Some of us have worked in companies in the past where “That’s not my job!” is an accepted way of doing things. In these companies, when employees enter a meeting room and there are still coffee cups on the table from the previous meeting, they leave the cups, add their own and then complain to the service staff afterwards about the mess.

It doesn’t work that way for us – not to mention the fact that we don’t have any service staff. We simply clear away the cups ourselves. And when we are faced with this “problem” more often, we ask our colleagues for ideas on how we can deal better with our shared empty cups in future.

Of course, we have no rules for dealing with empty cups – neither the real ones nor the metaphorical ones. But we do have a sense of responsibility and accountability for all problems, big and small, and will not turn our backs on them by saying “That’s not my job!”. We are responsible for what we do. We don’t hide behind others and we don’t shift responsibility. We take responsibility for ourselves, our work, our team, our company and the world around us.