Structuring an organizing with teams that are assigned ownership of value-drivers (products, features, services), and individuals that are appointed as directly responsible for specific outcomes sets up the foundation for self-organization, empowerment and autonomy. Ownership and accountability are related but crucially different. Ownership refers to what a team is responsible for designing, implementing and supporting. It’s a more permanent construct than accountability which is assigned to an individual for a specific outcome, which may be permanent or until the outcome is achieved. Having clearly defined ownership at the team level and accountability at the individual level empowers the team to self-organize around it’s purpose lead by individuals who have agency to achieve what the business expects from them.
It is imperative that ownership be defined around a value driver for the organization as the team will derive its identity and sense of purpose from what it owns. Ownership of a code base, a function within the business, or a mode of working lacks clarity around why the team exists. The ownership must be directly related, and framed in communication with the team, around the way in which that team provides value for the business. Consider the difference between “you are the front-end team” and “you are the team that owns the web-based user experience through which our customers can use our service”. The latter is far more powerful and focuses on value and purpose. This helps build the identity of the team in a way that is aligned with the success of the business and also provides a way to aggregate teams that own related value drivers to form value-aligned departments. Once the value dimension of ownership is defined for a team, separation of concerns and resolving structural ambiguity needs to be addressed. It must be abundantly clear, and easy to explain to the rest of business, what that team owns and why that makes sense. Craftsmanship and a strong work ethic stems from clearly articulated, unambiguous ownership over something that’s meaningful for the business.
Accountability for delivering an outcome must always be assigned to a single individual — shared accountability is no accountability. That individual becomes the Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for the outcome. Accountability can be cascaded down to others for sub-tasks or streams of work, but must always synthesize back up to a single, directly responsible individual. The individual and the organization enters into a pact whereby the individual accepts complete accountability for the outcome and the organization pledges the agency to that individual to act with autonomy and authority. When the leaders of the business are clear in words and actions as to who is accountable for the outcome, that individual is able to act without concern for ambiguity in responsibility or authority. Failure to defer to, and respect the role of the directly responsible individual, undermines the individual and introduces confusion that will place the outcome at risk.
It’s increasingly common in growing organizations for the delivery of an outcome to require effort from multiple teams. It is necessary to embrace an intentional difference between the team you’re part of, and what you have influence over. The most effective individuals in a company exert a sphere of influence beyond their own team or department. It’s not necessary to adhere strongly to team or reporting lines when assigning someone as accountable for an outcome. Instead it’s a coveted growth opportunity for an individual contributor to be made accountable for a cross-functional outcome that requires them to practice relationship building as a way to achieve the desired outcome across multiple teams. With regular exposure to this cross-functional engagement, key leadership skills of delegation, communication and organization are built without necessarily managing a team.
Whether or not a clear value driver can be identified for a team is an important test of growth plans in a business. When a team gets too large for a single manager, there is often the temptation to divide it along dimensions that exist within that team such as code base, backend vs front end, etc. Division along these lines alone will help define a team by name, but not the value it serves the organization. Instead, always look for the value driver that is self-contained such that it can be exclusively and unambiguously owned by the newly formed team. Conversely, when reviewing an organization structure this same lens provides indication of where a business might benefit form divesting itself of non-core activities.
