🤝 I Worked More and Achieved Less. How To Get Your Team Engaged (Don't Make My Mistake)

Should you shoulder all the responsibilities yourself or create a collaborative environment from the start? Shared ownership and participation are important for long-term success

You have an idea to make a meaningful change in your team.

You are the one taking the lead, as you had the idea.

But here’s the big question: Should you carry all the weight yourself or build from the start with your team?

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🙅 My First Attempt at Creating a Design Review Group in a 40-Engineers Organization

I was part of a design review group in my previous organization. It was tough to get in. I had to go through 10 reviews onboarding to become a member.

When I switched organizations, I wanted to create something similar.

However, I couldn’t enforce this onboarding process because. By definition, a group can’t exist with just one person 🤷

Initially, I handled everything myself: setting up the group, pre-reading documents, running meetings, and taking notes.

I thought it was a good idea to make it easy for people to join as reviewers.

But the outcome wasn’t what I expected—most reviewers didn’t join the meetings regularly.

🦃 Why having skin in the game matters

Think about it: who’s more likely to hit the gym: someone gifted a lifetime membership or someone paying for it monthly? The people paying the membership will go to justify their investment.

This same principle applies to work. Companies compensate employees with stocks for a reason—it increases their sense of ownership and commitment.

I can keep providing examples, but you already got the point. You are committed to what costs you an effort.

Sense of belonging to the organization was also able to encourage voluntary employee behavior in supporting organizational success. This is possible because the sense of belonging to the target reflects one’s self-identity, which needs to be protected and developed.

- Pierce, J. L., Kostova, T., & Dirks, K. T. (2001). Toward a theory of psychological ownership in organizations

🙆 My Second Attempt with the Design Review Group

I thought I was making it easier for people to join by handling all the responsibilities myself. In reality, I was preventing them from feeling any ownership over the group.

After that, we implemented the system designed for running the group in the long term. Every week, one member of the group took the responsibility of running it.

This made the group a thing of everyone, not a thing I owned. After this, all members participated in running the group during their week.

Those who realized they didn’t have the time to participate stepped aside.

🎯 Conclusion

I once heard a valuable piece of advice from Steve Huynh, a former Principal Engineer at Amazon: “Getting promoted by working overtime isn’t sustainable. You’ll need that same overtime to perform at the next level. Instead, focus on building systems that make the work sustainable. Get promoted when you’re ready to handle that next-level workload.”

The same lesson applies here. In my initial attempt to run the group, I was focused on achieving short-term results as fast as possible. I ignored building a sustainable system that runs even without me.

So, for anyone deciding whether to shoulder all the responsibilities of a new initiative, here’s my advice:

• For one-time efforts, it’s fine to take charge and handle things yourself—especially if you can set a clear end date.

• But for ongoing tasks, establish a long-term system from the start that distributes responsibilities.

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Some good articles I read this week:

• Why you cannot deliver fast with the same quality? by

  Tech World With Milan Newsletter
  . The project management triangle is a concept I covered before. Milan also covers the dimension of the quality of the product. If you want to save on time, cost, and scope, the quality will suffer.

• The #1 Mistake You're Making with Your Mentor (And How You Can Avoid It) by

  A Life Engineered
  and
  Jordan Cutler
  . It’s on the mentee side to come up prepared for the 1:1. But this preparation is easier if you follow a system like Jordan and Steve show here. Highly recommend the priming doc!

• Leadership Is Situational by

  Developing Skills
  . One-size-fits-all solutions usually don’t work. Here John covers 13 different leadership styles