Ho Jaayega: How a Simple Phrase Can Activate Agency

Every organisation loves the word ownership. It shows up in townhalls, on posters, in performance reviews, and occasionally even in PowerPoint decks with heroic stock photos of mountain climbers.

But ownership is one of those things that’s easy to talk about and harder to produce on demand. Policies don’t create it. Frameworks don’t either. Even incentives, at best, create compliance, and compliance is not ownership. It’s just people doing what they need to do so they can get on with their lives.

What genuinely creates ownership, surprisingly often, is something far simpler: language. The everyday phrases people use when things are messy, unclear, or uncomfortable. The kind of language that doesn’t come from HR or a leadership model, but from lived culture.

At GlobalGyan, one such phrase has shaped how we think about responsibility and leadership:

Ho Jaayega.

What Ho Jaayega Is Not

Taken literally, Ho Jaayega translates to “it will get done”. But like any powerful phrase (ahem, strategy), Ho Jaayega can also be misused. If left undefined, it can slip into a dangerous cousin: blind optimism. The kind that treats complexity as a minor inconvenience and believes that dealing with uncertainty is just hustle or jugaad.

Unlike what some Bollywood movies would have you believe, Ho Jaayega is not a vague optimism about the universe conspiring in your favour; neither is it, “All is well”(don’t worry, something good will happen).

That’s not agency. That’s irresponsibility with a smile.

What Ho Jaayega Really Means

The real Ho Jaayega is something else. It is disciplined agency. It carries action, yes, but also judgement. It’s the confidence to move forward even when things are unclear, combined with the humility to adapt when reality pushes back. It’s not about heroics or firefighting. It’s about responsibility with follow-through.

It’s really “I’ve got this.” (One must give credit to another Bollywood phrase “Main Hoon Na” that carries the ideals of Ho Jaayega.)

When someone says Ho Jaayega with conviction, they’re not predicting an outcome. They’re owning one. It’s a signal that says: I will take responsibility, I will figure it out, I won’t vanish when it gets hard, and I’ll stay with it until it’s done.

In two words, it captures something many organisations struggle to build through months of training: agency.

Why Language Matters More Than We Admit

Most organisations try to communicate values through long, well-crafted sentences that sound impressive in a leadership handbook. The problem is that nobody actually remembers them in the moment that matters, when a customer is angry, a deadline is slipping, or a decision needs to be made without perfect information.

Frontline employees don’t walk around with leadership frameworks in their heads. They carry phrases. Simple, repeatable, culturally familiar phrases that become behavioural shortcuts.

That’s why language is such an underrated lever in organisations. Pithy phrases reduce cognitive load, travel quickly across hierarchies, and create a shared shorthand for how we behave when things are uncertain.

And uncertainty, as we all know, is not a rare event anymore. It’s the default setting.

Agency Lives at the Edges, Not the Centre

Senior leaders often think of agency as a leadership trait, something expected from managers and “high potentials.” But the truth is that agency is most valuable far from leadership, at the edges of the organisation: in plants, branches, service teams, sales teams, customer support desks, and delivery operations.

These are the places where problems show up first, context changes daily, and instructions arrive last (if they arrive at all). In these environments, the difference between a responsive organisation and a slow one is whether people feel trusted to act, safe to learn, and accountable for outcomes.

When they do, organisations move faster and smarter. When they don’t, everything gets escalated upwards, decisions bottleneck, and leadership becomes a glorified helpdesk.

Making Ho Jaayega Real in an Organisation

For Ho Jaayega (or your preferred phrase) to work, leaders must do three things.

1. Make Ownership Explicit

If you say Ho Jaayega, you own it end-to-end. No hidden handoffs. No “I thought someone else was doing it.” No silent rescues from above that teach people they can say the right words without carrying the weight.

2. Protect Intentional Effort

If someone acts with good intent and sound judgement, and the outcome still falls short, don’t punish the attempt. Nothing kills agency faster than a culture where people are punished for trying. People will quickly learn that the safest strategy is to wait, escalate, or stay invisible.

3. Model It Relentlessly

Leaders can’t outsource this. If leaders don’t say “This is unclear, but Ho Jaayega,” nobody else will feel safe saying it. Culture is not what you announce; it’s what you repeatedly do when the situation is inconvenient.

A Simple Agency Manifesto

Any organisation serious about ownership can adopt — or adapt — something like this:

We take ownership even when roles are unclear.

We act before clarity, not after it.

We do not outsource responsibility to context.

We learn in public and improve in motion.

We stay with problems until they are resolved.

We don’t wait for permission to do the right thing.

We absorb the cost of learning without complaint.

We finish what we start — or clearly own why we didn’t.

When it matters, we step forward.

Ho Jaayega.