Everyone could stop it. Nobody owned it
Cases and implementation · 2 July 2026
Maciej Nuckowski led the Polish company of a large technology group. He wanted to launch a team of people with disabilities. The numbers worked, yet the project spent eighteen months in the same room where it had been conceived. In a matrix organisation, the local CEO has no “implement” button. They have influence, but depend on HR, procurement, IT, operations and headquarters.
Key points
- The project was not rejected once. It drifted between functions, each of which could professionally say “not yet”: HR saw audit risk, recruitment saw a non-standard process, IT saw non-standard equipment.
- Without an owner, a project eventually ends up in procurement. That is organisationally understandable and operationally disastrous: procurement buys a service but does not own the team's results.
- A functioning operation, with work, people, documentation and numbers, is easier to make a case for than the abstract idea of inclusion.
What this means for a company
This conversation does not introduce another accountability model. It shows what missing ownership looks like from inside. The topic passes from hand to hand; a person, structure or priority changes, and the next participant has no reason to inherit the predecessor's risk. In a large company, indecision rarely looks like a rejection. It looks like a sequence of sensible meetings that never lead to a decision. The board's lesson: while delivery is absent from everyone's objectives, blocking the project remains rational for each function and irrational for the company as a whole.
Originally published 2 July 2026.