Ownership

Ownership is by far the most effective way to exert influence on the outcome of an effort, on the wellbeing of an organization, and on the quality of a project. In my book (and this is my book!), it's the only viable option, the only game in town. Leadership is ownership. It doesn't guarantee success, and success is possible without it, but in terms of what can actively be done to steer the course of an activity, ownership is at the top of the list.

What is ownership? It's taking complete responsibility for all aspects and elements of the project you're pursuing. You have to care about the purpose and motivation, the people, the technology, the business, the users, the big picture, the details, the outcome, and all the rest. It's overseeing, guiding, influencing, delegating, communicating, and doing anything and everything (within legal and moral bounds) that's important for producing a good outcome and for serving the various constituents as you do it.

Ownership does not necessarily require that you do all the work yourself. It does not necessarily require that you be a micromanager. It does not necessarily require that you be stressed and overwhelmed. In fact, the quality of your leadership will tend to suffer if you interpret ownership in that way and try to do those things. Ownership doesn't require or prescribe any particular approach because it's a policy and not a mechanism. Ownership is about your attitude, about your view of your own role and responsibilities, and about the intensity of your commitment to the project. It's, like, a mindset, man.

Ownership and responsibility are intimately interlinked. They're two sides of the same coin. Being an owner means taking responsibility for the project and its outcomes. Being responsible for a project is only viable and reasonable with the empowerment that comes from ownership. Further, the presence of one in the absence of the other produces dishonest and disonant conditions. Ownership without responsiblity introduces moral hazard while responsibility without ownership leads to misattribution of success and misassignment of credit. TODO: Is this last sentence too much?

Because ownership requires responsibility, it also requires (by transitivity) all of the things responsibility implies and requires, including accountability, capability, and all the rest.

TODO: In the box-and-arrow relationship diagram, this will be a two-sided arrow pointing between ownership and responsibility, with accountability grouped in with responsibility.

I don't think owners should say that anything related to their project is "not their job" or "above their paygrade". Certainly, ownership can - and typically will - cut across teams, functions, and seniority. Beyond that, owners should be willing in some cases to take on requirements that are outside of their scope or area, if doing so is necessary for their project. For example, if you're blocked waiting on work from another team, consider volunteering to do their work for them. That's not always a good idea or viable approach, but it should be an option. Showing that willingness, that level of motivation, and that aversion to stalling is a great way to indicate your seriousness about moving forward. If you're truly, relentlessly, hungrily pursuing your project, then roadblocks should present as an interesting challenge to be navigated, rather than an excuse to throw your hands up, blame someone else, and chill. Don't be a jerk, don't violate the autonomy and consent of others under the guise of being an owner or "getting shit done", but also don't fall apart at the first task that falls outside of your well-defined plan, path, or playground.

Some of the greatest killers of productivity, motivation, drive, and success within organizations are practices that prevent owners from doing what they need in order to make progress and absolve owners of responsibility across the full scope of concerns relevant to their project. These include siloing, strict chain-of-command, excessive and slow processes, and various other things you see especially at old, slow-moving bureaucracies. Productive, ownership-oriented organizations should be designed to minimize these and maximize the ease and efficacy with which owners can proceed.

While I take an expansive view of ownership, I don't believe it's limitless. It involves "anything and everything" related to the project, but it does not mean "anything and everything" you might want it to mean. Yes, owners should be willing to oversee, push on, and do a wide range of things, but of course they can't be expected to do the truly impossible, to work magic, to have endless resources and capabilities, or to do everything in the world.

Ownership isn't a cudgel that leaders abuse their teams with, by demanding flippantly or aggressively that they "take some ownership" or "just fucking handle it!", when there are extenuating or complex circumstances that realistically prevent that in practice.

Ownership cannot be thrust upon someone or assigned unilaterally; it requires the potential owner to consent freely to the role. How could they possibly embody genuine ownership if they don't really want it or don't believe in it?

Ownership must also be agreed upon and recognized by others. Perhaps it's possible to exercise some form of ownership (and leadersip) unilaterally, by command, but doing so will be less effective, antagonistic, and not worth aspiring to. What we want is high-credibility ownership. This may come from the selection of a leader whose involvement sparks excitement and confidence among the team members based on the leader's reputation for ability and integrity. Or, it may be developed over time by a less-experienced leader who builds upon their existing competencies, rapport, and reputation by being in the work, persisting through challenges, mentoring and guiding, and truly embodying ownership.

There's a tension inherent to ownership. Owners feel a connection or even an emotional attachment to their area of ownership. They have some interest in it, in the sense of being invested in it and in the sense of finding it intellectually stimulating. They certaintly need to feel a sense of responsibility for it. Simply by being identified, and more importantly identifying themselves, as the owner, they'll feel important and in control. On one hand, these feelings are valid and necessary for effective ownership. How can you really be engaged and enthusiastic about something without feeling connected to it and interested in it? How can you take charge and do the hard things necessary if you don't feel powerful and responsible? On the other hand, these same feelings can produce negative side effects and behavior in the leader, which will echo detrimentally through the team and project. A feeling of importance and power can turn into arrogance. Attachment can transform into possessiveness and territorialism. Responsibility can become an overbearing burden.

