This is interesting! Instead of thinking of people as being fixed in one of these archetypes, though, I think it's useful to think of a team as orbiting True Ownership -- with everyone needing to be nudged slightly differently.
I also might suggest alternates for some of the labels. Specifically:
- I would label "Knowledge without responsibility or mandate" (currently labeled as "Coma") as "Critic": folks who know (or think they know) but don't have the mandate and aren't taking the responsibility are on the sidelines explaining why those that do have the responsibility and/or mandate are Doing It Wrong. This archetype can be really annoying on a team -- but their lack of responsibility + mandate makes them less harmful than other archetypes. In my experience, they need to be driven to take on more responsibility before they are given mandate.
- I would label "Responsibility without knowledge and mandate" (currently labeled as "Babysitter") as "Worrier". This one can be helpful, but it can also result in tons of makework for those with mandate and knowledge. This is not an uncommon pathology in nice people: they know that they don't have the knowledge, so they don't seize the mandate. This one needs to be guided to knowledge first, and then mandate.
- I would label "Knowledge and mandate without responsibility" (currently labeled as "Teenager") as "Technical Debtor": their lack of responsibility (often indicated, BTW, by a lack of long stints in their career) coupled with their knowledge and mandate makes them REALLY dangerous. Specifically, people that never live with the long-term consequences of their decisions can be blissfully unaware of the wreckage that they leave behind them. These folks can be hard to steer -- and the ones that are really bad will resist it to the point that they would rather move to their next gig than take true responsibility.
That said, I love the other three labels -- and my career has been fortunately blessed with few firearm-bearing monkeys...
The latter two labels sound fine, but the first label sounds like a stereotypical VP punch-down.
I've seen way too many people who actually do know better than their bosses, who actually step up to be responsible, and who are then told to sit down and shut up. I've seen how, after thing go wrong, VP blames their "critics" or "haters" for making them look bad. I think those with knowledge who get punched down, go work for places that give them the mandate first, and then responsibility.
Why work for someone who treats your questions as critiques, and their failures in management as your responsibility to fix?
> "Critic": folks who know (or think they know) but don't have the mandate and aren't taking the responsibility are on the sidelines explaining why those that do have the responsibility and/or mandate are Doing It Wrong.
This is an entire class of people who have learned how to thrive in companies with broken ownership.
When a team gets to this point it's usually because the reward structure is so broken that the only way to lose is to actual own something. It becomes more beneficial to put on a show and play politics than anything else, because you can't be wrong if you never actually do the work.
Healthy organizations recognize the people who aren't actually doing any work and either get them to work or get them removed from the situation. Bad organizations promote these people because their criticism and posturing are two things that help the status quo. The more ammunition you have to criticize the doers, the more you can elevate yourself over them in the broken political hierarchy.
Technical Debtor is a particularly nice refinement because it points toward the fact that this archetype is often exploiting incentives in a broken system rather than occupying an awkward-but-appropriate developmental phase.
I also might suggest alternates for some of the labels. Specifically:
- I would label "Knowledge without responsibility or mandate" (currently labeled as "Coma") as "Critic": folks who know (or think they know) but don't have the mandate and aren't taking the responsibility are on the sidelines explaining why those that do have the responsibility and/or mandate are Doing It Wrong. This archetype can be really annoying on a team -- but their lack of responsibility + mandate makes them less harmful than other archetypes. In my experience, they need to be driven to take on more responsibility before they are given mandate.
- I would label "Responsibility without knowledge and mandate" (currently labeled as "Babysitter") as "Worrier". This one can be helpful, but it can also result in tons of makework for those with mandate and knowledge. This is not an uncommon pathology in nice people: they know that they don't have the knowledge, so they don't seize the mandate. This one needs to be guided to knowledge first, and then mandate.
- I would label "Knowledge and mandate without responsibility" (currently labeled as "Teenager") as "Technical Debtor": their lack of responsibility (often indicated, BTW, by a lack of long stints in their career) coupled with their knowledge and mandate makes them REALLY dangerous. Specifically, people that never live with the long-term consequences of their decisions can be blissfully unaware of the wreckage that they leave behind them. These folks can be hard to steer -- and the ones that are really bad will resist it to the point that they would rather move to their next gig than take true responsibility.
That said, I love the other three labels -- and my career has been fortunately blessed with few firearm-bearing monkeys...