The Ownership Gap™ is the operational space between departmental responsibility and enterprise accountability. Every team owns a slice. Nobody owns the outcome. The gap between the two is where customer experience fragments, AI investments underperform, and workforce strategy quietly absorbs the cost.
It shows up in patterns leaders recognize but rarely name. Customers repeating themselves across channels. Every dashboard green while the enterprise number doesn't move. AI pilots that succeed but won't scale. Workforce burnout despite headcount investment. Workarounds running real operations because the official process is broken.
Closing it is not a reorganization. It is operational engineering: outcome ownership designed cross-functionally, KPIs that reward the customer outcome instead of the departmental one, governance that holds outcome owners accountable, and workforce strategy positioned to absorb change instead of compensate for fragmentation.
Related: /ownership-gap-hub · /ownership-gap-framework · /book · /donna-lightfoot.