Decision Rights Are One of the Key Ingredients When Scaling a Culture of Ownership.
They don’t replace trust, values, or leadership — they’re the structure that allows them to scale under pressure.
TL;DR
Ownership doesn’t scale on intent alone. It scales when decision rights are deliberately designed, reinforced, and protected.
When decision rights are clear, leaders, managers, and teams move forward with efficiency and confidence. When they aren’t, we’re left amidst the turmoil of lack of ownership and leaders becoming bottlenecks without ever intending to.
A Pattern I’ve Seen More Than Once
Early in my career — and repeatedly since — I’ve seen, and many times been a part of, capable teams that struggle in a way that didn’t make sense at first glance. Many of these examples showed all the right things with a company, division, or team that had a clear mission and priorities. The vision was understood and perhaps even the true owners were named and had accepted the charge with clear accountability and responsibility spread to the team.
Yet, progress stalled because decisions weren’t being made quickly enough or they started going back up the organization hierarchy.
I’ve seen this in manufacturing environments where supervisors waited on calls they were fully capable of making. I’ve seen it in executive initiatives where directors prepared endless recommendations instead of deciding. I’ve seen it in transformation programs where teams slowed down, not because the work was hard — but because the path forward felt risky or they simply weren’t able to truly make the decisions that they were supposed to be able to make (think budgets, brand-related marketing materials, technology systems, and even how to handle customer complaints).
In nearly every case, the issue wasn’t clarity or talent. It was unclear decision rights (a critical piece of creating ownership).
Why Decision Rights Matter in Creating a Culture of Ownership
Ownership answers: Who owns the outcome? Decision rights answer: Who gets to decide — and when?
You can have an owner for the outcome without defining the decision rights to support the outcome desired, but it won’t hold under pressure.
Think of this using the following example…
Frank owns the P&L for his division and the desired outcome is an EBITDA of 8% this quarter on $100M in sales. This is up from last quarter at $95M in sales and 6% EBITDA. Frank’s leadership team includes department heads of HR, production, fulfillment, procurement, sales, customer experience, finance/accounting, and quality.
Each of these leaders need to know the decisions they truly own.
Do they have full decision rights for their own budget?
How do their decisions/tradeoffs impact other departments?
What are the decisions that need Frank to be involved in (key personnel, key customers, key technology - and what defines “key)?
The clearer these decision rights are at the outset, the better the outcomes will be, the more efficient the work will be, and the better the culture will be.
When teams aren’t sure which decisions they truly own they wait. They escalate “just to be safe.” And over time, leaders are pulled back into decisions they never intended to own — not because they want to be, but because the system left a gap or we, as leaders, didn’t hold the line for where decisions need to be made.
What It Looks Like When Decision Rights Are Clear
I’ve also been fortunate to help build and transform organizations where decision rights are intentionally designed and the culture of ownership is ever-present. The difference is night and day.
When decision rights are clear, teams make decisions where the work is happening. Escalations come with recommendations, not just the problems. Leaders aren’t surprised by decisions, rather they’re surprised by how little they need to be involved day to day and how much time they regain for higher-impact work.
More importantly, a culture of ownership develops and sticks because leaders, managers, and teams are aligned on:
which decisions they truly own
which decisions they do not
what tradeoffs they are empowered to make
when escalation is expected and encouraged — not punished
That clarity creates momentum, confidence, and a healthier operating rhythm.
How Leaders Actually Design Decision Rights (Not Just Talk About Them)
This is where many leadership teams struggle — not because they don’t value a culture of ownership, but because they never translate it into concrete decision design.
Using the earlier example, Frank doesn’t scale ownership by being involved in every decision that impacts his outcome goals surrounding sales growth or EBITDA. He scales ownership by being explicit about which decisions require his involvement and which never should; and taking it one step further - why (that will be a topic for another post).
At the front end, effective leaders do three things deliberately and in an ongoing manner:
1. Identify the Decisions That Matter Most
Every outcome is shaped by a small number of decisions. For a P&L owner, these are often decisions related to the tradeoffs between:
cost structure
people, process and capacity
pricing and customer commitments
capital or technology investment
When we explicitly name these items and provide the guardrails for them teams can act effectively. This looks like providing a budget (or similar capacity constraint), confirming must-haves and non-negotiables at all levels of the decision trees/within the organization.
2. Define Who Decides and What Tradeoffs They Can Make
For each critical decision, leaders need to clarify:
who decides
what tradeoffs they are allowed to make without escalation
what conditions do require escalation
This is where ownership becomes real. Some examples…
If a department leader owns a budget/capacity constraint, do they have authority to reallocate it mid-quarter or is that really someone elses call?
If a quality leader sees risk, can they slow production or do they need approval?
If a sales leader needs to protect margin, can they walk away from a customer or can they make the decision to lower margin on a deal and make it up elsewhere?
When those boundaries are clear, judgment improves. When they aren’t, teams wait.
3. Reinforce Decision Rights Through Behavior
Decision rights don’t stick because they’re documented - especially not every one. To be clear, I am not saying that its a requirement to over-engineer things and have a formal structure in place for all decisions all the time. Rather, that it’s important to have the basic conversations at each level when creating a culture of ownership. Decision rights stick because leaders reinforce them at each of these levels.
That means:
backing decisions publicly, even when tradeoffs are uncomfortable
not reopening decisions without new information and a real need to do so
treating escalation as a signal, not a failure
resisting the urge to step back in “just to help” and instead supporting our teams at all levels to make the decisions and coach them if there is a disagreement as to why
This is where many leaders unintentionally break the system they’re trying to build.
A Simple Operating Test for Decision Rights
Leaders don’t need a complex framework to know whether decision rights are working. A simple weekly reflection is often enough:
Which decisions drifted upward this week?
Which escalations surprised me?
Which decisions should never have come to me?
Which decisions did I not agree with and was I clear in communicating that ahead of time as to why I didn’t agree or did I provide feedback/coaching quickly to redirect?
Patterns that emerge here are normally design signals rather than performance issues.
When the same types of decisions keep escalating, decision rights haven’t been designed clearly enough.
Up Next: how we can create Guardrails to support good decision making and create speed especially under pressure.
A Leadership Reflection
When decisions keep coming back to you, pause before assuming it’s a people problem.
Ask instead if I actually designed and am actively reinforcing the decision rights — or did I assume ownership would emerge on its own?
When I step in, am I coaching the decision… or quietly taking it back?
Ownership doesn’t scale on intent. When leaders consistently hold the line on where decisions live — especially when pressure makes that uncomfortable – a culture of ownership starts to form.