In my last post, Nobody Owns This, I argued that unless someone in the business owns the outcome by name, a programme can deliver everything on its plan and still not deliver the result. So how do you close it? Let me sketch a scenario for you.
An organisation ran much of its operation on a fairly basic rostering system, which was central to paying salaries and contractor invoices. A previous operations manager had bought it long ago and had since left. Finance paid the subscription, IT kept the system up, and team leaders used it every day. Then the feed into payroll stopped, and a number of people were paid incorrectly.
This was a serious issue for the organisation, but the first hour went into deciding who owned the system and who should decide what happened next. Most people's first answer would be IT. IT said they didn't own it; they only kept it running. Operations saw it as an IT system and just wanted their people paid. Finance said they just paid the invoice. Nobody genuinely thought they owned it.
Without a business owner, decisions about how to fix the system and get payroll sorted were delayed. A business owner who understood the system and why it mattered could have decided quickly, alongside IT, to get people paid first and fix the system properly afterwards, because that is what mattered to the people using it.
The technology owner still matters. Someone has to understand the system's health, access, integrations and support arrangements. But most IT teams don't fully understand the business impact when a system fails, and that is the other half of the picture the business owner brings.
There is a distinction I think we need to make. Two system owners are not jointly accountable for the overall business outcome. That remains with business leadership. But I do believe that technology leaders have a responsibility to make ownership gaps visible, even when a system was bought outside IT.
For technology leaders, my suggestion is to start with five simple steps:
✅ Make the real system landscape visible, including tools purchased outside IT
✅ Name a business owner and a technology owner for each important system
✅ Agree what “working” means and who is watching its technical health and dependencies
✅ Keep the list current, particularly when people leave or responsibilities change
✅ Make time for the two owners to talk regularly, before an urgent conversation is required
The same principle applies if your organisation uses a managed service provider. I would still want a named technical counterpart, clarity about what the provider supports and what sits with the software vendor, and a business owner inside the organisation. We can outsource support, but not the need for clear ownership and sound decisions.
So, here's this week's challenge. Think of the five systems your organisation could least afford to lose tomorrow. Could you name the business owner and the technology owner for each one, and do those two people know each other well enough to make decisions under pressure?
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