Optimal Ownership

Mastering the Art of Strategic Responsibility

Gordon P. Henshaw, Senior Vice President of Cross-Functional Initiatives and Synergistic Growth, leaned back in his ergonomic chair, which was neither too comfortable nor too uncomfortable—just enough to signal that he had earned his position but not enough to suggest that work was over. He squinted at the Slack notification that had just popped up.

@COO: Hey @GordonPH, can you take point on this restructuring initiative? We need someone to own it.

Gordon exhaled through his nose. He had been in the industry long enough to recognize a subtle but desperate attempt to place responsibility in his lap. He was no fool. He did not “take point” on things. He did not “own” initiatives. He advised on them. He weighed in on discussions. He empowered teams. Ownership? No, that wasn’t his core competency.

He typed a response.

@GordonPH: Great initiative! Love the ambition here. I think this is more in Operational Alignment’s wheelhouse—looping in @KarenT.

He hit send. The message scuttled off into the abyss of plausible deniability.

Karen Thompson, Director of Operational Alignment, saw the notification pop up on her screen as she was busy forwarding an email to someone who was actually responsible for answering it. She frowned. Restructuring initiatives? That sounded strategic. And strategy, as she had clearly outlined in her last performance review, was not her function. Operational Alignment was about… well, alignment. Facilitating. Elevating. Creating cross-team transparency. But actually structuring a restructuring? No.

She needed to pass this off before it congealed into something with her name on it.

@KarenT: Thanks for looping me in, @GordonPH! I think this would be best driven by Organizational Change Management—cc’ing @DaleH.

Dale Hemmings, Vice President of Organizational Change Management, saw the notification appear and promptly closed his laptop. He stared out the window of his office, where a bird was pecking at something on the windowsill. It wasn’t his bird. It wasn’t his windowsill. He felt a deep, spiritual kinship with the creature.

Dale did what any seasoned professional with finely honed corporate instincts would do. He stood up, stretched, and walked to the coffee station, where he remained for 12 minutes, discussing the latest developments in hybrid work policies with a group of people equally invested in avoiding their email inboxes.

When he returned to his desk, he saw that the thread had grown.

@DaleH: Love the collaboration happening here! I’d say we might want to get People Strategy involved, since restructuring has workforce implications. Adding @RachelB to get her thoughts.

Rachel Bennet, Senior Director of People Strategy, saw the tag while in the middle of carefully crafting an email that said, “Let’s circle back on this in Q2” without any commitment to actual follow-up. She sighed audibly. This had all the signs of a request being passed around like a cursed amulet in a horror film. She had spent a decade perfecting the art of the soft handoff, and she wasn’t about to break her streak now.

@RachelB: Absolutely—important to get ahead of this. I believe Workforce Planning would be best suited to drive this forward. Looping in @TedR for visibility!

And thus, the initiative continued its slow, dignified journey through the corporate wilderness, each recipient carefully sidestepping ownership like a minefield in business-casual footwear.

Ted Rogers, who had just come back from a suspiciously long lunch, looked at the thread and made a decision that had been perfected over years of passive resistance.

He did nothing.

He closed Slack. He let the conversation drift into the quiet graveyard where unresolved tasks went to die. If it was important, someone would follow up. And if they didn’t? Well, then it had never really been his problem, had it?

Two weeks had passed since the restructuring initiative was born. And in those two weeks, something miraculous had happened: absolutely nothing.

Not a single meeting had been scheduled. No one had followed up. The Slack thread had sunk, like a forgotten shipwreck, to the murky depths of the channel history, buried beneath GIF reactions and passive-aggressive "gentle nudges" from the Project Management team. The initiative had entered the liminal space where ideas go to either be rediscovered months later with a sudden, panicked sense of urgency—or to be quietly reabsorbed into the corporate ether.

It should have died.

But then, in an act of unprecedented bureaucratic cruelty, the Chief Operating Officer had decided to check in.

@COO: Hey team, circling back on this. What’s our latest on the restructuring initiative? Let’s align on next steps.

The message detonated across the organizational structure like an unplanned fire drill.

Gordon P. Henshaw, Senior Vice President of Cross-Functional Initiatives and Synergistic Growth, saw it first and experienced a brief moment of existential panic. Hadn’t he successfully offloaded this to Karen? He scrolled up frantically. Yes, yes, he had. His hands hovered over the keyboard. He needed to be careful here. If he responded too quickly, it would look like he was the go-to person for this, and that was dangerous.

Instead, he opted for a classic maneuver.

@GordonPH: Great question! I believe @KarenT was tracking this—thoughts?

Perfect.

Karen Thompson, Director of Operational Alignment, was in the middle of a meticulously crafted “per my last email” response to someone who had dared to ignore her previous message. She saw the tag and felt her stomach tighten. She had to neutralize this before it spiraled.

@KarenT: Thanks, @GordonPH! I know @DaleH and the Org Change team were evaluating frameworks for this—any updates, Dale?

Dale Hemmings, Vice President of Organizational Change Management, had been staring at a blank Google Doc titled “Strategic Change Enablement Roadmap” for the past 45 minutes, hoping that if he waited long enough, the words would simply appear. They had not.