In my view, the antidote to all these ills is to elevate and rely on the team [LINK: the-team]. In my view, prioritizing the team is also the best way to derive the greatest benefit from ownership. Retain and apply your position, pride, and power as the owner in order to support, prioritize, enable, promote, lead, and genuinely value the team. Right here, we can see two of the constituents [LINK: constituents] - you and the team - and how they work together.

This same tension inherent to ownership applies to individual contributors as well. It's possible for individuals, focusing on their area of expertise, to feel overwhelmingly burdened, to feel solely responsible, to feel arrogant and individualistic, to feel possessive, and so on (trust me, I've been in this position at various points in my career). In fact, it may even be more of a risk for ICs because they can operate individually, while the leader is clearly only a leader because of the team. The solution for ICs is the same as for leaders: rely on and prioritize the team [LINK: the-team]. Yes, it's "your" work and it does reflect on you, but in a functional and effective organization, you're a member of a team. Your job is to help the team accomplish its goals as effectively as possible and to find your position and role within that team, not to carve out your own little walled garden or to be unproductively overwhelmed.

Ulimately, ownership must be viable, sustainable, cooperative, and beneficial for the team and the owner, no matter if they're an IC in charge of a specific technical area or a top-level executive in charge of an entire company.

Within your area of ownership will be sub-sections and sub-parts that themselves can be delegated and owned by others within the team, so that each team member has ownership within some bounds of their own. Defining these bounds is a crucial art of ownership and leadership. We want every area covered by an owner, we want a single primary owner per area, and we want to define areas in a way that maximizes autonomy, motivation, and efficacy. Despite this desire, it's entirely possible - and often quite easy - to partition the work in a way that not only fails to achieve these goals, but also destroys the conditions for true ownership. Getting this right is not easy, but it's what we should have in mind and aim for.

TODO: Consider making this a standalone paragraph about how leadership is for everyone. The last sentence ("Ownership is for everyone...") could be the topic sentence. I could move it earlier in order to introduce the idea of ownership for everyone / for ICs earlier. This view of ownership certainly applies to leaders, but it also extends in a form to individual contributors as well. While the scope of their ownership may not be as broad or diverse, I believe that everyone should own something, should have the mindset of owning something, should make a firm commitment to something, should have the attendant empowerment and responsibility, and should enjoy the associated sense of purpose, motivation, and accomplishment. The thing they own might involve creating or building something specific, ensuring quality, maintaining and growing a component over time, being a subject-matter expert and advisor, and so on. The thing they own might be large or small. The key is that they get to put their name on it and that it is in fact a necessary and valuable piece of a larger whole. Ownership is for everyone, not just leaders.

Ownership comes with prerequisities. It requires something ownable, a coherent project that can be guided and pursued by an owner and team. It requires a viable opportunity that has the possibility to be successful and is sufficiently supported and resourced that success is possible. It requires an owner with enough skill (including the ability to learn new skills as needed), enough power, enough empowerment, and enough control. It requires a sufficiently broad scope of ownership and oversight that all relevant and important considerations can be influenced by the owner and team. It requires a context that understands, respects, and ideally values ownership. If the project doesn't come with all of these prerequisites in place (and what real-world project could possibly come that neatly packaged?), then it falls on the project's owner to establish them. Doing so is the first test of an owner, with failure calling into serious question both that leader's ability and the viability of the overall project.

TODO: Develop a full list (like a checklist) of prerequisites and develop them into a visual or framework?

Ownership is obscured by its more visible and ostentatious associates, which causes it to be both under-recognized and under-appreciated. It's natural to confuse the causes and effects of ownership with ownership itself, to mistake the visible symptoms and side effects for the invisible, underlying condition. Further, so many of the things people identify as being important to success are actually those symptoms and side effects of ownership. So many of the motivations that are correlated with success actually derive from and reinforce ownership.

As a result, people often analyze, emulate, and impute success to the coterie of ownership, rather than recogizing ownership itself as the king. Interest, passion, and even obsession are viewed as important to success, to the extent that the industry fixates on them. They can all provoke or lead someone into taking ownership, and they can all result naturally from ownership, but none of them are ownership. None of them on their own will produce the wide variety of controllable factors needed for success. The same applies to being in the details, micromanagement, and even being a demanding jerk. People love to discuss the role these characteristics and behaviors play in success. I think that all of those conversations are distractions from what really matters. Someone who is highly conscientious, details-oriented, controlling, an asshole, or any combination therefore, may be driven to take ownership by those traits. And, once again, prompted by ownership, those traits may intensify and be expressed through a person's behavior. But, none of those traits are ownership and none of them are centrally connected to the other characteristics and factors of success in nearly the same way as ownership.

