Tofugu is roles-based organization.

Roles tell us what we do, and where we have power and autonomy.

Each individual has one or more roles.

Each role has a mission.

The mission is a fairly general, but inspiring statement that tells us what we (the role owners) are trying to do.

It doesn’t tell us how to do it, though. That’s up to the role’s owner.

Roles are a part of a team.

Role missions should support the team’s mission. (The team’s mission also should support the company’s mission and goals).

Roles have ongoing activities that they do.

It’s up to the role owner how they get those done.

It’s also up to the role owner if they get those done.

There are times where you need to prioritize, and ongoing activities get put to the back burner. There are also times when those ongoing activities just aren’t important. But, if a role owner is slacking on important activities, someone will likely say something at some point.

The idea with roles is that we try to keep individuals’ focus tight. When someone doesn’t have a role, they may think they need to do everything, spreading themselves thin. Conversely, if one person has too many roles, they will be spread thin. We want people to do one or two (and in rare cases three) things really well, and do those things effectively. We want people to have lives outside of work, too. So, we tend to limit the number of roles someone can have.

With roles, we try to develop a pretty good idea of what people do, what people are in charge of, and who to talk to when you have a question, or when your work might impact someone else. By defining these things, it makes it easier to know what decisions to make and what you’re able to do, all without having a manager doing all that for you.