“Own it” should be one of those corporate speak sayings that gets popularly chucked from our collective vocabulary for the sin of overuse and misuse.  We hear ad nauseum the need to own our mistakes, own our work, own our clients, own our destiny…you get the picture.

We’re all for unambiguous accountability…fiercely so.   But there’s something about the term “own it” or not “owning it” that irks us.  It misses ― in fact perverts — the “I have your back and you have mine” sensibility that we feel so strongly about cultivating at APEX and ruckus digital.  It’s hard to fully embrace collaborative work if you’re constantly be told to “own it.”

To us, it’s a short hand way of saying, “it’s your problem, not mine.”  Well, in our world “your problem is mine and vice versa” and to believe or behave otherwise, is a non-starter and the road to nowhere.

Which is why it’s somewhat ironic that we finally made the leap to “own” APEX and ruckus Digital outright.  As was announced in October, we bought-out our majority shareholder and founder, Pat McNamara, making us the full owners of our 18-year-old agency.

We now literally own it in the sense of a pure asset.  But philosophically, we share the ownership of our present and future; of our road to innovation and excellence with all of the practitioners at APEX and ruckus and indeed with our clients.

We will continue to be fiercely accountable to our team, partners and clients, making critical and time sensitive decisions as leaders need to.  But ownership of creative, strategies, new services and expertise, and so on, will reside with us all.

Again, to believe and behave otherwise will not only lead to nowhere, but defy the legacy we have so successfully built for almost 20 years.  Cheers to the future.

Linda Andross and Kenneth Evans are managing partners and owners of APEX PR and ruckus Digital. They are also guest editors for this month’s edition of The Goat.