The Ball is Always in Your Court
Making the case for radical personal responsibility and matrixed accountability
TL;DR - Companies stall when team members pass the ball without ensuring it's caught. Leaders can ensure success by making sure everyone owns bottom-line outcomes, not just their isolated tasks.
"What's the status of Project X?" asks a product lead at NewCo, Inc.
"I'm not sure," shrugs Teammate 1. "I completed my edits of the product requirements document last week. No idea if Teammate 2 reviewed them yet."
Translation: "I did my part and forgot about it."
High-Velocity workflows demand more than just passing the ball—they require confirming receipt and ensuring the next person catches it cleanly. The fatal flaw plaguing most companies? Team members who believe they're only responsible for their individual pieces, rather than collectively owning the larger mission.
Today's Workflows are not Assembly Lines
Assembly lines create perfect linear accountability. Employee 1 performs a task, the product physically moves to Employee 2, then Employee 3, and so on. Nobody can "drop the ball" without the entire line grinding to a halt.
Modern workflows aren't built this way—yet we pretend they are.
The Matrix of Responsibility
Today's work thrives in a complex matrix of overlapping responsibilities. When you complete your task and simply "pass it on," you're stuck in an outdated mindset. The truth is you're not just responsible for your part—you own the project's success.
Every team member should think like a quarterback. Great QBs don't just hurl the ball in a receiver's general direction and call it a day. They aim precisely, communicate clearly, and take responsibility for completing the pass. If the ball drops, both players share the blame.
This is matrixed accountability—where everyone owns not just their contributions, but also the connections between tasks and, most importantly, the ultimate outcome.
The Cost of "Not My Problem"
The "I did my part" mentality bleeds companies dry. Projects die in the handoff zones between teammates. Small issues metastasize into crises before anyone notices. Critical information gets trapped in silos. Teams waste hours hunting down updates or redoing work. Deadlines evaporate without clear ownership of delays
The worst cost is cultural: when dodging responsibility becomes normal, engagement plummets. People stop caring about results and fixate on checking boxes.
Radical Personal Responsibility
Make it a cultural norm for everyone to embrace one powerful mindset: "The ball is always in my court."
In practice, this looks like:
Follow through. After completing your task, personally confirm the next person received what they need and knows what to do.
Close the loop. Never leave communications dangling. Every interaction must end with crystal clarity about the next steps and ownership.
Think outcome, not output. Ask: "How does my work drive our ultimate goal?" not "Did I finish my assigned task?"
Attack the gaps. When something falls through the cracks, step up immediately. "This project seems stalled, what happened?”
Hunt for information. Don't wait for updates to find you. Aggressively track project status and offer help before being asked.
Building a Culture of Collective Completion
Leaders must intentionally instill the mindset of “we only win if we ALL win” deep into the company culture. At all hands, try spotlighting team members who take ownership of collective wins. During planning sessions and when delegating tasks, detail how every small project ladders up into the bigger picture. To ensure you catch problems early, be sure to publicly praise people who raise issues, rather than sweeping things under the rug. And most importantly, celebrate incremental collaborative wins over individual heroics. The more you showcase and reward your “heroes,” the more you train your team to believe that collective results are not valued and individual efforts are.
The Paradox of Shared Responsibility
Some people might say, "When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible." But, sorry…they're wrong. Radical personal responsibility doesn't dilute ownership—it multiplies it.
When everyone acts as if the ball is always in their court, projects accelerate. Handoffs become seamless. Problems get identified and solved before they metastasize. And teams develop a shared purpose that transcends individual roles. This isn't about overloading anyone's plate. It's about transforming from "passing the buck" to "passing the baton"—where each person ensures the next in line is set up to win.
When people stop asking "Did I do my part?" and start asking "Did we achieve our goal?" organizations Gain Velocity. Because in answering that question, everyone gets to say with conviction: "I took responsibility for and played a role in making it happen."
In business, the ball is always in your court. In fact, it’s the only way to play to win.