Ownership
“An ownership mindset, in a professional context, is a perspective where individuals treat their work and their company as if they were the owner, taking full responsibility for their actions and the outcomes of their work.”
When I was earlier in my investment management career, we would have interns and company trainees come through our department. They found our department particularly intriguing. We used both a national and global lens while most of the bank focused on just the local market. We didn’t play defense with the local market and competition, we breathed in a global experience and played offense to stay ahead. We managed a 10 digit sum of money and had direct access to Wall Street and other market centers.
Having rotated through other departments in the bank, there were always one or two brave souls that would ask for a meeting and secretly share that they wanted to have a job like mine instead of the traditional banking path. They were excited about the prospect of sitting in my chair and doing my type of work.
They weren’t so interested when I told them that it would help them to get hired to change their degree to finance/economics or get a masters in that direction. It would also require some timing and luck because these jobs were really rare compared to the armies of people performing the other functions of the bank. And, that it would take 10-15 years.
You can imagine how they responded. They were as deflated as I would have been if someone had told me the same thing at their age. I wasn’t trying to discourage them, just help them understand that rising to the privilege of authority or even ownership requires taking on the burden of responsibility.
Conversely, I often have owners of businesses or senior leaders tell me they are frustrated with how little an “ownership mindset” their teams operate with. My common question is, “Why should they?” They typically aren’t given much authority and they rarely participate in the benefits of ownership. Owners and senior leaders often expect employees to act as if they hold the keys—while refusing to let them go.
I am having a growing set of conversations around this issue:
With Employees - they seem to want the privilege of authority or even ownership, but don’t seem as interested in the burden of responsibility that comes with it.
With Owners & Senior Leaders - they seem to expect the people they lead to carry the burden of responsibility without offering any of the privileges of authority or ownership.
And the competing postures seem to be increasing their distance from one another. The widening wealth gap and the social media driven expectation of an abundant life seem to be contributors, but it feels even more systemic than all that. And it is a real problem with things like engagement, which is an incredibly costly issue.
The result is typically only one person operating with an “ownership mindset”: the owner.
You may be surprised to know that this is a very fixable issue and it doesn’t require turning over the ownership and all decision-making to those that likely don’t have the full professional maturity to handle it. Through healthy delegation, meeting governance, and mature engagement of team feedback, and many other practices, we can all live in the unfamiliar, but wildly productive middle. We’ve seen it happen over and over again.
Consider
Are you frustrated that you are being asked to have a high burden of responsibility without enjoying the privilege of authority or even ownership?
Are you challenged by employees expecting the privileges of authority or ownership without embracing the burden of responsibility?
What is one small step you can make to help move in the direction of the necessary tension to manage found in the middle?
