who owns the number?

in the management meetings we've sat in, there's almost always a slide with numbers. and more time is spent on what the number covers than on what should be done about it.

it looks like a data problem. it's an ownership problem.

the three ways a number loses its owner

1. nobody owns it. the number is in the report because it was there last year too. it gets read out, and the meeting moves on.
2. two people own it. marketing and sales measure the same thing, but not the same way. the meeting is about the definition, and whoever has the most convincing method wins. neither of them moves the number.
3. one person owns it, but can't move it. there's a name next to the number, and that person simply doesn't have access to the levers that change it. that isn't an owner. that's a reporter.

the three look alike from the outside. in a status meeting they all look like a number being followed.

two questions that settle it

ask five people in the building what the conversion rate was last month. if you get five numbers, the problem isn't your data. it's that nobody owns the definition.

then ask the person who owns the number what they will do about it next month. if they can't answer without naming another department, they don't own it.

the definition is where the fight is

almost every disagreement about a number is a disagreement about the definition. not about reality.

four things get debated every time. when does it count, who counts, what is deducted, and what is one unit. is a customer a company registration number or an email address. does a renewal count if it arrived two months late.

two departments that both measure correctly can easily arrive at two different numbers. that isn't an error. it's two definitions.

that's why the definition belongs with the person who owns the number, and it has to be written down in one place with a date on it. a definition that only exists as a formula in a spreadsheet isn't a definition. it's a calculation one person can change without anyone noticing.

and if the definition needs to change in the middle of a year, that's perfectly fine. it just has to be written down, or you've cancelled your own history without deciding to.

what ownership requires

a number has an owner when three things fit together: a definition, a person and a lever that person can pull themselves. most organisations have the second. fewer have the first.

when the lever sits somewhere else

there are two legitimate ways out, and only two. move the lever to the owner, or move the ownership to the lever.

the third way out is to leave the number shared. that's the one most people choose, and it's the one that doesn't work. shared responsibility is a polite way of saying nobody gets asked.

ownership without a cadence is still a report

a number with an owner but without a fixed time when a question is asked about it falls back to being a report. ownership doesn't come from being on an organisation chart. it comes from being asked, every month, by the same person.

that's also why ownership has to sit with a person and not a department. a department can't sit in a meeting.

when it isn't an ownership problem

sometimes the number shouldn't be measured at all. before you find an owner, it's worth asking whether anyone would act differently if the number looked different. if the answer is no, the number comes out of the report. it doesn't need an owner.