Take Ownership

WHY

As a project resource, leader, or manager, there is typically already so much on your plate. Why take some more? Why Ownership? Because Ownership is not about adding more work, but about changing your relationship with the work you already have. Let’s explore this.

The word Responsibility is commonly understood as “a duty to deal with something, so that it is your fault if it goes wrong.” Accountability, often used in a managerial context, is understood as “while it may be someone else’s duty, it is still your fault if it goes wrong.” The word duty here signifies something that you have to do because people expect you to do it, or because you think it is right. Do you notice the separation between you and the thing you have to do, say your project? It feels natural, logical, even scientific.

In contrast, consider you and your son or daughter. There is a feeling of him or her being your own. Understandably lesser, but a similar feeling exists for the college you graduated from, the company you started, the house or car you purchased, the garden you grew, and so on. This feeling is Ownership. While we are born free, die free, and everything in this world is by default value-free, it is the sense of Ownership that imparts value to our family, culture, pursuits, assets, or anything else, and helps fill our lives with meaning.

Though Responsibility, Accountability, and Ownership all motivate you to act, Ownership transforms you to do your absolute best, irrespective of whether you are responsible or accountable or not. For example, it’s Friday and you are closing work when your client calls and informs you of some changes needed in submissions related to a million-dollar project by the following Tuesday. What do you do? If you are sincere, you schedule it for Monday. You reach home, pick up your family, and drive off for a long-planned get-together with friends. On the way, your ten-year-old son tells you he is feeling feverish and also has a test on Tuesday. What do you do? You immediately assess the situation and consult a doctor available at that hour.

With Ownership, the separation, and the resulting psychological resistance, is replaced by an ethical, moral, and meaningful obligation. Without it, even conscious pursuits feel forced, like a chore. Being responsible or accountable isn’t bad, but it is far from optimal. Ownership helps you do significantly better, faster, and more enjoyably. You stop trying to merely meet deadlines and begin to set inspiring benchmarks aligned with your abilities.

Note that a parent takes an unwell child to the doctor neither expecting reciprocation later in life nor seeking anything in return. Likewise, as a project manager, you must invest your energies to express your own character and abilities. You should work for work’s sake, not for money or anything else. Ownership enables exactly this.

But why Ownership alone? To understand this, let us examine alternative motivations such as money and responsibility.

Neither a work position nor an employee’s worth can be measured by salary and perks. These are merely a share, often disproportionate, returned from the value created for the client. Value creation, and therefore compensation, depends on multiple factors: market conditions, business models, and overall team performance. If money alone drives your motivation, you will never do justice to your abilities. And unused potential is potential lost.

Unfortunately, the commonly held understanding of Responsibility is deeply flawed. Responsibility is made of two words: responsible and ability. Objectively, it means the ability to respond. Like flexibility or reliability, it is an ability you are expected to possess or develop in order to hold a position.

But just because you have the ability to drive a car does not inspire you to drive every unwell person in your neighborhood to the doctor. Ownership is the missing ingredient. Without it, even a good person may act for a while, but motivation soon evaporates, especially when tested against easier gratifications.

Negative motivations such as fear of losing one’s job or being scolded by supervisors make people rebellious, self-centered, and reserved. They create separation between you and your work and discourage teamwork and initiative. Such motivations waste human potential and are counter-productive. Only Ownership brings a value-driven, meaningful, and constructive approach to project management.

Real-world projects are complex systems with emergent behavior. New stakeholders, requirements, and risks continuously arise. It is impossible to plan everything in advance. In the absence of Ownership, issues grow unnoticed and opportunities are missed. Often, damage is already done before someone identifies a scapegoat or corrective action. Ownership keeps us alert to foresee, embrace, and overcome change.

A project is also a team endeavor. While individual team members hold specific competencies and responsibilities, everyone must hold Ownership toward project goals. Major project failures rarely occur due to lack of technical ability; they occur due to lack of Ownership. To revive the health of your unwell child, even without medical knowledge, you will do whatever it takes. Do the same for your project. Take Ownership.

Project success demands fast, holistic, and aligned decision-making. With Ownership, decisions are pursued proactively. Without it, people work in silos, become indifferent, and procrastinate, even on urgent matters. Decision inertia is one of the biggest causes of project delays. In an uncertain environment, it is often better to take two quick decisions, one wrong and one to correct it, than to take none at all. Ownership provides the confidence, urgency, and skin-in-the-game required to act.

The first thing we do in any project is procure human resources, the abilities and intelligence that do everything else. Yet collective human qualities such as trust, imagination, and perseverance cannot be procured. They must be cultivated through shared purpose. By making the project meaningful and valued, Ownership builds trust, ignites imagination, instills perseverance, and promotes constructive behavior critical to success.

Change is the most defining characteristic of a project. Ownership promotes a solution mindset, helping teams see change as opportunity rather than disruption. It sharpens observation, expands situational awareness, and enables anticipation, thereby minimizing rework.

The success of your project and your own long-term well-being, growth, and prosperity are deeply linked. Take Ownership.

WHAT

Taking Ownership is essential. But do you fully understand what it means? If not, buckle up. Information without philosophy is sterile, and half-knowledge is a dangerous thing. Let us therefore understand what taking Ownership actually means, what it applies to, when it applies, and who must take it.

The word Ownership is generally understood as owning something or having it in your name, earned or entitled. But what does it really mean to own anything? Is it merely material possession for dominance, prestige, or inheritance, or is it something deeper?

