Ownership doesn't need a start-up

I'm often asked about my leadership style, and I realised it is connected to a reflection on how differently people show up in start-ups versus corporates.

Not better or worse, just a different game. Scaling something fragile versus optimising something that already works requires a different mindset. Yes, part of it is nature, but there's a whole lot that's nurture.

In the best start-up setups I have worked in, people have real ownership. Not just responsibility on paper, but actual control. Feedback loops are fast, performance is visible, and you're expected to get things wrong, and then fix them at lightning speed. In larger organisations, with the best intentions, we often design the opposite. More layers, more alignment, more process, and somehow we drift further away from outcomes.

A large organisation is not a start-up, and it shouldn't pretend to be one. It absolutely needs to build with scale in mind, especially in digital. But it can build teams that feel like they own a piece of the business and get to experience the drive, the spark, that comes with it. That takes builders: people who work and ship like a self-governing product team.

Is this entrepreneurial transplant in large corporations a romantic ambition or a feasible reality? I'd love to hear about your own journeys in digital transformation.