What a role is, what it contains, and why explicit roles work better than job titles.
A role is not a job title
In most organisations, people have job titles like "Marketing Manager". What the job actually involves lives in someone's head or a stale job description. Moral Fabric uses roles instead.
A role is a clearly described slice of responsibility. One person can hold several roles across different teams, and one role can be held by several people. Each role moves independently: you can pick one up or pass it on, without rewriting anyone's job description.
When roles are explicit, you don't need a manager in the middle to coordinate every handoff. People can act because expectations are visible.
The four building blocks of a role
- Name: A short, recognisable label for the role. Verbs or descriptive nouns work well.
- Examples: "Newsletter Editor," "Treasurer," "Welcome Buddy."
- Purpose: One sentence describing what the world would look like if this role did its job perfectly.
- Example: "Our supporters feel seen, informed, and inspired to act."
- Accountabilities: The ongoing things others can expect from whoever holds this role. Each one starts with a verb.
- Examples: "Sending the weekly newsletter," "Responding to supporter questions within 48 hours," "Reporting open and click rates each month."
- Domain (optional): Anything this role controls exclusively. Others ask permission to change it.
- Example: "The contact database."
Role vs. person
When someone asks you to do something, they're engaging your role, not you personally. When you ask someone for something, you're talking to their role too.
This separates work disagreements ("does this fall under your role?") from personal ones ("are you being difficult?"). If you're unsure whether something is yours to handle, check the role description first.
In the Moral Fabric app
Roles live at app.moralfabric.org/roles . Search for your name or browse by team to see how your organisation is structured. To learn how to view, edit, and keep roles up to date in the app, see Teams & Roles in the Helpdesk.
Where this comes from
This model comes from Holacracy, an organisational operating system used by many self-managed organisations. You don't need to adopt all of Holacracy to use Moral Fabric, but the role / purpose / accountabilities structure is the small piece that pays off immediately. See Holacracy: How It Works for the full picture.
Next
- Manage roles in the app: Teams & Roles in the Helpdesk.
- Want to change one? Read 🐣Changing roles .
- Curious why explicit roles matter? Holacracy's Understanding Tensions explains the underlying idea.