The Orphan Step: Why Every Flywheel Step Needs One Owner

There is a moment I see in almost every flywheel session I run with a leadership team.

The team has mapped its flywheel. Five or six activities, in order, each one feeding the next. They have argued about the labels and agreed on the sequence. Then we go around the wheel and I ask a simple question for each step. Who owns this one?

The first step is easy. The head of sales owns new business. Everyone nods. Delivery is easy too. Then we get to the step where a happy client becomes a repeat client, or sends a referral. I ask who owns it, and one of two things happens. Two people raise their hands at the same time. Or nobody does, and the room goes quiet.

I call this The Orphan Step. It is a step in your business flywheel that everyone depends on and nobody owns. It is almost never the step at the top. It is usually a step further around the wheel, where one activity has to hand its momentum to the next.

An orphan step is easy to miss, because everything looks covered. Your leaders are capable and busy. Work is happening at every step. The gap only shows up when you go around the wheel one step at a time and ask who is accountable for making each step work.

Jim Collins describes a business flywheel as a handful of activities that feed each other in a loop. Each step makes the next one easier, and the last step feeds back into the first. It is a picture of how your business creates momentum.

The loop is the important part. Each step’s output is the next step’s input. A strong onboarding step makes delivery easier. Great delivery makes renewals easier. Happy, renewing clients make referrals possible, and referrals make winning new clients cheaper. The momentum comes from the connections, not from any single step.

That is why one weak step costs more than it looks. It doesn’t just underperform on its own. It starves every step after it.

So every step needs an owner. Owning a step means being accountable for making sure it works the way the flywheel needs it to. The owner doesn’t do all the work. They make sure the step delivers what the next step depends on, and they fix it when it doesn’t.

Steps end up without that kind of owner in four predictable ways.

Nobody owns it. The step was never named as a step of its own, so it never made it onto anyone’s list. Everyone assumes it happens. Some quarters it does.

Two people own it. Each one assumes the other is handling it. Both are partly right, which means neither is fully accountable. In my experience, two owners is the same as no owner. It just takes longer to notice.

Somebody owns it on paper. A name is written next to the step, but that person isn’t watching its number and doesn’t treat the step as part of their job. Ownership nobody acts on is still an orphan.

The founder owns it by default. When nobody else picks it up, the CEO quietly does. That works until the company grows past what one person can hold, and then the step falls through without anyone deciding to drop it.

Orphan steps rarely announce themselves. They show up as a pattern of small frustrations that never quite get resolved. These are the signs I look for:

• The step has no weekly number. Ask what the KPI is for onboarding or referrals and you get a long pause, or a number someone pulls together once a quarter.
• Problems surface as finger-pointing. A client churns, and the leadership meeting turns into a discussion of whose fault it was. Everyone can explain why it wasn’t their part. Nobody points at themselves, because nobody owned the step.
• Everyone is “working on it.” The step comes up in every planning session. Several people have it on their list. It never moves.
• It gets the same grade every quarter. When the team grades its flywheel, this step lands at a C or D. Everyone agrees it needs work. A quarter later it lands at a C or D again.
• The founder keeps stepping in. When something goes wrong at this step, the CEO is the one who fixes it, personally, one client at a time.

Any one of these on its own might be noise. Two or three pointing at the same step is an orphan.

The most expensive orphan step I know of is a public one: the October 2013 launch of HealthCare.gov.

Set the politics aside and look at it as a management problem. The site was built by many contractors, each responsible for its own piece. Some pieces were finished and tested. What nobody owned was the step where all the pieces had to work together as one system.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general looked at this in two reports. The first found that the agency never named a lead systems integrator, the one party responsible for making sure all the contractors’ work fit together. The second found that leadership for the program was split between two offices inside the agency, and that nobody was given clear, dedicated responsibility for the whole effort. The report described the result as a “lack of unity and dispersion of responsibility” that made it hard to track progress or enforce accountability.

In other words, every piece had an owner. The step that turned those pieces into a working website did not. The agency received repeated warnings before launch. Without one owner for that step, there was nobody whose job it was to act on them.

You are not building a federal website. But the shape is the same one I see in growing companies all the time. The team winning new clients hits its numbers. The team delivering the work hits its numbers. The step between them, where a signed client becomes a launched client, belongs to no one. Everyone can show you a green dashboard while the client sits in the gap.

Amazon learned this lesson inside its own flywheel.

One of the steps in Amazon’s flywheel is attracting third-party sellers. Sellers bring more selection, which brings more customers. An obvious way to strengthen that step was to let sellers use Amazon’s warehouses and delivery network. That idea became Fulfillment by Amazon.

According to Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, two former Amazon executives, the idea had broad support from senior leaders. It still sat for well over a year. The leaders who liked it were capable people, but each of them already had a full job. The idea touched all of their work, so it belonged to all of them and none of them. It was an orphan step.

What changed was ownership. Amazon asked one vice president, Tom Taylor, to drop his other responsibilities and own Fulfillment by Amazon. He got the authority to build his own team and launch without waiting on approvals from other groups. Amazon calls this a single-threaded leader: one person who works on one thing and is accountable for its results.

