Nobody knows who owns what
List the decisions and deliverables, name an owner for each, and flag the unowned. Run it with the team, not on them.
Overlapping skills help a cross-functional team. Shared context makes for better communication and faster problem-solving. But when boundaries blur, so does accountability, and diffusion of responsibility is the polite name for nobody actually owning the thing that just went wrong.
Job titles will not solve it, and they are getting less useful by the month. A product manager can prototype a working interaction, a designer can ship a real component, an engineer can draft copy that does not read like an engineer wrote it. The tools that used to mark the boundary between roles are dissolving faster than any argument about titles ever could.
So ownership has to be worked out explicitly, and it has to come out of the team's own process rather than being assigned from above. A manager who fills this in alone has produced an org chart, not ownership.
What you get
- A table of decisions and deliverables, with an owner and a consulted list for each
- An unowned flag, which is the column the exercise exists for
- The argument for why structure and fluidity are not opposites
- One readiness question for anyone taking on a new area
Where should we send it?
One email with the worksheet. You can unsubscribe from anything else in one click.
On its way
Check your inbox. If it has not landed in a minute or two, look in promotions or spam, and add sam@startuppatterns.com to your contacts so the rest arrive.
Adapted from the Leadership chapter of The Mindful Product Company by Sam McAfee.