Directly Responsible Individual : Founder Mode in a larger organization
A take on the prevailing model of Directly Responsible Individual leadership in organizations and the common pitfalls that come with the application of such a model
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The notion of Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) is a fairly common structure used in organizations to drive ownership with accountability. DRI by name is uncommon, but DRI by concept is widely practiced in many forms. The phrase DRI emerged from Apple, but has been used in wild at other companies often phrased differently : Single-threaded leaders, Sponsor, Owner etc. The fundamental idea is to install a clear owner of an outcome and reduce decision by committee mindset. Organizations often adopt such model at a higher level in an organization hierarchy where a senior leader acts as a single owner of an outcome cutting across roles and functions. A Vice President role overseeing product, design, engineering and sales functions driving a clear set of outcomes is a common adoption of the DRI model in organizations. Most commonly one sees this model in cross-functional matrix organizations where teams are not separated by functions but rather the outcomes.
In this short take, I would like to go deeper into the traits that I believe organizations need to thrive the DRI model more effectively, and the common pitfalls that I have seen from my experience that we need to be aware of. As a context, I played this role briefly during my time at Zalando between 2017-2019 leading product, design and engineering functions under the role “Dedicated Owner”.
DRIs reserved for senior most leaders
At lower levels of hierarchy in an organization, individuals focus on building depth and specialization in their given area. However, most DRI structures require a broad T-shaped skill set so that the DRI has a good holistic understanding of functions to drive action towards the aligned outcome. The dearth of the T-shaped skill set at lower levels of hierarchy including middle management in some organizations prevents successful adoption of DRI. So the trait to look out for in your organization is if there are incentives available for individuals to adopt a T-shaped skill over time through stretch responsibilities guided by career frameworks. Even at lower levels of hierarchy, the T-shaped skill set can be adopted to a smaller scope of the problem space allowing the individual to build mastery in their discipline while building holistic understanding of other disciplines.
DRIs as a stretch responsibility instead of automatic assignment
I have seen numerous adoption of DRIs due to reasons like lack of capacity, smaller organization setups like startups, a brand new problem space that is not explored or understood well thereby adopting a wait and watch model etc. Lot of these reasons that drive the adoption of DRIs are essentially automatic assignments without a clear assessment if the individual and the problem space is benefited by DRI. Driving the adoption of DRI as a stretch responsibility for competent individuals aiming to take up more responsibilities at their current level seems more reasonable to me. This helps to validate if the individual is indeed ready for DRI especially a lower level of hierarchy where specialization is incentivized. In some organizations, individuals with a Project or Program management skill set are automatically assigned DRIs but they may lack depth in a particular function relevant for the outcome leading to ivory tower DRIs who are not setup for success.
The other improper incentive to watch out for is the idea that being broad and having little knowledge about many things is a sure shot way to be an effective DRI - which is not true. While having a broad knowledge is essential, most DRI have a product sense and taste, have a strong empathy with challenges of functions outside their expertise, while having a depth in their area of expertise that is crucial for DRI success. In some cases, a DRI nomination is dominated by individuals who demonstrated a strong depth in an area critical for the outcome of DRI while having a strong product and business sense to differentiate between what is right and wrong. For instance, a technical capability in a technology platform may have a technical expert as DRI working with design, product, analytics and sales function.
Crowded DRI model implementation leading to chaos and lack of doers
Being aware that rampant DRIs for every single topic or problem space can confuse or clutter the organization leading to overlaps in ownership and conflicts. For DRI to be successful, the individuals need a strong executional support and access to talent who can work across functional boundaries (in functional organization structure). Further, the knowledge that not everyone needs to be DRI and therefore DRI is not seen as a sole proxy for growth is critical for sustaining the model itself and incentivizing great execution. The analogy for this is in traditional technology organizations where growing as a manager is seen the only obvious choice for growth. Finding the right bounded context for DRI to “own” and “operate” that has clear commercial outcomes and requires the DRI to work across functional boundaries is the way to go from here. Therefore, it is convenient for organization to implement DRI at a senior leadership level as the bounded context becomes more clear at that level and individuals have the authority to drive outcomes without failing prey to functional optimization (aka technology for the sake of technology).
Role amplification affecting DRI’s true essence
Individuals who are first-time DRIs often struggle with amplifying one specific skill set as a way to operate well in that role. The amplification affects their ability to get to the right outcomes in most cases. In some cases for example, I have seen individuals focussing just on project management to drive outcomes, thereby making sure the work happens and focus more on the structure of the work and the process, than the work itself. This may be needed, but amplification of this skill solely to achieve outcome is a recipe for disaster for DRI. Further, individuals overusing their area of expertise to drive outcomes sometimes forget the collaborative nature of arriving at outcomes in a DRI setup. DRI are doers, they get into details, they care about the process as much as the results, and that requires to them to involve the right people and build collaboration skill more than anything else.
