Over the course of my career, I’ve found that there are some principles that are key for people and teams to be effective. One of these is that everything should have an owner. Everything should have someone that is responsible. Everything should have a designated person whose job it is to care about it. This might a be bug or vulnerability reports in software, it could be routine processes, or who responds to certain emails.
When there isn’t clear ownership, things slip through the cracks, things are forgotten about, and minor issues can quickly become anything but minor.
This works well enough for many things where ownership is clear and agreed upon, but things get ugly when that thing is a problem. Here, human nature starts getting in the way, and leads to unfortunate outcomes. In this essay, I’d like to explore how people deal with the problems they see.
The Polish idiom “nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” is, perhaps, my favourite phrasing of the statement “that’s not my problem.” Some variant of this statement is made countless times everyday in Slack threads and email exchanges, sometimes rightfully staying out of other people’s area of responsibility, but far more often, to avoid a problem that they don’t see as theirs to address.
An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot. - Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
In reality, when problems are found, people react in very different ways. From my experience, there are 3 kinds of people, when they see a problem, they will do one of these things:
- Unless it’s clearly theirs, they assume it’s somebody else’s problem and stop thinking about it.
- Unless they’re told it’s theirs, they assume it’s somebody else’s problem and stop thinking about it.
- Unless they see somebody else handling it, they assume it’s their problem.
When a person says “that’s not my problem,” they are probably in the first group. It’s not clearly theirs, so they drop it, move on, and focus on other things. As they don’t perceive it as their responsibility to address (or ensure that someone else is addressing it), it drops from their mind.
This form of automatic anti-ownership is both understandable, and, to me at least, disappointing. Instead of claiming ownership, at least until a better fitting owner is identified, they avoid making a concerted effort to not have ownership. This strategy greatly increases the odds of the problem slipping through the cracks.
Where the first group exhibits an active aversion to owning issues they see, the second group exhibits an indifference to it. Unless given the order to take ownership, they adopt a more passive approach and pay little heed to this issue unless told to.
This is not to say that anyone in either of the first two groups are avoiding work, or unwilling to take ownership, but that due to the nature of different personality types, incentives, and organisational dynamics, people can be disinclined to adopt a problem that isn’t clearly theirs.
We’ve all seen this, right?
None of these traits though should be particularly surprising to anyone with a non-trivial amount of leadership experience. These are common traits, and lead to common issues, and are simply part of the routine within teams. Enough ink electrons have been spilled covering these archetypes, so I won’t belabour the point on them. Instead, I will focus on the third personality type.
For those people that assume a problem is theirs unless (or until) they see that someone else is handling it, those that are proactive about accepting ownership, they do so at both visible and invisible costs. It’s these costs and the motivation that pushes them to proactively accept ownership that we will be discussing here.
In general, people that are proactive are seen positively, are more likely to be promoted, are often given greater responsibility. After all, they are already accepting greater responsibility without being asked to.
Before we move on, I would like to look at a seemingly subtle difference, which is, in reality, an important distinction in both behaviour and motivation.
The archetype – the people – I’m describing here are those that proactively accept ownership of problems they see, though they do not seek ownership. The difference is critical: one accepts what they see, the other seeks to expand what they own. The latter may be seeking greater control or influence, while the former only seeks to ensure that problems are addressed.
This oft misunderstood distinction can lead to conflict or discord, though the motivations are entirely different, as those that seek to expand control are less likely to be motivated to actually address problems, but to leverage problems to achieve other aims. Where those that proactively accept are instead motivated to achieve a resolution to the problem, or at least a resolution to their perceived responsibility for it.
As this essay is a study of how problems are perceived, and not how they can be leveraged, I will not be further exploring those that seek to use problems (and other forces and events) for their advantage.
For those that proactively accept ownership, they feel a deep sense of responsibility for issues they see, even if they are outside the direct scope of their role. Some portion of this may be rooted in loyalty and concern for their company, some may be linked to a broader sense of what they owe to coworkers, either way, that sense of responsibility is real. It’s also difficult to ignore, creating an unavoidable and inescapable weight once they become aware of a problem.
Once the knowledge of the problem comes into existence, the increasingly oppressive weight of the problem grows. And it will continue to grow until that responsibility is, one way or another, discharged.
This practice tends to result in fewer problems being left until they develop into a large issue, but it weighs on the people that feel obliged to pursue these problems.
While the people that are the most dedicated to ensuring success, to avoiding the deferred consequences of ignored problems, also are those that are seen as the squeaky wheel. They are the proverbial messenger that are too often the first in the line of fire. By opting to say something, to acknowledge the problem, to seek a solution or an appropriate owner, they are faced with continuous guilt by association, they are blamed for bringing negativity into discussions.
This creates a singularly unfortunate combination of pressures: the perceived weight of responsibility and the dread of blame and resistance for acknowledging that the problem exists.
When you combine this personality type with certain careers, such as anything in security, a field whose members are often seen as a particular inconvenience when added to a conversation, the results are worse (at least for those that feel compelled to open their mouths).
Yet, for all the benefits of this archetype in terms of results, the self-imposed pressures speed burnout, magnify discontent due to the recurring instances of shooting the messenger, and creates an impenetrable cloud of stress that shades everything. Useful for a team, bad for the person.
If you look in the mirror and see the person that has no choice but to adopt each and every unowned problem they encounter: welcome to the annoyingly stressful club. I very much identify with this archetype as well.
Thanks to this deep sense of responsibility, one ends up caring for a substantial number of proverbial monkeys. Though it’s important to understand how much of this pressure is self-inflicted, and not organisationally imposed. More importantly though, it’s important to remember that the vast majority of these problems aren’t actually yours: you don’t own them, you’re a caretaker until the rightful owner is identified.
When viewed through this critical lens, that there is a key distinction between ownership and custody, the pressure is lowered and the path forward is simplified.
If you are in a leadership role, you need to understand which members of your team exercise this type of proactive acceptance, and actively aid them in finding the proper owners of these problems. This work to redirect these problems will substantially lower stress and slow burnout, and will demonstrate that they don’t need to own these issues, only care for them temporarily.
Just as importantly, you need to take due care when discussing these issues to ensure that you don’t create a feeling that they are being seen as a problem themselves. The repeated negative receptions to speaking up eventually creates a constant fear, a latent pressure in every conversation.
For those of us that have shared this lived experience, we need to identify this in others, so that we can leverage our positions & experience to relieve the pressure from others.
