From low-level design to high-level project planning, ownership is central to succesfully enacting change. In this post, I will talk about what ownership is, and several ways to achieve effective ownership.
What is ownership?
Before we can talk about what ownership means and how to achieve it, we need to agree on a definition of ownership. For me, ownership has three pillars: the authority to influence outcomes, responsibility for the outcomes, and a commitment to making sure that the things that need to be done, get done.
Ownership is a combination of authority to drive the course of action taken, and responsibility for the outcome.
When it comes to a software project, ownership can manifest itself in a variety of ways and in multiple scopes. At a low-level, ownership may mean pushing back on poor implementation in pull requests. At a mid-level, ownership may mean doing technical due diligence to ensure high quality designs. At a high-level, ownership means taking a longer view on things; making sure that the overall direction of the product is correct, coordinating with other teams to avoid issues, and fostering growth within the team.
Achieving ownership
Ownership and authority typically come in two flavors : “hard” power and “soft” power. Hard power comes in the form of your superior assigning you tasks. On the other hand, soft power is being able to achieve ends by persuading peers or superiors, without a way to force them to adopt a particular course of action. Soft power is more broadly applicable and is more interesting, since it can be achieved regardless of seniority and can be used outside of your immediate team.
There are a couple of ways to achieve ownership via soft power. First of all, you can achive ownership by being a known expert for a given area. If you are the most knowledgeable person about a particular area (but not neccesarily the most senior overall), then people will consult you for future developments in that area. Consequently, you will be able to achieve ownership, as you will both be able to influence decision making via your input, as well as having responsibility by virtue of being the known “expert” for that area.
Another way of achieve ownership and soft power is to be involved in ongoing discussions and mentorship. It can be difficult to suddenly convince someone of an idea the first time they encounter it. But on the flipside, if you’ve been having discussions about similar topics on an ongoing basis, and align yourselves before the fact, it can be much easier to get buy in, since the ground work has already been laid.
Finally, a useful way of gaining ownership is by being a champion. If you have an idea, and you pitch it to the team, and you don’t hear a no, then go ahead and implement it! This way, you can gain ownership by virtue of taking initiative and being the first person to implement a given piece of functionality. Being a champion can be an incredibly effective way of gaining ownership and cutting through red tape. That being said, being a champion and having ownership means being comfortable with the risk of being wrong in a very public way.
Conclusions
In conclusion, ownership is key to enacting change and can be achieved via a couple of paths. But the core takeaway is that ownership is about making sure that the right decisions are made, and the the work that needs to get done, gets done. This may mean joining meetings to raise concerns, reaching out to other teams to coordinate efforts and align technical vision, or something as simple as taking initiative and implementing a new tool in a code base.