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Vasco Duarte's avatar

Oh my gawd! I can't believe I've just read a post that says "When everyone’s responsible, no one is" in 2024!

Rafa, I sympathize with your worries. But you should replace "ownership" with "blame" in your article. Your whole article confuses "blame" with "ownership" and with "responsibility"!

Let's face it, EVERYTHING in the world is a shared responsibility. You and your wife share responsibility for your shared life!

The Bystander Effect that you mention is MUCH MORE LIKELY TO HAPPEN, when only one person is responsible (that's the "it's not my job" quip we so often hear in our teams).

So, no. I don't agree, and I think that the illusion is that in a system (like a software team, or company) that putting the "blame" (that's the word you are implicitly referring to with the car example) on some individual will magically motivate them to be perfect in their job! NO!

As Deming put it: “The problem is not the people; the problem is the system. If you want to improve performance, you must work on the system.”

It's the management responsibility to make sure that shared ownership works, because in a team, all the code is shared, the delivery is shared, and the quality is shared. It's inevitable!

The DRI culture that Apple started is a cop-out by managers who want IC's to be responsible for their own failures to create a system where teams can excel!

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Marcos F. Lobo 🗻's avatar

Agreed 💯

There is no such a thing.

Even with the concepts of Responsible and Accountable are problems because fluid communication is needed 😅

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