This is it! This is the project you’ve been waiting for. The one that’s going to define your career and challenge you and totally transform “the way things are done around here.” The project your team will point to five years from now as the inflection point that ushered in a new era of awesome. If, that is, you can get the project approved, prioritized, and properly resourced.

The one I’m talking about was a meeting with my boss in one of those conference rooms with clear walls, like a fishbowl, when she told me I didn’t get promoted. I’d had a fun, intense, wild ride working at a late-stage startup. But three years later, I felt like a shell of a person. I was commuting ninety minutes each way to work. I was feeling uninspired, dreading the relentless marketing campaign cycles that at one time were exciting.

We’ve all been on two types of projects: ones that ran smoothly, and ones that crumbled to pieces. While there are lots of contributing factors in each case, I’ll go out on a limb and say that project ownership (or lack thereof) is what makes the biggest difference.