Passive Ownership Transfer (POT)

Most management systems don’t collapse because no one cares. They collapse because everyone thinks someone else cares.

Many writings treat ownership as binary: you either have it, or you don’t. In my experience, the real danger lies here: ownership doesn’t vanish in a dramatic flash, it leaks away in small, polite exchanges. Someone says “tell me what you want me to do”, and voilà, the responsibility has slipped out of their hands, floating in the air between the doer and the task-giver, like a balloon no one’s holding.

I call those moments Passive Ownership Transfers (POTs). They’re subtle, hard to catch, and often sound nice. But pile up enough of them, and your team ends up drowning in responsibility puddles, wondering why nothing moves forward.

Spotting and killing POTs is, like shaping identities, one of the core skills of good managers. Because ownership is leaky by nature — you have to contain and transfer it with care. Neglect it, and sooner or later the balloon (and teams) bursts. So let’s see how to avoid a big boom.

Ownership: a simple definition

The quickest way to spot ownership at work is simple:

Ownership = who gets fired if it fails, who gets promoted if it succeeds

It’s rough and a bit harsh but makes the point: ownership isn’t about titles or “who contributed”. It’s about consequences. Ownership is about responsibility.

This implies:

1. If there are no consequences, there’s no ownership
2. Ownership must be tied to a person (and only one per ownership)
3. Good companies reward ownership. Bad ones reward activity. Very bad ones reward people who only distribute ownership
4. To reward ownership, you need to have a clear definition of what success and failure looks like
5. Ownership helps make decision (eg: fire/promote). The universe doesn’t care about ownership, but your boss/investors certainly do

Those are conditions for ownership to exist. But to spot POTs, a definition is not enough. We must look at what ownership is not (apophatic style!).

POT is ownership lost in translation

Passive Ownership Transfer (POTs) are the moments ownership leaks. It’s when someone hands off responsibility but the other person doesn’t actually take it. The ownership doesn’t land anywhere. It just hangs in the air, invisible but heavy.

A POT is ownership lost in translation… until someone notices.

Those leaks can come from everywhere: a team, a person, culture, … Sometimes the transfer is unintentional (“can you review it and tell me if it’s good enough?”). Sometimes ownership is not fully received (“ok let’s do your way”). Either way, ownership gets diluted.

What matters most is to spot immediately when an action dilutes someone’s ownership and stop it right away. When gas leaks, it’s hard to scoop it back in the bottle. Same goes for ownership!

The best managers I know aren’t just good at inspiring, they’re veteran POTs-hunters. Teaching “high-agency” is hard. Hunting POTs is easier. So let’s see what POTs look like, and how to catch them. Rest assured: if you finish this article and can’t name at least three POTs you’ve heard this week, I’ll take full ownership responsibility for wasting your time!

Detect POTs

POTs usually sound polite. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear responsibility run away faster than a unicorn’s burn. Here are some classic POTs:

• “I’m stuck in my operations because my boss’ vision isn’t clear“
• “Tell me what you want me to do”
• “We failed my project as [other person] didn’t do his assigned task”
• “What do we do for client X?”
• “That how I’d done it, but it’s not up to me to decide”
• “Tell me what to prioritize”
• “We had a bad quarter, but the market is really tough right now”
• “Can you review and tell me if it’s good enough?”

Do those sentences look innocent to you? They’re not. Those sentences are ownership-crushing machines. They are because they’re not obvious. They infer a subtle and passive transfer of ownership.

To detect those, the test is simple: let’s ask the simple question “if things go awry, who’s to blame?”. If the answer is “someone else”, a wild POT appeared!

• “my boss’ vision isn’t clear”, “other person didn’t”, and “the market is tough” -> blame someone/something else.
• “tell me what”, “tell me how”, or “not up to me” -> transfer the decision (= responsibility) to someone else, who can be blamed in the future.

After a POT, the initial ownership-bearer is no longer to blame. By diluting ownership, it pushes back the responsibility of a failure. Of course, if the project is a success, the ownership will be back home quickly…!

