The Name in the Box - Stefani's Briefs

Every process is supposed to have one - a clearly defined owner, neatly captured in a RACI, documented in a policy, and politely included in quarterly review emails that may or may not be read. That’s the theory, at least.

In practice, the picture is a bit more creative. Some processes have multiple “owners,” which is another way of saying no one quite feels accountable. Some have a name that survived three reorganisations but no longer has any meaningful connection to the work. And some - often the ones quietly holding the organisation together - operate without any identifiable owner at all, relying instead on collective goodwill and a high tolerance for ambiguity.

But even in the rare case where a name does exist and appears credible, the question doesn’t become less relevant. It becomes more so.

Ownership of what, exactly?

Because owning a process is not the same as running it, and the distinction matters more than most governance models are willing to admit. The people doing the work carry the operational reality - they know where the process bends, where it breaks, and where it only appears to function because someone intervenes at just the right moment. They own delivery in every practical sense, regardless of what the documentation suggests.

The name in the box, on the other hand, is theoretically responsible for something more elevated: the design of the process, the governance around it, and the rather inconvenient question of whether the process still makes sense in its current form.

This is usually the point where things become slightly uncomfortable.

Ask when the process was last properly reviewed - not cosmetically updated or formally “validated,” but actually challenged in terms of purpose, design, and outcomes - and the answer tends to involve a pause long enough to be informative.

What sits underneath that pause is a structural gap. Process owners are often positioned just far enough from delivery to lack visibility into how the work truly operates, while simultaneously being too detached from governance expectations to feel responsible for challenging the status quo. The result is a role that looks authoritative on paper but carries remarkably little practical weight.

In some cases, even that is generous, because it assumes there is a role to begin with.

This is not an individual failing. It is the predictable outcome of assigning accountability to satisfy an organisational diagram rather than designing it to serve the process itself. As long as ownership exists primarily as a label to complete a framework, it will continue to behave like one - present, visible, and largely symbolic, while the real work of keeping the process alive happens somewhere else entirely.

#Accountability #Ownership #ManagementThinking

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