The truest, most intense, and most durable form of ownership comes when you actually care about something, when you know it is important, when it matters to people you respect or care about, and/or when it's a meaningful part of something bigger. Think about a time in your life when you knew and felt in your body that something was important and that you were the one to do it, especially in situations where you knew no one else would. That's what ownership feels like.

How did you respond to that feeling? Hope things would work out? Expect someone else to come along and make it happen? Shy away, deny, and procrastinate? Or, did you take action?

In my life and work, getting engaged and taking ownership has been the primary path to satisfaction and success. Sometimes I took this on immediately and eagerly, sometimes haltingly and hesitantly, sometimes happily, sometimes grudgingly. In some surprising and gratifying cases, I discovered or realized that someone else really did already own the area and was managing it capably and reliably, often with impressive levels of skill and care. What a pleasure. But, in general, this hasn't been the case for me and won't be the case in the world or at work. No one else cares about, feels as accountable for, or is as suited to handling the things you care about as you are. Everyone is rightfully too busy with their own responsibilities, interests, lives, and work. It's not as if we live in a world with an overabundance of time, energy, ownership, leadership, and willingness to see projects through from end-to-end, and to do so capably and reliably, especially when they are complicated, difficult, unglamorous, and so on. Therefore, we need people to step up for the important and valuable things that they care about, that fall into their area of responsibility and expertise, and that no one else is taking on.

That's the level and intensity of ownership we would like to achieve at work, both for ourselves and for our teams. Achieving this is not trivial and not even possible in every case, but it's the right thing to target and strive for. But how? Although it's important to clearly establish responsibilities, assigning or granting ownership is not enough because it's not possible to make someone genuinely feel ownership, just as it's not possible to make anyone feel any specific thing. Not only do they need to consent to and accept, but they need to believe in the thing they're taking charge of. The right way, and I think the only way to achieve this, and to gain the varous benefits that come along with it, is to structure organizations, incentives, and the work itself to allow for, encourage, and reward ownership. In fact, the ideal is to create an environment in which ownership seems like a native and obvious concept, and in which there are an abundance of high-quality opportunities for people to take on the responsibility and benefit from its rewards.

TODO: More on how to create an environment of ownership.

Ownership both requires and supports leadership, autonomy, purpose, accountability, motivation, growth, and many other profoundly-important characteristics you want in a high-quality organization and high-quality environment. I therefore belive that organizations that embody a high degree of aggregate ownership are more likely to be healthy, effective, and successful. If I could pick just one thing to prioritize or target, I think I would choose ownership, because a genuinely-felt and genuinely-experienced sense of ownership can only thrive in a forest filled with many of the other properties we want in our teams, projects, and workplaces.

One key thing I've learned, one thing I now bring to every area of my life, and one key piece of advice I'll give, is to thoughtfully identify areas that you could beneficially and capably accept ownership of, and then proactively and even quickly take steps to get involved, solve problems, take on more responsibility, and in that way establish and grow your ownership. This isn't about seizing control, "claiming territory", exclusion, or competition, it's about finding an area in need and acting as a leader in that area. By continually searching for and pursuing ownership, you can ensure that you won't stagnate, won't be useless, won't become irrelevant, and will be directed toward growth, improvement, and commitment, both for yourself and for the team.

This strategy is also imperfect. Things may not work out as you had planned. You may discover that the area you considered owning is impossibly broken, that you're actually not suited or capable to take it on, or that it's not as vital as you thought it was. But, that's OK. Life and work are a bit messy. If you handle each situation professionally and fairly, then it's possible to navigate through these challenges. You may determine that there's a sub-part or piece you can own, you may discover a related area along the way in which there is more opportunity, or you may simply learn a lot.

Ownership is good and, not coincidentally, the opposite of ownership is bad. What is the opposite of ownership? It's the insidious, creeping toxicity of always complaining, blaming, "identifying issues", critizing, and being cynical. It's never being an agent of change, never allowing yourself to be empowered, as intimidating and even scary as it may be, to fix, build, accomplish, and own. Therefore, within an organization, driving toward increased levels of ownership has the benefit not only of promoting ownership, but of decreasing the volume of "not ownership" as well.

TODO: Technical framework with visualization: Prerequisites for ownership (i.e. things you have to have), tailwinds of ownership (i.e. things that support ownership and support positive outcomes), consequences of ownership (results, mostly positive), cousins of ownership (the other things that coincide with ownership, are necessary for and supported by ownership, including autonomy, etc). Maybe draw a graph linking all of these ideas. I expect that ownership will end up being central and highly connected. Maybe I could size things (the nodes, the edges) differently in order to indicate their relative importance / weight?