it's not even in my company, so I have much less ability to control it.

But if I want to sell my cars, I need to deal with the bureaucracy of the ad agency to make those ads go out. And so, again, it is my job to sort out the problem. It is my job to chase around the ad agency's bureaucracy, sort out what's going on and how to fix it, figure out who I need to talk to and convince them to get those ads out. (Or delegate the work to someone else, and make sure that they will in fact get the ad bureaucracy to put those ads out.) Again, doesn't matter whether it's "fair" or whether it's "the ad agency's fault". If the problem is owned by an agency which will not in fact solve it, then it's my job to take over ownership of that problem, and make sure it gets solved.

That's "heroic responsilibity". It means that the buck stops with me. It means that if a problem isn't *actually* going to get solved by someone else, then it's my job to make sure it gets solved, no matter who's job it is on paper.