Strategy Ownership Is Quietly Shifting from Individuals to Roles

What’s happening

Strategy teams are beginning to anchor ownership to roles, not named individuals.

|This shift is emerging across enterprise strategy offices, PMOs, and transformation teams as organisations contend with:

• higher executive turnover

• operating model redesigns

• flatter management layers

• rotating portfolio leadership
  

Execution research from ClearPoint Strategy, AchieveIt, and PMI consistently shows that a large proportion of strategic goals and initiatives lose momentum when owners change roles, leave the organisation, or become overloaded.

In response, some organisations are redefining ownership as:

• “The role accountable for outcomes,” not “the person currently in the seat”

• persistent across restructures

• explicitly transferred during role changes
  

Ownership is being treated less as a personal assignment and more as infrastructure.

Why it matters

Individual-based ownership can be fragile. Especially when ownership is tied to people:

• initiatives stall during transitions

• accountability becomes ambiguous

• progress depends on informal handovers

• execution risk accumulates silently
  

Execution benchmarks consistently show that “phantom ownership”, where an owner exists on paper but is inactive, is one of the strongest predictors of non-delivery.

Role-based ownership reduces that risk by:

• making accountability durable

• forcing explicit handovers

• separating execution responsibility from individual tenure
  

In environments with frequent change, ownership durability is now as important as ownership clarity.

What to do next week

Map ownership to roles, not names: For your top initiatives, record the accountable role alongside the individual currently filling it.

Stress-test ownership continuity: “If this person changed roles tomorrow, who would own this?”

Formalise ownership transfer: Add ownership handover as a required step in role changes, restructures, or leadership transitions.

Track owner activity, not assignment: Flag initiatives where owners haven’t updated, decided, or intervened in the last 30 days, regardless of who they are.