Why Organizations Should Center the Individual and Decenter the Team

Shared ownership is diluted ownership. When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.

The tech industry is addicted to the idea of teams. We talk about "team ownership," "team accountability," and "team performance" as if outcomes can be meaningfully attributed to a group. But here's the problem: shared ownership is diluted ownership. When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. If accountability matters — and it should — then we need a different posture.

The posture is simple: one person per project.

When work can be divided — and almost all work can — it should be divided into parts small enough to be owned by an individual. That individual enters into a clear agreement with their leader or stakeholder: you own this project, you own the outcome, and you will be evaluated on that basis. No diffusion, no swarming, no excuses.

Think about it like hiring contractors. If a general contractor brings in a plumber, and later the plumbing leaks, you don't call the electrician, the roofer, and the drywall guy back to fix it. You call the plumber. Because it was the plumber's job. The same should be true inside organizations. The idea that "the whole team owns the service" is as absurd as asking every contractor on a job site to be responsible for the plumbing.

This doesn't mean individuals operate in isolation. People still need professional communities, cross-pollination of ideas, and peer support. That's where cohorts come in. A cohort is simply a group of individuals operating in the same domain — engineers working on services, designers working on systems, operators working on processes. Cohorts provide context and connection, but they don't dilute accountability. Execution still belongs to the individual.

Shifting from teams to individuals supported by cohorts requires both cultural and structural change. Culturally, organizations must stop romanticizing collective ownership and start celebrating individual accountability. Stop praising the "team effort" when outcomes were the result of one person's work. Structurally, leaders must assign projects to individuals with tight boundaries and clear agreements. On-call rotations, shared responsibility for services, and other diffusion mechanisms must give way to direct ownership.

This model aligns naturally with Collaborate by Contract: leaders define and clarify the work, individuals internalize and execute it. It also fits perfectly with Outcome Over Optics: results are measurable, traceable, and attributable. Ownership isn't performative — it's explicit.

One person per project is not just a catchy phrase. It's a discipline. It centers accountability, sharpens focus, improves performance, and makes evaluation straightforward. And most importantly, it respects the truth: work is not done by teams. Work is done by individuals.