Who owns me?
This week I was asked – can a task have more than one owner? And seeing as it’s not the first time I’ve been asked… let’s talk about task ownership.
The answer is very simple:
A task can only have one owner.
And that owner must be a person, not a team.
Why?
Because in project management, if a task has more than one owner… it has no owner.
It will be sad. Lonely. Forgotten. Possibly forever.
Don’t let your tasks live in the Graveyard of Forgotten Work.
(Tombstone reads: “Wasn’t me.”)
❓ So, why only one owner?
Because when everyone is responsible…
…no one feels responsible.
Result:
“Oh, I thought you were doing that?”
“Well, I assumed they’d started it.”
“Wait, has anyone actually sent the email?”
And suddenly you’re in a meeting explaining why something important didn’t happen. Again.
💼 What does “ownership” actually mean?
Owning a task doesn’t mean doing all the work.
It means being responsible for:
✅ Making sure it gets done
✅ Checking in on progress
✅ Nudging others if needed
✅ Closing the loop
The task owner is the single point of accountability. That’s it. That’s the role.
🤝 But we’re a collaborative team!
Great. So collaborate.
Add collaborators. Use comments. Assign subtasks. Use followers/watchers. Do all the things.
But the parent task still needs one person driving it forward.
👉 Collaboration is powerful.
👉 Ambiguity is deadly.
It’s not about ego or control.
It’s about clarity. And clarity gets things done.
🧠 What if someone leaves or gets sick?
That’s when ownership matters most.
If a task has one owner → You know what’s at risk and can reassign quickly.
If it’s shared → You’ll waste time figuring out who was sort of doing what.
TL;DR:
Every task needs one owner. Not a team. Not a trio. One human.
Ownership ≠ doing all the work — it means being accountable.
Shared ownership sounds nice. But clarity gets things done.