Every business runs ten functions. These are functions that have to happen for the business to work, not departments with doors and headcount. A sole trader runs all ten, as does a company with four hundred staff. The difference is whether anybody has been made accountable for them.
Where nobody is accountable, the function does not stop. It gets done badly and late, often by the owner, after it has already caused damage.
What are the ten?
Different frameworks name them slightly differently. We use these ten.
- Leadership. Direction, standards, and the decisions nobody else can make.
- Finance. Pricing, margin, cash, budget, and knowing the numbers before somebody else tells you them.
- Marketing. Creating the enquiry — everything that happens before a human conversation.
- Sales. Converting the enquiry. A different discipline from marketing, and often a different person.
- Delivery. Doing the work, on time, to standard, at the margin you priced.
- Customer care. What happens after delivery: retention, complaints, referrals, the second sale.
- People. Recruiting, inducting, developing, appraising, and the conversations nobody enjoys.
- Systems and IT. How the work is recorded, repeated and improved. Process as much as software.
- Legal and risk. Contracts, insurance, health and safety, compliance, data.
- Innovation. Improving the offer and the way it is delivered.
Why does an unowned function cost real money?
An unowned department shows up somewhere else, as a symptom that gets misdiagnosed.
Nobody owns marketing, so enquiries come only from referral, so the pipeline is lumpy, so in a quiet month you take work you should have refused. It arrives looking like a margin problem.
Nobody owns people, so hires are made in a rush against no defined role, so one leaves within months and one underperforms without ever being told. It looks like bad luck, or a difficult recruitment market.
Nobody owns innovation, so the offer is the same as it was six years ago, so the only argument left in a competitive pitch is price. It looks like a market getting harder.
What does owning a department mean?
A function is owned when it passes three tests.
A number
The person can tell you how that function performed last month without going away to work it out. Marketing knows the enquiry count. People knows the leavers. Delivery knows the on-time percentage. If producing the number takes a week, nobody has been watching it.
A standard
They know what good looks like in that function, and they are entitled to say when something falls short of it — including when the person falling short is you.
A boundary
They can spend, decide or commit up to a stated limit without asking permission.
Those three tests often show that several departments you believed were covered are not. Somebody is performing the tasks, but nobody is holding the outcome.
How to use it this month
- Write the ten out and put exactly one name against each. Do not use pairs, shared names or “we all do that”.
- Count how many say you. If four or more say you, the business is limited by your capacity.
- Give each department one number. Marketing gets enquiries per month. People gets unplanned leavers. Delivery gets on-time percentage.
- Fill the blanks with somebody who already works for you, even for two hours a week, before you think about hiring.
- Hand over one department properly this month: written outcome, one number, a spending limit and a monthly ten minutes to review it.
- Put the sheet on the wall and revisit it quarterly. Departments drift back to the owner without anyone noticing.
The mistakes to watch for
The first mistake is drawing an organisation chart of the people you have rather than the functions you run. Every box on that chart has a person in it, so it looks complete, and the functions nobody performs are not on the page.
The second is believing you are too small for this. The function exists in a business turning over a couple of hundred thousand exactly as it does in one turning over twenty million. In the smaller one it is often done late at night by somebody with no training in it.
The third is confusing owning with doing. The owner of a department is accountable for the outcome and the number; they may do none of the work. A department can be entirely outsourced and still owned, provided somebody holds the supplier to a standard.
Questions to ask yourself
- Out of 10, how confident are you that all ten functions are being performed rather than merely assumed?
- Which three departments would show up blank if you filled the sheet in now?
- Which of your recurring problems is a symptom of an unowned department somewhere else?
- If you had to remove your own name from two boxes by the end of next month, which two would you choose — and why not those two today?
This is the usual starting point for the systems and structure work in Business Coaching. It sits directly alongside Who Is Sailing The Ship?, which is about the leadership function specifically, and The 5 Ways, which shows what an unowned marketing or finance function does to the numbers. The full set is in the Mindsets library.
Get the next one in your inbox
One guide for business owners each week. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Frequently asked questions
We are only four people. Do we run ten departments?
Yes. The functions are not job titles; they are things that have to happen for a business to work. A four-person firm still creates enquiries, converts them, delivers work, handles complaints, hires people, keeps records, manages contracts and insurance, and decides whether the offer still makes sense. What changes with size is how many names are available, not how many functions exist. In a small business one person will own several boxes. The risk is a box with nobody's name against it, because that work only gets done after a problem.
What is the difference between owning a department and doing the work?
Owning it means being accountable for the outcome and the number; doing it means performing the tasks. They often sit with different people. A department is properly owned when one person can tell you how it performed last month without going away to work it out, knows what good looks like and is entitled to say when something falls short, and can spend or decide up to a stated limit without asking. On that test a function can be entirely outsourced and still owned. It needs somebody inside the business holding the supplier to a standard.
Which department do owners most often leave blank?
In owner-managed businesses the three that go unowned most often are marketing, people and innovation, and they share a common feature: none of them has a deadline attached. Delivery has customers waiting, finance has a filing date, sales has a quote to send. Nothing forces marketing to happen this week, so it does not, and the shortage of enquiries shows up months later as a margin problem when you take work you should have refused. The fix is rarely a hire. It is a name, one number and a standing slot in somebody's week, reviewed monthly so the box cannot quietly empty again.