Career Advice for My Sons, Part 2: Ownership

Thank you for joining me for part two of a four-part series on the characteristics of excellent team members as I travel and reflect during a summer sabbatical.??My motivation has been to share advice for my sons (and the younger version of myself) for entering the workforce; learnings drawn?from years of interviewing and managing others, and from both good and bad choices I have made along the way. I hope these will help my children (and maybe yours too) achieve greater joy and meaning in their work, and to be the kinds of cherished team members who will shape their generation of companies.?

Part 2)??Ownership

We all hope for employees and co-workers who are conscientious, honest, and prompt.??But ownership is next level.??I often use this analogy:??if you own a restaurant and the pipes burst on Saturday night, you’re going to be there with a mop before the sun comes up on Sunday morning. An owner carries the burden of success regardless of the circumstances and is willing to put in whatever effort is needed without being asked.

As an owner, you’re concerned about customer experience, about profitability, about efficiency, about sustaining and growing the business. You’re motivated by money, but also by impact and legacy.??

How do you instill this quality in your employees???You hire for it.

You hire the kind of people who would treat the business as if it is their own, the kind of people a boss would not hesitate to trust with her business if she leaves the country for a month.???A recent?article ?in the NY Post shared one subtle way a hiring manager checks for a conscientious attitude by simply seeing if the job candidate cleans up after himself at the close of an interview.??A hireling lacks a sense of ownership and makes excuses for inaction, finding it easy to fall back on “it’s not my job.” An owner believes every job is connected back to them.

Ownership is Rooted in Love

The sense of ownership I want to impart to my sons is: the work you do reflects the love you have. If you don’t love others or yourself, you won’t take pride in your work; you won’t be able to inconvenience yourself to own the little things needed for the success of the enterprise?when it is no longer fun.??Regardless of whether you helped found the business, if you work from the perspective of love for the organization and the team, you will treat the business and the customers as your own.??You will be fiercely protective of them. Innately you consider the quality of the product and the success of your team a personal reflection on you and your character.??By your behavior, people may even begin to assume you’re the owner. And if the boss is smart, she’ll promote you and do everything she can to retain you.

If you’re a hiring manager and you interview a young person who demonstrates a fierce love for your business and your industry, you ought to consider hiring them on that basis. Skills can be trained, experience can be obtained, but love is harder to manage. I don’t see it documented in many employee handbooks. But it is an attitude that can be modeled, shared, and caught.

Let each of your look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others*

Ownership rooted in love not only affects the success of a business enterprise, it can also impact the success of an entire society.?

Ownership is Mutual

As I strive to hire for ownership, I need to manage for it too. I’ve made mistakes in this area by imposing my perfectionism on the tactics of executing a project that has many paths to success.??Perhaps the person working with me has an equally valid way of getting the same result, and I could give them space to explore another way to achieving success, finding ownership along the way.???

I also try to choose who I follow based on a two-way expectation of ownership.??Does the boss create an atmosphere, motivation, and encouragement for people to develop a love for the enterprise as if they are co-CEO??My own sense of ownership has thrived under leaders who trusted me to take the lead and championed my successes.??The converse is also true:??I’ve worked for leaders who discouraged an attitude of ownership in their people. Unfortunately, there are many examples of insecure managers who try leading from fear and intimidation rather than helping instill a mutual love for the business. I recall one owner who felt the need to impress on me over drinks one evening: “remember, you are only here to make me money.”??One of the least motivating speeches I’ve ever received in my career! It was clear to me that in this company, ownership was not to be shared.

Ownership Drives Loyalty

Just recently during my travels I had a bad experience with Airbnb customer service, but I can now share it as an illustration of poor ownership.??My Airbnb host in Bratislava ghosted me and I was left standing outside in the rain with my luggage trying to find a way in.??Finally, I’d had enough. I gave up and walked soaking wet to the nearest Marriott hotel and was given a room.??

Rather than apologizing or trying to be helpful, the Airbnb service agent spent many chats and calls returning to the same explanation of the workflow and policies she followed.??I began to wonder if she was a chatbot instead of a human (and I work in AI!) until we finally talked over the phone.??She could see the history of my Airbnb stays all over the world and my upcoming reservations, but rather than “owning” her customer’s success and being my advocate, she kept returning to a monotonous script of company “workflows.”??

This is probably a reflection of how the service agent was trained.??Though I kept probing I didn’t sense any freedom to take ownership over helping find a successful outcome, only a strict adherence to a policy which she annoyingly kept referring to as a “workflow.” This dehumanized the interaction even more and seemed to give her permission to avoid ownership of her customer’s experience. (actually, her behavior indicates that her customer was the Airbnb host, not the guest.)

After I checked in to the Marriott, soaking wet, the Marriott reception agent showed up at my room later with a fruit basket and a note of thanks for my business.??She knew who her customer was.??The Airbnb agent closed my case saying the cancelation “workflows” did not allow her to make an exception to compensate me for my bad experience.??She definitely was not motivated to own a successful customer outcome.

Ownership is attractive.??Guess which business I’m more attracted to now?

Ownership Cannot Be Contained

One last example of ownership:??in January 2000 my son Jackson and I toured Israel together.??At the end of our first day we settled into an?Indian restaurant ?near our hotel in Herzliya that had come recommended. Our only problem was Jackson had no appetite, between jet lag and an earlier mistake ordering a hamburger based on a misreading of kilograms (it was huge!). As he sat there unable to eat any of the food we had ordered, the owner and head chef?Reena Pushkarna ?came by our table very concerned after seeing a young man who would not eat his food.??Was he sick, she inquired? Was the food tasty enough???Could she do anything to help? When he explained his plight she immediately called her staff, who snapped to attention and appeared at our table.??We were feted with her advice to help with his digestion, given some more food beyond what we had ordered (or paid for) to take away for later. She was concerned for our experience, and my son’s health. It was touching.?

Reena exuded love for her business, and for her customers (photos of her with world leaders adorned the walls).??

Reena exuded love for her staff. She was kind but commanding. They snapped to attention at her call and it was obvious they had adopted her high expectations to love the customer, the food, and the atmosphere.??

I could tell she considered our experience in her restaurant a reflection on her personal brand.??Here's the thing:??we were only two weary travelers in a large restaurant with many families and visitors, and yet it felt like we were her only and most important guests.??How did she do that???Her sense of ownership rooted in love generated the interest and the energy for her to attend to our needs. It bubbled and flowed out of her, her staff shared in it, and their guests were blessed by it.??What a great memory. I wish for my sons to adopt this level of ownership over every enterprise they engage in.??

Thanks for reading!??Next Installment:??Career Advice for My Sons, Part 3:??Accountability

*?Philippians 2:4