How many times have you been involved in a project where no one seems to take action until a deadline looms– then you have to manage the actions?

Have you had to lead a project to get the information needed for a proposal or a report to management?

When I speak to groups and ask these questions, almost everyone in the room raises their hands. What strikes me as funny is this: if I took everyone with a raised hand and put them in project teams, who would follow? There would be too many leaders!

Seriously, the number of natural leaders in any given group is small. Most people want to be led and do not mind passing ownership and responsibility to someone else — especially in risky situations. Ownership will be avoided when people have nothing to risk, too.

Recently, I was involved in a project with three different areas of a firm - sales, delivery, and a technical team — all involved in building a proposal for services to a prospect. The only group at risk if no business was landed was the Sales team. If the client accepted the proposal the other departments would be at risk. For weeks, the Sales team let the other departments know about the upcoming proposal, its deadlines and did everything they could to make sure there was no last minute rush to get things done.

You know how this ends up. At the 11th hour, the other departments decided to participate in the process of putting together the proposal. The end result is a half-baked proposal and inter-departmental resentment.

When any leader considers the concept of ownership, s/he must figure out what drives all people involved to have some sense of ownership. Without this sense, no one really cares about the project. Team compensation and advancement must be based on measurable metrics. One of these measurements should be “# of projects managed to successful completion”. In my example, why not create a metric for “proposals delivered prior to deadline”.

It is also very easy for people to get caught up in daily tasks and not look at the big picture. When planning compensation and looking at the type of projects your teams execute, make sure the metrics are measurable. Otherwise, people can avoid taking responsibility.