Session 3: Ownership and reporting

Who owns what, and who needs to know?

Length: 45 to 60 minutes.
Format: short teach, real-work exercise, written output.

This is the session where unclear ownership stops being a guess and gets settled on paper. Expect productive conflict during the exercise — that is the point. Better to resolve it in a meeting than in a crisis.

Session at a glance

Length: 45 to 60 minutes.
You will need: the Ownership Map template open or printed; the Status words page open; one current project with more than one person involved (chosen in advance — see The week before below).
Participants leave with: one completed Ownership Map for a real project, plus a shared definition of green / yellow / red / blocked.

What we will teach

Owner versus helper.
Decision maker.
Reporting rhythm: who needs to know, what they need, how often.
Status words: green, yellow, red, blocked.

Timed agenda

Time	Segment	Move
0:00 – 0:05	Open	State the question. Note that conflict during this exercise is useful, not a problem.
0:05 – 0:15	The teach	Walk the roles + the four status words with one example each.
0:15 – 0:40	Exercise	Map the chosen project: owner, decision maker, helpers, who is informed.
0:40 – 0:55	Status practice	Apply green / yellow / red / blocked to current work.
0:55 – 1:00	Capture & close	Save the map. Confirm where it lives. Set the next date.

Opening words

“Today we are settling who owns what on [project X], and how we will report status on it from now on. If two people in this room think they own the same step, this is a good place to find out. Disagreement here is not a problem — it is the work.”

The teach (about 10 minutes)

Owner. One person moves the work forward. The owner is not necessarily the most senior or the most skilled; they are the person whose job it is to keep the work visible and unstuck.
Decision maker. Often the owner. Sometimes not — e.g. a project owner may need a department head to sign off on a budget. Name both roles explicitly.
Helper. People who do work on the project, but do not own the next step.
Informed. People who need to know, but do not need to act.
Status words. Read aloud from Status words:
- Green — on track, no help needed.
- Yellow — some risk; watching it.
- Red — serious risk; goal or date may be missed.
- Blocked — work cannot move until [a decision / answer / tool / person / resource].

The phrase to plant:

One owner. One decision maker. A small list of helpers. The smallest useful set of informed people.

The exercise (about 25 minutes)

Part A — Map the project (15 min)

Open the Ownership Map on screen. Walk through it field by field as a group:

The project name and its outcome (from Session 2 if applicable).
The owner. If two people both believe they are the owner, surface it now. Pick one. Write the other in as a decision maker or helper.
The decision maker.
The helpers.
Who needs to be informed and how often.

Part B — Status practice (10 min)

Pick three pieces of current work (not necessarily related to the mapped project). For each one, ask the room to call green, yellow, red, or blocked — with a one-sentence reason. Notice where people disagree on the color. That gap is information.

Scenario for this session

Use this scenario as the day’s case if the team did not bring a real one. It is written generic enough to apply across any of our businesses.

The starting situation

A project that crosses two business units has been moving for three weeks. The work has touched four people:

Person A treats the project as theirs and has been driving it.
Person B also treats the project as theirs and has been driving a parallel version of the same work.
Person C has been asked by both A and B for input but has not realized they are duplicating effort.
Person D — the executive who originally requested the work — has been getting status from both A and B separately and assumed they were collaborating.

Today someone notices the duplication. Two people are independently asking the same shared-services lead for help; the shared-services lead is confused about who to escalate to when the requests conflict.

What the group should produce

A completed Ownership Map for this project, with these specific moves:

Name one owner. Not two. Not “co-owners.” If A and B both insist they are the owner, the group settles it on paper in the room. The losing claimant becomes a helper or a decision maker, depending on the work.
Name the decision maker. Often the same as the owner, but not always — if the work requires a sign-off from a business-unit head, name that explicitly so the owner knows where to route decisions instead of getting stuck.
Name the helpers and the informed. Specifically: who needs to know without being able to change scope, and who is doing work on the project without owning it.
Name the chain-of-command path for conflicts. If the owner and a helper disagree, who breaks the tie? Put that in writing.

Where this goes wrong

The most common failure: the group invents “co-owners” to avoid the awkwardness of choosing one. Co-owners are usually no owner; the conflict the group is trying to avoid will surface again the next time the work needs a decision.

The second-most-common failure: the group settles ownership inside the room but forgets to tell the shared-services lead (who was caught between A and B in the original setup). The map must travel to everyone touching the project, not just to the people in the session.

Closing words

“[Owner] now owns this map. The first weekly status update using these words is due [date]. If your project name is on this map and you have not been told you are the owner, you are not the owner. Disagree out loud now if that is wrong.”

Common derailments and how to redirect

If you hear or see…	Then say…
Two people both volunteer as owner	“Good. We need one. Who has the authority to act if the other is on vacation?”
Nobody volunteers as owner	“Until someone owns it, this work is unowned. Who is the closest to it today?”
Someone hedges with “I’m kind of the owner”	“Kind-of-owner is not a role. Are you the owner, the decision maker, or a helper?”
Everyone wants to be on the informed list	“Informed means you get the update. It does not mean you can change scope. Is that what you want?”
A status disagreement gets personal	“Different colors are normal. What signal are you each reading? Let’s share that.”

Output

One completed Ownership Map for a real project, with named owner, decision maker, helpers, informed people, and reporting rhythm.

Facilitator notes

Conflict during this exercise is useful. It usually means ownership was unclear before. Resolve it on paper here so the team does not resolve it later in a problem.
Do not let the group avoid naming a single owner by inventing “co-owners.” Co-owners are usually no owner.
The status-words exercise is short on purpose. The point is to expose the cases where people read the same situation differently.

The week before

Choose the project. Tell the likely owner so they arrive ready.
Skim the Status words page so you can speak to it without reading.

The week after

The named owner sends the Ownership Map and the reporting rhythm to everyone in the session within 48 hours.
The first status update happens before Session 4.
Notice one place this week where ownership outside the mapped project is unclear. Bring that observation to Session 4.