DRIs being a culture vehicle
Adoption of DRI as an accountability and ownership model require consistent application across the entire organization. Scattered implementation where some teams use it and some do not causes misunderstanding and affects the effectiveness of that model in driving outcomes. Scattered implementations also lead to “politics” at organization leading to the notion of “too many chefs in the kitchen” where a particular outcome is driven by an assigned DRI comes into conflict with other members of the organization who are also assigned similar outcomes. In a mid to larger company, DRI requires a strong reinforcement and alignment from top down requiring active participation from senior leaders in advocating for DRI, setting up the bar for such a model and enabling such a structure to thrive with their teams and stakeholders. DRI is a clear by-product of a culture, and a mismatch between the DRI expectation and the culture is one of most common ways DRI don’t become widespread. For instance, if your culture values “customer obsession” requiring everyone to have a close proximity to the customer irrespective role and function, then that reinforces the DRI model. However, if the culture is dominated by “Doing it right and being right”, this may prevent DRI success due to fear of retribution and lack of psychological safety when failing.
Hiring and retention instruments for DRI effectiveness
Hiring for traits that make an effective DRI across all levels in an organization is critical for the continued success of that setup. The specific trait to look for includes the ability to empathize and constructively challenge functions and areas outside of the individual’s expertise. A strong orientation around outcomes and tradeoffs that are needed when making decisions is another critical trait for look out. Can an individual articulate tradeoffs and bring along other functions together through informal leadership to drive outcomes ? If yes, then likely they may be a good fit for DRI. Also, looking for key areas of expertise where the individual can zoom in as comfortably as zoom out is another trait to look for. The individual trait to operate in limited amount of context and information indicating a comfort for fuzzy scenarios, and find their feet quickly is an asset for an effective DRI.
DRIs differ from Product owner role and RACI framework applications
A traditional Product Owner (PO) role originates in the Scrum framework focussing on enabling the right features to develop in the right order by the team by working closely with the stakeholders. There is definitely some overlap here with DRI, however the difference exists in breadth of their autonomy, accountability and impact on cross-functional aspects. A DRI is directly responsible for the success or failure of a product or capability they own. There is no prescribed framework on how and what DRI does to drive the success, and therefore a lot of what DRI does is to leverage their native strengths and adopt to whatever is needed to make the product or capability a success. A DRI may decide to be in the details if that is what is necessary to drive the outcome - they may go deep into engineering or step in to handle a sales conversion. So in essence, DRI takes “whatever it takes” authority, beyond just product features to ensure success.
Similar to this, a RACI assumes that there is a constant role an individual plays in the overall outcome of a product or capability that they are driving. RACI creates specific hard swim lanes for others who are contributing or participating in the outcome. The flexible and intangible nature of DRI is based on the premise that a DRI has all the autonomy (with some organizational guardrails) to deliver the outcome without prescribing to traditional roles and their definitions.
Imagine a new product launch is faltering because of supply chain issues. A Product Owner might adjust the release timeline and backlog priorities, while the RACI matrix clarifies who to inform. The DRI, however, would personally tackle the supply issue—hopping on calls, negotiating with vendors, or reallocating budgets.
In practice, a DRI can work alongside or above Product owners if that is what they decide is right for the success. They may employ RACI or other frameworks that is well suited for the outcomes DRI is owning.
DRI and Founder Mode
Founder mode was made popular by the article by Paul Graham in 2024. There are definitely similarities between DRI and Founder mode, especially around mindset of the individual where the DRI is responsible for making sure everything works within the bounded context of the problem space. There is no formal framework or guidelines that dictate what DRI should and should not do, similar to Founder mode. However, the DRI is dictated by the guardrails and the context of the outcome assigned to the individual. I believe Founder mode leans more towards extreme breadth, especially in a startup environment where Founders do have to take on multiple hats due to constraints of the environment and pace required to move fast. Founder mode is also more about organic ownership rather than a formal role like DRI. The key pitfall to be aware of is the prevalence of burnout that is common with founders and DRIs alike, especially when they try to be hands-on for everything and not being able to delegate. For DRI to be successful and sustainable, it is critical for senior leadership to be aware of the potential burnout of individuals and provide support in terms of coaching and interventions when needed.
Concluding Thoughts
DRIs or single threaded leadership as a model is not a silver bullet but an effective implementation of these concepts can drive wonders for teams to move fast and build outcomes. A final consideration to be aware of is the notion of “hero worship” - the tendency to put an individual on a pedestal as a sole contributor and driver for success, and ignore everyone around them. While DRI and similar model like Single threaded leadership encourages individuals to be better decision makers, take risk and be accountable for eventual success or failure, there may be occurrences of over amplifying the contribution of the DRI as an individual and disregarding the contribution of the team and people they need to get to the success. Tendency to worship them as heroes creates a toxic environment for the organization and leads to slow destruction of the culture as a whole, contrary to the original idea of DRI.
An effective implementation of such a model is possible through a combination of right hiring decision, supporting culture and individual incentives, clear understanding of scope and boundary of the DRI’s impact, and encouraging the individuals in that role to leverage their innate strengths and build collaborative muscle with other functions.
An audio version of the article is now available, thanks to NotebookLM:
A video version of this article with me going over the content is here:
I found another resource around Directly Responsible Individual at Apple :
I would like to also share a special thanks to Fabian Kleeberger and Dr. Olena Bachynska for reviewing the article and providing feedback that helped immensely to put this article together. All images used in the article are generated using Generative AI technologies and there is not intention to resemble any specific person, dead or alive.
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