Phrase	POT on …
“we did as you wanted”	results
“can you review and validate this?”	quality
“do we do choice A or B?”	choice
“do this and ping me please”	project management
“do this when you’ve got time”	timing

How to fight POTs

There are great articles about high-agency, how great founders are dictators, and clear methods for goals setting. Those are great starts, but aren’t specific about ownership transfers.

To fight Passive Ownership Transfers, you must do … Active Ownership Transfers (duh!). To be active means to make things explicit.

To do so, use the CCC Framework:

CCC Framework to fight POTs:

1. be Clear – about what you need
2. Confirm – the ownership is transferred
3. Contain – unexpected change

First, we need to send clear information:

Passive OT	What’s lacking?	Active OT
“do this when you have time”	timing	“I need this by Friday, is it ok for you?”
“draft a first version of X”	quality	“Write a print-ready version. No draft, the final thing.”
“Do we do A or B?”	decision	“We’re going with A unless you see major issue. Speak up now.”

In real life, bad managers combine POTs. A “magical” example:

❌ 💬 Harry > Alice: “client A needs an article about Hogwarts and it’s rather urgent, can you do it please?”.

Here, what Harry does to Alice? Harry POTs her (Hehe!).

✅ 💬 Harry > Alice: “write a ready-to-publish version by next Friday. If you want feedback, ask by Wednesday“.

Now it’s clear: Harry doesn’t do “review”, he gives feedback, so he doesn’t own quality. He gives a clear deadline, so he doesn’t own timing. The ownership transfer from Harry to Alice is complete and explicit.

Second: we need to make sure our colleague receive, understand and accept the ownership transfer. Even a clear handoff can fail if the receiver doesn’t really take it.

Phrase	Role
“just to confirm, can you restate what’s expected?”	understanding
“is timing “review by Wednesday and perfect-copy by Friday” ok for you?”	timing and quality check
“I know you work on X & Y too. Will you be able to prioritize this project on top of those?”	prioritization check
“are you OK owning this fully?”	ownership check

There is no confirmation without feedback. Ownership transfer is a conversation, not an order.

❌ 💬 Alice > Harry: “wow it’s gonna be hard, but OK… I’ll do it”.

Here Alice agrees. That’s the only information we have. We don’t know why and to what Alice agreed. Did she agree just to get rid of her annoying boss? Did she agree to the quality standard? Are there any hidden consequences?

✅ 💬 Alice > Harry: “Looks urgent so I’ll deprioritize project X for this one. I’ll send you a good version on Wednesday, and I’ll need your feedback by Thursday afternoon so that I can iterate: ok for you?“.

Here Alice accepts the task, define conditions and explain consequences. Good job Alice!

Finally, we need to anticipate unexpected change. Ownership doesn’t mean rigidity. Things will shift: scope, priorities, constraints. A very good tool to plan is the Compass vs Map method: compass sets direction, while map explains how to get there.

Laura Tacho gives a great example:

Compass: “If the project scope changes, the whole project team needs to be informed.”

Map: “If there are material changes to the UI or UX because of technical constraints, the whole project team needs to be informed before those changes are deployed — including PMs and customer success. It’s not enough to just mention them in your PR. We need to discuss it in Slack, and have these discussions as early as possible in case we need to change something.”

Three minutes of clarity here can save three hours of review_v43_final.doc.

My lessons learned the hard way:

• Asking people to restate the task shows whether they got the why, not just the what. When they grasp the why, they’re far more motivated.
• Asking “are you excited?” or “do you see blockers?” catches problems before they explode.
• I used to “help” by taking little pieces of ownership myself from my team: a quick review, a small subtask, etc. It felt efficient, but it robbed teammates of 100% ownership. So I stopped and my team became magically more productive.

POTs & personalities

Not everyone relates to ownership the same way. Roughly, you’ll meet three types:

• High-agency types: they embrace ownership easily. Hand it to them and they’ll run with it.
  –> make sure they know how delegate too
• Anxious types: “If I fail the whole company will collapse in flames”. Small and big projects feel like life or death.
  –> give reassurance
• Carefree types: ownership just slides off them. Responsibili-what?
  –> be extra explicit

A more subtle way to look at it is to put people on two axes: motivation driver and attitude:

• Motivation: do people expect a reward (transactional) or is the work the reward itself (intrinsic)?
• Attitude: is their default stance positive or negative?

