Stream owners

Once the plan has been developed, in most cases it will be broken down into work packages or action streams. However, at this stage it will be difficult to decide who should own the various work streams because much of the detail will be uncertain. For example, in a product development project one stream might deal with changes in the engineering department and another will deliver improved bottom-line results for the marketing manager. It is therefore open to debate as to who should be held accountable for delivery of a stream. Do the logical owners accept responsibility for the change? Should it be a shared responsibility? Or do they both attempt to absolve themselves on the pretext that they don't have time or interest in the change? Although as a backstop you might be able to own some of the streams, unless the home players accept some responsibility then it becomes harder to effect a logical hand-over of responsibility at a later date.

You should aim to move to a position where both the design of the change stream and the owner are clearly understood. As the ownership of the stream becomes clear, this will lead to a deeper understanding of the design issues. However, as these become clearer so the issue of ownership comes into question, as seen in Fig. 8.5. The end result is that you might need to allow time and space for people to accept ownership of a work stream. If you can sit back and let the ball bounce around, when it finally settles there will be a greater chance that it has fallen into the right home. If you try to force the issue and end up allocating the work stream to an owner, there is a greater chance that game playing will emerge later.

Imagine a project designed to reengineer a manufacturing process. At the outset, ownership of the work stream might be allocated to a director on the main board. Once he or she looks more closely at the issue, they might decide to pass it to the engineering director. This person does some work on clarifying the issues that drive the change and then passes it to the technical design team since they control the necessary levers to effect the change. Finally, once they have mapped out the change levers, it might end up with the plant manager to oversee the implementation.

These ownership transfers are legitimate and make sense in isolation - the problem is that with each transfer energy is diffused and lost. Like a raindrop rolling down a window, as it falls lower it gets smaller and loses energy. Whereas at the outset the goal was to reengineer the whole manufacturing process, it might end up that local changes are made to the flow mechanism - possibly things that the plant manager had planned to do anyway. The end result is the delivery of a safe change, one favoured by all stakeholders.

To avoid this dilution, you must ensure that authority is firmly tied to accountability. Like the bungee jumper who dives off the bridge parapet, always know that the elastic is anchored. The same applies here, no matter how far the natural owner chooses to devolve authority, they must still hold on to the accountability. Without this anchor, the stream can lose energy, direction and focus, resulting in only partial delivery of the goals. If circumstances dictate the initial owner must let go, then the recipient must be made aware of the fact that they are being handed both aspects and will be measured accordingly on the end result.