NBOP National Board of Operations Professionals

Part three. The OwnerLesson 11 of 15

The passion owner

The person who cares most about a number is not automatically the right person to own it.

The instrument Separating care from control

0:49. Captions on by default. Everything said here is also written on this page, so nothing is only in the video.

Read the transcript

When an unowned number is found, the instinct is to give it to whoever cares most about it. This is usually wrong, and it fails predictably. Ownership requires two things: caring about the outcome and controlling the levers that move it. The person who cares most frequently has neither budget nor authority, which means they can only escalate. After a few months of escalating they either burn out or stop, and the number is unowned again, now with a name against it, which is worse because it looks handled. Caring can be manufactured by measurement. Control cannot be manufactured at all. So list the three actions most likely to move the number, and ask who can take each without asking permission. If that is three people across three functions, the problem is structural.

When an unowned number is found, the instinct is to give it to whoever cares most about it. This is usually wrong and it fails in a predictable way.

Ownership requires two things: caring about the outcome and controlling the levers that move it. The person who cares most frequently has neither budget nor authority over the levers, which means they can only escalate. After a few months of escalating they either burn out or stop, and the number is unowned again, now with a name against it, which is worse than before because it looks handled.

The right owner is the person who controls the largest share of the levers, whether or not they care. Caring can be manufactured by measurement. Control cannot be manufactured at all.

A concrete test. For the number in question, list the three actions most likely to move it. Then ask who can take each of those actions without asking permission. If that is one person, they are the owner. If it is three people in three functions, then you do not have an ownership problem, you have a structural one, and assigning it to an individual will not fix it.

In the structural case the honest answer is either to change the structure or to schedule the decision: a standing forum with the three people in it and the authority to decide. Both are real answers. Naming a passionate owner is not.

Two things worth doing, neither of which costs anything

One Help decide what a competent operator is expected to know The eight domains carry equal provisional weighting until practicing operators say what the work actually is. Takes about eight minutes. Two Check whether you are eligible About a minute. No account, no email field, and nothing you enter is kept.

Read the standard in full, free and in the open, before you pay anything or give anyone an address.