When ownership is agreed in the room and lost afterwards
An imagined meeting explores how agreement can leave ownership, authority and competing priorities unresolved.
Working Across the Organisation · Alignment · Managing Sideways
Everyone agreed in the meeting. Why did nothing move?
YouTubeThe meeting described here is fictional, developed from my reflections on leadership, autonomy and structure. It does not recount a specific workplace event or represent real people or organisations.
Imagine I leave a meeting feeling we have finally sorted something out. A piece of work has been moving between two teams, with each doing their part but neither quite getting it over the line. We have spent an hour discussing the gaps, agreed on the outcome and identified someone to lead it. There are a few details to resolve, but everyone seems comfortable with the direction.
It is the sort of conclusion I tend to like. We know what we are trying to achieve. Capable people have room to work out how to achieve it. I do not need to turn the next two weeks into a set of instructions.
A week later, very little has moved.
The person leading the work has been waiting for the other team to confirm capacity. The other team has been waiting for a proposal they can assess. Both have continued with their existing commitments, which have deadlines attached and people asking about them. Our newly agreed priority has neither.
When I ask what happened, nobody disputes the decision. They can all explain what we agreed. What becomes clear, though, is that each person left with a different understanding of what that agreement required them to do.
What did I think we had agreed?
My first reaction might be frustration. We had the conversation. We named an owner. I deliberately avoided interfering in the details. At some point, surely people have to take responsibility without being chased.
But I would need to look at my own part in that conclusion. I had heard someone agree to lead the work and assumed they understood that as permission to bring the teams together, resolve the remaining questions and start making decisions. They might have understood it as responsibility for coordinating a plan once the other team had committed resources.
Those are quite different jobs.
The other team, meanwhile, might genuinely support the outcome while having no idea which of its existing commitments should move to make room. Agreement in our meeting would not automatically change the expectations waiting for them outside it.
From my position, the work would look stalled. From theirs, there could be an entirely reasonable next step that belonged to somebody else.
This is where my preference for outcomes-based leadership deserves some scrutiny. I like giving people a goal and room to figure out how to reach it. But I can also imagine mistaking the things that feel obvious to me for things we have actually made clear together.
I may know which deadline is flexible. I may know that another manager will support a change in priorities if someone asks. I may feel comfortable making a decision with incomplete agreement. The person I have asked to lead the work might know none of that.
Giving them freedom would not, by itself, give them the context I was using.
The follow-up I would want to have
The temptation would be to call another meeting and ask for firmer commitments. We could leave with more actions, more dates and a stronger sense that this time we meant it.
I think I would learn more by first asking each person what they believed was supposed to happen after the original conversation. That would give us something concrete to examine before deciding whether the problem was follow-through, capacity or an unresolved decision.
If the owner had been waiting for capacity, we would need to establish who could commit it. If the other team needed a proposal, we would need to agree what was sufficient for them to respond. If both teams were already fully committed, I would have a leadership decision to make about priority.
That last possibility matters. It would be convenient to describe the problem as unclear ownership if the harder truth was that I had supported another piece of work without making space for it.
In this imagined situation, I would want the follow-up to end with a shared understanding of the first move, the decisions the owner could make and the point at which they needed someone else’s help. The detail after that could still belong to them.
I would also want to hear whether the commitment was achievable. People need room to say that something cannot happen under the current conditions while there is still time to change those conditions.
How much clarity is enough?
There is a balance here that I do not think a perfect meeting template can settle. Too little detail leaves people interpreting the agreement alone. Too much can leave the owner implementing my plan while I congratulate myself on delegating.
The question I would carry from this scenario is whether the person leaving the room has enough shared understanding and authority to begin. That seems a more useful test than whether everyone sounded aligned during the conversation.
It also asks something of me. If I want people to take ownership, I need to be willing to hear the dependencies, competing commitments and disagreements that make ownership difficult. Otherwise, the meeting can feel resolved largely because we have stopped discussing the parts that remain unresolved.
I would still want to lead through outcomes. I would still want capable people to have freedom in how they deliver. But I would want to become more careful about what I assume has travelled with them when they leave the room.
Continue exploring
- Article
Before You Coach the Person, Inspect the System - AI Skill
Meeting-to-Action System - Free resource
A meeting needs a decision
