What it is
It’s a structural gap: you’re responsible for a result, but you can’t decide who works on it or what’s in scope. It’s common for project and product owners, and it quietly burns people out, because effort can’t fix a gap in authority.
How it shows up for me
Two rules I wrote for myself. Name the mismatch within days, not months, and frame it as a structural gap rather than as frustration. And every item in scope gets a name; a scope list without owners is a wish list.
When I can’t assign people, I propose a named owner for each item and send the list as a request to confirm, not a call for volunteers. Silence on a named list can be escalated. Silence on a volunteer call can’t.
The opposite of reactive isn’t “proactive,” which is too vague to act on. It’s anticipatory plus written down: every decision lives in a document, and every commitment has a name.