Should responsibility for outcomes be assigned to a single accountable owner rather than shared jointly across multiple people?

David Lieb · Sep 21, 2022

Every decision coming out of a review needs a single named owner with a date, because value is lost the moment responsibility is sharded across multiple people

If three people are responsible for cleaning the floor it's less likely to get cleaned than if one person is; Apple's directly responsible individual model works because one person is designated to make the thing succeed and escalate roadblocks

Scope: applies broadly to running large teams, not just product reviews; the owner need not be the boss of the people involved

46:36 20 Product: The No 1 Metric You Need To Look at When Building Product | Why the Best in Product Have No Domain Experience | Why You Should Not Hire From Incumbents & The Difference Between Good vs Great PMs with David Lieb, Visiting Group Partner @ Y Comb

Gustav Söderström · Oct 12, 2022

The failure mode of removing swim lanes is that everyone is responsible for everything and nobody makes decisions, so you still need clear ultimate decision rights and accountability

At Spotify people are too nice to step on each other's toes, so ambiguity produces decision paralysis rather than power grabs

Scope: at Spotify specifically; other companies may see the opposite, where ambiguity triggers power grabs

38:41 20 Product: Spotify's Gustav Söderström on Why Product is 100% Science and 0% Art, Why You Should Look at the Competition and then Do Something Completely Different & Why Talk is Cheap and Product Teams Should Do More of it; Structuring the Best Debate

Sri Batchu · Jul 26, 2023

Joint accountability is dangerous because when more than one person is responsible, no person is responsible

Shared ownership diffuses responsibility, so it must be balanced culturally

Scope: a balance to strike culturally rather than an absolute prohibition

8:53 20Growth: Biggest Growth Lessons from Instacart and Opendoor, Why 70% of Growth Experiments Should Fail and How to Fail Fast, How to Hire a Growth Team; Secrets and Tips & Why Operator Investors WIll be the Best Investors in 10 Years with Sri Batchu @ Ram

Harry Stebbings · Apr 3, 2023

Leaders can share accountability but never abdicate responsibility, and that is the hard part of leadership — outcomes you didn't personally create still land on you

When things go right or wrong, it falls on the leader regardless of who executed

44:39 Leaders can share accountability but can never abdicate ultimate responsibility