At Write of Passage, people “Own It.” The team operates with high trust, high autonomy, and high accountability. They deliver what they say they will, when they say they will, to a high standard of quality.

This should be table stakes in any organization, right? Well, it’s not. We’ve all been in interminable meetings where colleagues weedle and twist about why their work isn’t done. It sucks. Huge swathes of mental energy are spent checking up on others. Worse, it leads to a need for more interminable meetings — check-ins and stand-ups and progress reports and draft submissions — which consume any desire to remain living on this mortal plane.

Sound familiar? If so, it’s time to instill an “Own It Mentality” in your organization.

To do this, there are three steps: define what people should own, show how they will be held accountable, and then encourage them to communicate how it’s going.

Step 1: Define Areas of Responsibility

If people don’t know what they are meant to own, then how can they Own It? If people don’t know what others own, then how can they hold each other accountable? Be exceptionally clear about who is responsible for what. 

What you don’t want in your organization are Bermuda Triangles of Responsibility, where important tasks fall to a watery doom for being forgotten. These occur when ownership is not clearly defined among people and within teams. If it’s not clear who is meant to do something, then it is not surprising when that task doesn’t get done.

Reach an understanding. Write it down. Revisit it regularly. Shout it from the treetops.

If a task doesn’t get done when you need it to, then hurry to figure out why that has happened. Was it a failure of communication, a process, or a person? It’s usually the first, sometimes the second, and occasionally the third.

Once you have defined areas of responsibility, you need a mechanism by which everyone can be held accountable.

Step 2: Create Impeccable Agreements

At its core, an Impeccable Agreement is very simple. It’s an agreement for somebody to have done exactly X by precisely Y. It is an agreement of input, or work done, not of output or results.

These agreements should be specific (so that a stranger could work out whether it was achieved), written down with clear timelines, and owned by one person. Crucially, Impeccable Agreements should guarantee effort, not results. 

Life happens. Priorities shift. When they do, Impeccable Agreements do need to be adjusted. The obligation is on the agreement welcher to inform other parties as soon as they realize that they can’t uphold the agreement and that it needs to be re-negotiated. 

In Harry Potter, Professor Snape makes an Unbreakable Vow that, if he were to break it (no spoilers), would result in his immediate death. Whilst Impeccable Agreements should not have such dire stakes, they should be treated with a level of seriousness and integrity, lest they be broken as often as curfew at Hogwarts.

Alas, we can’t rely on magic to enforce Impeccable Agreements. We must, instead, reinforce the agreements, set a model example, and — in some cases — suggest that a repeat agreement-breaker be “moved on to other challenges.” Breaking an Impeccable Agreement may seem like a minor indiscretion, but many little oversights are what will prevent you from instilling an Own It Mentality. If a team member makes a habit of this and fails to Own It, they will have a termite-effect on the rest of the team (or ossio dispersimus for those still in the Potterverse), and if you want people in your organization to Own It, those termitic few will have to, eventually, go. 

Impeccable Agreements cover both the big and the small. If a meeting starts at 11 am, then it starts at 11 am. Not three minutes past. Being late shows a lack of respect for colleagues and the agreement that you all made to each other to be there on time. Accepting a meeting invite is an implicit agreement to be there, ready to go, at the start of the meeting (an Implicit Impeccable Agreement, if you will).

Again, a note of caution: Impeccable Agreements should only be used when you are referring to inputs, not outputs. They must not be conflated with objectives, goals, or key results. You can promise what you will put in, but you are unable to promise what will come out. Conflating the two undermines Impeccable Agreements because, while goals are sometimes missed, agreements should never be.

Step 3: Encourage Transparency & Communication

People know what they should be doing (Areas of Responsibility), and they know how they should be doing it (via a series of Impeccable Agreements). The final step in Owning It is to tell everyone else how it’s going.

The price of autonomy is transparency. If your team wants to be left alone to do their work, then they need to be hyper-proactive in telling everyone what they are doing. This does not mean giving minute-by-minute updates like a firehose, but it does mean sharing updates regularly with the team, on a cadence that is useful and informative.

Where this becomes particularly important is when things go wrong. It’s easy to be transparent and communicative when you land a big sale (some companies even have a big ol’ bell for obnoxious people to ring when this happens). But how communicative are you when that sale falls apart? (I haven’t heard of any companies with a bell of shame. This is not advice. Please don’t do this.) 

The point is: Bad news should travel fast. Lay it bare. Do whatever you can to avoid a torturous slow drip of horrible revelations. When things go wrong, speak up. Own It. 

Nothing reveals a failure to Own It like catching a whiff of the malignant stench of a cover-up. 

Say what has gone wrong. Say why it happened (if you don’t know, say that). Say what you are going to do about it. Say when you will next say something. Then get on with it.

If you define Areas of Responsibility, require and reinforce Impeccable Agreements, and encourage transparency and communication among your team, you will be amazed by the changes you see, as you start to instill an Own It Mentality. 

You might even be able to cancel a stand-up or two and rediscover your desire to live.

Cover photo by Viktor Bystrov on Unsplash