Originally, of course, it started with work. "Ownership of your work" is a big thing nowadays, the concept being that you (the individual) own the responsibility of the project's success or failure. Ideally of course, the concept is that you will 100% buy in to the idea that you, and you alone, are responsible for the success or failure of the work. It can be a useful thing but at the same time is not always productive - in my case as a project manager, now matter how much I "own" the project, the decisions about it are not mine to make in most cases. And I question if one can have 100% ownership of one does not have the ability to direct the outcome (my job as a project manager is mostly to enable the work getting done and see the project through to its conclusion, no matter what the twists and turns).
But then it got me to thinking of Ownership on the larger level. And how, frankly, it is often preached but seldom does.
The place it seems most likely to be done is in the personal realm. One can have 100% ownership of one's life or one's choices, because one has 100% control of yourself. I can choose to do something or not do something. If I want the results, I will do whatever it takes to get those results. If I try something and it fails, the responsibility for the failure may not be on me, but understanding why the failure happened so that it does not happen again (and trying again) are 100% up to me.
But expand that to those that make policy.
In publicly held companies this is possibly the most practiced: come up with enough unsuccessful business choices and leadership will find itself out on its duff (I have seen it happen personally more than once). In professional sports as well: coaches and players that do not find themselves sufficiently interested or responsible for victory will eventually find themselves transferred to other teams or doing B-grade commercials for sports drinks or pet insurance.
But in the most important areas - policy initiatives, be they economic, social, foreign, military, religious, or anything else - there seems to be zero ownership by those who are making them.
It is an odd thing, is it not? When these policies are being put in place, there is no end to the amount of people that will fight for and publicly declaim on the issue. Yet once the issue is voted or decided on and made into law or policy, it passes into the hands of bureaucracies and committees and study groups - and there, in the process of being executed, ownership dies.
On the off chance of a success of course, there is no end of people taking credit - as someone quoted once on this blog "Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan". But when it fails and fails miserably, no one suddenly has any ownership for how it got to that to that point. The committee points to the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy points to the policy makers, the policy makers point to the public that demanded the action, the public points to the policy makers that demanded it. The failure exists, the resources of time and money to make the failure have been expended; no-one claims ownership for how it got there. And more often than not there is no accountability: perhaps a discussion about not meeting the "goal", one or two underlings get lectured or make public mea culpas, but nothing more.
Viewing it this way, suddenly it is of no surprise to me why we find ourselves in the situation we do on so many fronts. This is not a political party or industry or specific religion issue: we seem to have created a society where on the whole, individuals own their results but anything beyond the individual does not.
Such a situation cannot last forever, of course: nothing - a personal life, a company, an organization, a government, a state, even a nation - cannot stand a consistent and unmitigated string of failures without anyone owning them. Eventually someone or some group will begin taking ownership for the results that they desire; many others will sit and complain or deny that it is the right action, but they have lost that right. Having surrendered the opportunity to own the results of their own proposals, they lose the ability to criticize those who have owned them and seen their results through to a conclusion.
TB it’s the damnedest thing… but I’ve noticed lately, that certain people, when presented with a set of possible actions… they’ll unfailingly choose the worst, most self destructive option possible. It HAS to be deliberate; the kind of things they do will boggle the mind. They will take functioning policies and procedures and destroy them to ‘build back better’ with something that can obviously only fail. I am convinced that the upper echelons of our managerial class is mentally ill.
ReplyDeleteIf you want success, your people must have the means to accomplish it and you have to all be on the same page playing the same game. We either all own it, or none of us do.
Glen, I think both agree and disagree with you. I agree in that in many cases it seems like at least the results we get in many of our policies - and by these as mentioned, I do not limit it to political only, but economic, social, religious, everything - are literally the least desirable of all possible worlds. That said, I do not think it is necessarily because they intentionally seek out the worst decision (although to be fair, they may believe that once they have the ability to do so, they need to fix things). After having considered it even further, I truly believe it is because they do not own the problem.
DeleteImagine if you will a policy - choose your arena - where the decision maker clearly states "I own this, and I own the outcome." And the policy failures. How refreshing would it be not only to have the policy maker say "I was wrong. The buck stops with me. Policy is rescinded, and I am stepping down. To the best of my ability, I will make the wrongs right."
That is ownership. The problem, in my view, is that in virtually every arena of life we have abandoned. We no longer control the issue, we are controlled by the issues - therefore failure is not "our" fault as we never really could solve the problem.
Agreed that success ultimately derives from all parties being on the same page. But ultimately one person, one position, owns the ultimate responsibility. Currently no-one takes that responsibility.
I think politics in general is the opposite of owning one's work. Politicians cater to those who give immediate gratification (or reelection) and don't really care for those decisions where hard decisions must be made. They also care not at all for the future beyond the next reelection cycle.
DeleteI suffered a lot in my career on this topic. As an engineer, I was often responsible for entire projects and making them happen and yet given no authority to do so. Often times my projects resided in the hands of others who had different agendas. Yet my livelihood depended on how well I did. Once my boss assigned me a project that had been floating around unsuccessfully for nearly a decade and I told him flat out the day he assigned it to me that this would be the year I get minimal increase in pay because I had been saddled with a project that was impossible to complete. He assured me that I would be compensated for my efforts and not my results. 12 months later he apologized and said he was over ruled by his manager and my results didn't merit a pay increase.
ReplyDeleteI always wanted ownership, as long as I had the ability to ensure that I could do what was needed to complete it. I rarely find that both come together.
That is my experience too, Ed, and it’s far too common.
DeleteMy experience is similar to your Ed - ownership promoted, ability to impact project limited, rewards minimalized.
DeleteWhich in a way, I think, is exactly the problem. The Owner of the project (whoever it was at your place, CEO if no one else) was responsible for making it happen. If they do nothing or worse, insure nothing gets done, it just discourages anyone from wanting to own it. As your experience shows. And thus, little gets done.