Every business runs ten functions. Not ten departments with doors and headcount — ten functions that have to happen for the business to work. A sole trader runs all ten. So does a company with four hundred staff. The difference is not whether the functions exist; it is whether anybody has been made accountable for them.
Where nobody is accountable, the function does not stop. It gets done badly, late, by the owner, usually after nine at night, and usually in the week it has already caused damage.
What are the ten?
Different frameworks name them slightly differently, and the labels matter far less than the completeness of the list. This is the version we use.
- Leadership. Direction, standards, and the decisions nobody else can make. Never delegated, only shared.
- Finance. Not bookkeeping. 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 usually 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. Boring until it is not.
- Innovation. Improving the offer and the way it is delivered. The function that decides whether you still have a business in five years.
Why does an unowned function cost real money?
An unowned department does not announce itself. It 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. That does not look like a marketing problem when it arrives. It looks 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. That does not look like a people problem. 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. That does not look like an innovation problem. It looks like a market getting harder.
What does owning a department actually mean?
Three tests. A function is not owned unless it passes all three.
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. Accountability without authority is not ownership; it is blame with a job title, and capable people work out the difference quickly.
Applied honestly, those three tests usually show that several departments you believed were covered are not. Somebody is performing the tasks. Nobody is holding the outcome.
How to use it this month
- Write the ten out and put exactly one name against each. No pairs, no shared, no “we all do that”. The discomfort you feel doing it is the point of the exercise.
- Count how many say you. Four or more and the ceiling in this business is you, however capable you are.
- Give each department one number. Marketing gets enquiries per month. People gets unplanned leavers. Delivery gets on-time percentage. A department without a number is an opinion.
- Fill the blanks with a person, not a hire. Two hours a week from somebody who already works for you beats a job advert you will not place. Accountability first, resource second.
- Hand over one department properly this month: written outcome, one number, a spending limit and a monthly ten minutes to review it. That is a handover. Telling somebody they are now in charge of marketing is not.
- Put the sheet on the wall and revisit it quarterly. Departments drift back to the owner silently, and a visible sheet is the cheapest control you will ever install.
The mistakes to watch for
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 simply not on the page. You cannot manage an absence you have never drawn.
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 being done at eleven at night by somebody tired who has had no training in it. That is not the same as it not existing.
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 properly owned — and it must be, because an outsourced supplier with nobody holding them to a standard is just an invoice.
The questions to sit with
- Out of 10, how confident are you that all ten functions are genuinely being performed rather than merely assumed?
- Which three departments would show up blank if you filled the sheet in honestly right now?
- Which of your recurring problems is actually 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?
One name in every box, no blanks and no pairs. Your own name in more than four boxes is not commitment, it is the ceiling.
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.
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Frequently asked questions
We are only four people. Do we really run ten departments?
Yes, and that is the point of the exercise rather than an argument against it. 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. That is fine. What is not fine is a box with nobody's name against it, because that is the work that 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, and confusing the two is why handovers fail. 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 just 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.