Most founder-CEOs reading this can’t free up a vice president for every step of their flywheel. You don’t need to. The principle scales down. Every step of your flywheel gets exactly one name. That person doesn’t do all the work. They own the outcome, they watch the number, and when the step breaks, they are the one who fixes it or raises the flag.

One name is the point. Not a team, not a committee, not two co-owners who each assume the other has it.

The owner also has to understand where their step sits in the wheel. What does it receive from the step before? What does the step after it need? An owner who only sees their own step can hit their number and still break the flywheel. Owners who understand the connections are what turn a list of activities into momentum.

Run these five questions with your leadership team, with your flywheel on the wall.

1. For each step of your flywheel, can the team name one owner without hesitating? Go around the wheel out loud. Any pause longer than a second or two is worth writing down. The steps where people look at each other are your candidates.
2. Which steps have two names, or a name nobody acts on? Shared ownership feels collaborative. In practice it means each person can assume the other has it. A name with no follow-through is the same problem. Both are orphans with a better cover story.
3. Can each owner say what their step needs from the one before it, and what it hands to the one after? If owners only know their own step, the handoffs are where momentum leaks. Every connection in the wheel needs someone who understands it.
4. Which steps does the founder still fix personally? If the CEO is the person who steps in when onboarding goes wrong or a key client drifts, the CEO is the owner, whether anyone wrote it down or not. That rarely scales.
5. Which step has graded C or D for more than two quarters? A step that stays broken while everyone agrees it needs work is almost always a step nobody owns.

If the same step comes up in two or more of these answers, you have found your orphan.

Fixing orphan steps doesn’t require a reorganization. It requires a few decisions, made deliberately, and written down where people will see them.

1. List the steps of your flywheel. Five to eight activities, in order, with the leading activity at the top. If you haven’t mapped your flywheel yet, start there.
2. Put one name on every step. One person, not a team. Write the name under the activity. If the work runs through several teams, pick the person closest to the outcome.
3. Give each owner one weekly number. The owner’s job is to watch that number and act when it moves the wrong way. A step with an owner but no number is still half an orphan.
4. Write the step into the owner’s role scorecard. If owning a flywheel step isn’t part of how someone’s performance is measured, it will lose to the work that is. The scorecard makes the ownership real.
5. Walk the wheel together. Once every step has a name, have each owner explain what their step needs from the one before it and what it hands to the next. Do it with the whole team in the room. This is where people see how the steps connect, and where gaps in the handoffs show up.

Here is what this looks like on the worksheet. It is an illustrative services firm, with an owner written under each activity. Two of the steps tell the story.

Example, PDF, 1 pageExample: Services firm

An illustrative services firm on the Flywheel worksheet. Two steps have no single owner: onboarding is shared, and referrals belong to no one. Both grade D.

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Example: Services firm×

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I use a one-page Flywheel worksheet for this exercise, along with filled-in examples from Amazon, Vanguard, and Nespresso. Download the Flywheel worksheet (free with registration). Fill in the owner column with your team in the room. The pauses will tell you where to start.

Ask these at your next leadership meeting. Have everyone answer on paper first, then compare.

• Which step of our flywheel would we struggle to name an owner for right now? Most teams can point to it within a minute. The fact that everyone points to the same step is usually the most useful thing that happens in the room.
• Where do we have two people who each think the other one has it? These are harder to see than steps with no owner, because both people feel responsible. Naming one of them is often a relief to both.
• Which steps is the CEO still holding? Write them down. Each one is a step that will break when the company grows, unless someone else takes it on first.

The goal isn’t to have perfect answers. It’s to surface whether The Orphan Step might be affecting your business.

What is an orphan step in a business flywheel?

An orphan step is a step in your business flywheel that everyone depends on and nobody owns. It is rarely the first step, which usually belongs to sales. It is usually a step further around the wheel, such as onboarding, renewals, or referrals, where one activity has to hand its momentum to the next and no single person is accountable for making that happen.

What does it mean to own a step of the flywheel?

Owning a step means being accountable for making sure it works the way the flywheel needs it to. The owner does not do all the work. They watch the step’s number, make sure it delivers what the next step depends on, and fix it or raise the flag when it breaks.

Can two people share ownership of one flywheel step?

They can share the work, but not the ownership. When two people own a step, each assumes the other is handling it, so neither is fully accountable. Two owners is the same as no owner. It just takes longer to notice. Pick one name and make the other person a contributor.

Who should own a step that runs through several teams?

Pick the one person closest to the outcome the step produces, even if the work flows through several teams. That person does not need authority over everyone involved. They need to watch the number, understand what the step receives and hands off, and be the one who acts when it slips.

How do I find the orphan steps in my business?

Go around your flywheel with your leadership team and name one owner for each step out loud. Watch for pauses, steps with two names, steps the founder still fixes personally, and steps that grade C or D quarter after quarter. A step that shows up in two or more of those checks is an orphan.