He sighed.

@DaleH: Yes, great discussion here. I’d say we’re still in the evaluation phase. @RachelB and @TedR—any insights from a People Strategy perspective?

Rachel Bennet, Senior Director of People Strategy, had no intention of being caught in this crossfire. She responded instantly.

@RachelB: Good callout, @DaleH! This has significant workforce implications, so we’ll need to ensure alignment with Leadership before proceeding. @COO, any guidance on priorities here?

The ball had been sent flying back to the COO’s court. It was a masterstroke. The strategy was simple: if a task became big enough, vague enough, and dependent on enough variables outside of your control, eventually, it would collapse under its own bureaucratic weight.

The COO took several hours to respond.

@COO: Good discussion—let’s get an update deck together by end of week. Who can take point on that?

Silence.

The seconds stretched. Minutes passed. No one dared to break the stillness of the channel. It was a high-stakes game of corporate chicken. Whoever answered first would be it.

Eventually, Dale played his last card.

@DaleH: Happy to provide input, but I think @TedR is best positioned to take the lead on this one.

Ted Rogers, who had successfully ignored this conversation for two weeks, had been caught flat-footed. He could not pass the buck any further. He had reached the end of the line. He stared at the screen. He considered quitting his job. He considered deleting Slack. He considered standing up, walking to the window, and just staring out at the city until everything felt less real.

Instead, he did what any true corporate survivor would do.

@TedR: Absolutely. I’ll get something drafted.

And with that, Ted became the owner.

But not really.

Because ownership, as every seasoned professional knows, is not about doing something. It’s about being the last person to speak before the meeting ends.

Ted, knowing this, promptly created a Google Doc, titled it “Restructuring Initiative—Draft”, and then did absolutely nothing.

By Friday morning, the Google Doc titled “Restructuring Initiative—Draft” had been opened exactly twice: once by Ted Rogers, who created it, and once by a confused intern who immediately closed it, fearing they had stumbled into forbidden corporate territory.

Ted had, of course, done nothing with the document. This was a strategic move, not a failure of execution. Experience had taught him that the worst thing he could do in this situation was actually write something. A document with words invited scrutiny. A document with words meant deadlines. A document with words made it real.

But a draft?

A draft was an enigma, a corporate Schrödinger’s cat—both an active project and an unformed idea, existing in perfect ambiguity.

At 4:56 p.m., he took a bold step and made his only contribution. He added the words:

"Initial thoughts—open for discussion."

Then, he closed his laptop.

The document link was sent in the Slack channel, and immediately, everyone in the thread did what was expected: they all clicked it, scrolled for three seconds, and then promptly left, satisfied that it existed and that, most importantly, someone else would deal with it.

For a moment, it seemed like Ted had won. He had successfully reabsorbed the task into the fog of corporate inertia. If he could just make it through the next 20 minutes, he’d be free until Monday, when people’s priorities would inevitably shift to something else.

But then, at 5:04 p.m., disaster struck.

@COO: Thanks, Ted! Let’s review this in Monday’s Leadership Sync. Excited to see where we are!

Ted stared at the message.

The others, upon seeing it, had only one reaction: pure, primal fear.

This had escalated beyond passive deflection. It had been scheduled into a meeting. A Leadership meeting. The nuclear option.

Everyone knew what had to be done. If Leadership was expecting a review, the safest move was to ensure there was nothing substantial enough to review. The initiative could not be allowed to take shape.

At 5:07 p.m., a tidal wave of comments hit the Google Doc.

@KarenT: Love the direction here! A few clarifying questions before we finalize scope.

@DaleH: Great start! One thought—should we consider aligning this with our Q3 transformation goals?

@RachelB: This is really important work. Before we proceed, I’d recommend defining key stakeholder engagement touchpoints to ensure alignment.

Within minutes, the document had become an impenetrable wall of comments, suggestions, and requests for alignment.

Not a single one contained a concrete decision.

By 5:13 p.m., Ted made his last move.

@TedR: Great insights, everyone! Given all the feedback, I think it makes sense to take a step back and refine our approach. Let’s regroup next week once we’ve aligned on strategic priorities.

It was a masterpiece.

"Let’s regroup next week."

Ted had just committed the greatest act of ownership deflection possible: he had successfully kicked the can down the road indefinitely.

The COO, upon seeing the message, reacted predictably.

@COO: Makes sense. Let’s make sure we’re set up for success. Looking forward to updates.

And just like that, the restructuring initiative dissolved into the corporate ether once more, joining the hundreds of other unfinished projects that would never be touched again.

By 5:20 p.m., the office was empty. The Slack thread was silent. The Google Doc, still marked as "Draft", would sit untouched for months, its only visitors being interns and confused new hires who would click it by accident.

Ted closed his laptop with a satisfied sigh. He had done it. He had not just avoided ownership—he had operationalized it.

As he walked out of the office, he saw Dale Hemmings staring out the window again, watching a bird peck at the same spot on the sill.

"Not my bird," Dale murmured.

"Not my window," Ted replied.

They nodded in mutual respect.