Goal Core · Tactical goals · Module
Ownership
One named person accountable for each goal, distinct from the people doing the work and from those merely informed.
The idea
How it works
Accountability does not divide. Two people accountable for one goal produces a goal that advances only when both happen to have capacity, which is rarer than it sounds.
Owning is also not the same as doing. The owner is the person who answers for whether it moved, who escalates when it does not, and who can say at any point what state it is in. They may do none of the work themselves.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Name a person, not a role or a team
Roles change and teams diffuse. A name can be asked a question.
- 02
Separate owning from doing
List who is accountable, who is doing the work, who must be consulted and who is only informed.
- 03
Confirm they accepted it
Assignment is not agreement. An owner who was told rather than asked will behave like someone who was told.
- 04
Give them the authority
Accountability without the power to decide anything is a way of allocating blame.
One level in
The components of ownership
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The responsibility split
Who is accountable, who does the work, who is consulted, who is informed.
LearnThe escalation path
Where the owner goes when the goal is blocked by something outside their authority.
Learn
If a goal has been reassigned three times, the problem is usually the goal rather than the owners.
The other modules in tactical goals
Cascade and catchball
Carrying a strategic goal down into commitments, and letting the answers come back up and change it. The upward half is the part most cascades leave out.
LearnInitiatives
The named, finishable pieces of work a tactical goal resolves into. Each with a start, an end, and something that exists afterwards which did not before.
LearnResourcing
What the goal costs in money, people and attention, agreed before it is committed to. The test is whether the owner could describe the resource without checking.
Learn