Knowing this, you can empathize different things during the transfer. Each type has its pro & cons. People can be so positive and intrinsically motivated that they forget their other duties. Some people can get more attached to the reward than the goal, and thus will complain if anything unexpected happen (as it “robs” it from the reward). Etc.

• Intrinsic + Positive: make sure their ownership criteria align with yours and remind them of other projects.
• Intrinsic + Negative: check motivation, a strong driver for intrinsic people. Give a confidence boost if needed.
• Transactional + Positive: be extra-clear on incentive in both cases (success or failure) and remind people that team success > individual success.
• Transactional + Negative: anticipate people that want to “opt-out” if things go bad. Ensure a reward in any case.

POTs up, POTs down, POTs out

Everyone is POTing and POT flow in every direction.

POTs up (↗)
These are bottom-up leaks, when employees hand responsibility upward. The classic line: “We failed because leadership didn’t give us a clear vision.” Legit or not, it’s still a leak. Local projects can succeed without a 360° picture.

“Launching the new blog was a total failure. To my defense, our leadership didn’t share its 10-years vision” – marketing dude, adept of the POT

Another common version is “We missed targets because we’re understaffed”. Translation: our results belong to the budget-holder, not us. It’s a POT directed to leadership, or something more vague: “the resources”. Left unchecked this POT corrodes culture fast and becomes the go-to-excuse for bad performance.

The cure is simple: disagreements should surface when ownership is handed over, not afterward. Be clear, be directive, and challenge excuses early.

POTs down (↘)
Leaders and managers are especially prone to down-POTs.

“We failed our Q4 by 60%, mainly due to our Sales intern not doing enough cold-calling” – CEO of POTCompany to his board

Down-POTs often come from trying to be nice. Too nice. No one wants to be seen as a micro-manager. But being too broad in giving tasks, forgetting to check the basics (deadline, quality, etc.) and avoiding conflict is not being lenient. It’s being incompetent.

One special note about managers ranting at one’s team (worse: their own). By definition, managers own hiring, firing and training. Passing the blame down is just dodging it. It’s one of the POTs I’ve seen more than I expected. Sentences like “we need to level up the playing field”, are red flags for long-tenure managers (totally fine if it’s a new manager assessment). It reflects a situation that the manager let unfold during a long time, filled by POTs.

External POTs (↔)
Here, ownership gets punted outside the company. They are a transfer of ownership to another vague and ill-defined entity. Like “the market”, or “clients”.

I’ve seen many CEOs blaming “the board”, “market conditions”, “the crisis”, etc. to explain bad results. There is no harm to look at external forces. The thing that makes it a POT is not to do anything about it. While we can’t “own” a market, it’s in the CEO’s ownership to understand it and plan accordingly.

Betting a company on the next fundraising round is transferring most of the ownership to the VC market (“damn VCs that didn’t get it and let the company die!”). Ownership is deciding to spend less, pivot, find other customers, etc.

A non-obvious part where we do POTs without knowing is in designing the Customer Experience. “The client will be trained on the platform” sounds clear, but hides risks. If the client doesn’t master the platform, whose fault is it? Will the client be aware of it? Will he care or push back the fault on us? Is that clear to the client that it’s his responsibility to put us in next year’s budget?

By not assessing for each step if the client accepted ownership, everything we ask of a client is a risk.

Conclusion: kill POTs

Companies are systems. We tend to focus on the stocks: people, customers, money. But the real story is in the flows: the invisible currents that link everything together. Ownership is one of those flows. Most writing treats it as a stock, something you have or don’t. But seeing it as a flow is a better way to understand how we actually work together.

Don’t over-engineer it. POTs aren’t solved with checklists. They’re solved by managers who notice when ownership starts to slip and stop it before it disappears. Building the POT-detection muscle makes us better at organizing the chaos that is business-life. So now, less process and more plumbing!