You own your body for a lifetime. You can own houses, cars, and other physical assets. You own paintings, software, and other creative work that you solely create. But do you own your project? It does not seem to belong to the same category. Most likely, someone else paid for it, operates it, and earns profits from it, not you. At the same time, we do not raise children because we own them or to earn profits from them. In all fairness, parenting is a demanding endeavor and at least a twenty-five-year project, if done well. Both kids and projects lack the ownership basis of physical assets. Yet, we embody tremendous Ownership for our children, somewhat less for physical assets, and often negligible Ownership for projects.

The belief in material possession of things and ideas, while useful for building a capitalistic society, is counter-intuitive to living a serene, fulfilling, and accomplished life. Why? Because it creates fear and conflict, the roots of many negative human behaviors. Consider a typical employee who works about forty to eighty hours a week, out of approximately one hundred and twelve waking (16x7) hours. Investing such a large portion of life into things “owned” by someone else naturally feels uninspiring. It creates inner conflict: you do not want to do it, yet you do it. Fear becomes the motivator: the fear of losing the job, income, or status. Focus suffers, the mind drifts easily, and work becomes a burden. The good news is that a correct understanding of Ownership can resolve this sub-optimal and unsustainable state.

Believe this: you own everything that you invest time into. Later, you may trade that invested time for money, such as salary, or exchange it for someone else’s invested time, such as when purchasing an asset built by others. Or you may simply continue to own it, as in the case of your creative work. Observe this closely: you own the thing while you are working on it. Ownership is lost only when you trade or disengage from it.

This philosophy resolves the apparent contradiction between Ownership of children and Ownership of physical assets. You feel greater Ownership toward your children because you invest far more time and energy into them than into any single project. More importantly, this understanding helps you develop a natural sense of Ownership toward your project while you are engaged in it. It removes fear and conflict from your work, and who does not want that?

The scope of taking Ownership encompasses everything that may affect the project or task, including aspects beyond your control, outside your expertise, and even entirely unknown. Everyone who is a project stakeholder must take Ownership. Stakeholders include the totality of persons, organizations, and the connected environment that can affect or be affected by the project. Ownership is independent of physical location or formal authority; it must be embodied from anywhere and throughout the project’s entire lifetime.

At first, the concept, scope, and applicability of Ownership may feel overwhelming. But when practiced, it is deeply fulfilling, objectively rewarding, and immensely inspiring. When in doubt, equate your project situation to that of your child. The right course of action becomes obvious. Families do not divide ownership of action based on all possible diseases a child might catch. Planning for every possibility is impractical. When a child falls ill, whoever is available takes action, regardless of diagnosis. Likewise, in a project, irrespective of the issue, any and every stakeholder must do what they can, at all times, for the project’s well-being and success. That is taking Ownership.

HOW

Knowing what Ownership actually refers to, and why it is critical to project success, is essential to aligning personal and professional goals. Although Ownership is a natural human behavior, it requires conscious embodiment and practice to become intuitive and effortless. As a project stakeholder, leader, or manager, there are several ways to instill, improve, and sustain Ownership toward the project.

Unite yourself with your work and express yourself through it. Who we are is reflected in what we do, and what we do shapes who we become. Our work is the miniature version of us that the world sees. This does not mean becoming a workaholic, just as caring for a child does not mean bringing them to the office every day. It means treating your work as a primary avenue for deriving meaning from life, giving it your best, and growing through the process.

Keep project goals SMART, i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, and aligned with all stakeholders. Scope changes usually arise long before they are formally expressed, as stakeholders are absorbed in their own priorities and cannot manage alignment the way a project manager can. Regular reviews of deliverables, roadmaps, and priorities with stakeholders are therefore essential to sustain Ownership and prevent drift.

Ask questions, and question everything. Many projects fail not because of wrong answers, but because the right questions were never asked. While focus on key project KPIs is important, the devil lies in the details, and no detail should be left to chance. “What can go wrong, will go wrong” should be a guiding mindset. Maintain a list of unresolved items, as it is easy to lose track of them in high-octane execution. Daily or weekly stand-ups help surface progress, risks, and blockers before they grow.

Ask for help and escalate early. Ensure frequent, clear, and transparent communication across all levels. Deal with the big while it is still small. Often, a project manager’s role is not to solve every issue personally, but to identify it early, envisage a resolution, and trigger, pursue, and persist through the chain of actions until closure.

Projects rarely go smoothly. In fact, a project that appears to be running too smoothly may indicate a lack of Ownership, mistaking absence of visible issues for absence of issues altogether. Alternatively, it may suggest that the project is not being executed optimally in terms of speed, cost, or quality. In an imperfect world, conflict is sometimes a healthy sign of stakeholders taking Ownership of their respective priorities and critical paths, thereby keeping overall execution sharp.

Empower your team. Without empowerment, expecting Ownership is like asking people to drink water from empty bottles. Provide support when needed, but avoid micromanagement. Demonstrate Ownership through your own actions; teams follow what they see, not what they are told.

There is no end to finding ways to take Ownership, and no limit to how much Ownership one can take. If systemic or people-related issues are stifling Ownership, take Ownership to escalate and resolve them. Even if your immediate supervisor appears reluctant or negative, remember that someone is certainly losing value due to the lack of Ownership. Escalating such situations to the right level is often appreciated and, in time, rewarded.

Everything is your responsibility.

Live it.

Get the job done.