Ownership

What do an ancient Chinese philosopher, a navy SEAL, a roman emperor and 20th century business guru have in common? 

They will all tell you, in their own way, about the importance of taking ownership. 

Ownership. Personal responsibility. The main factor in who wins (and who doesn’t).  

Stephen Covey wrote in his famous ‘7 habits of highly effective people’ that until you accept you are who you are today because of the choices you made yesterday, you can never say ‘I choose different.’ Taking responsibility for your world and everything in it is difficult, and essential, and life changing. 

But, what exactly does it mean? 

It means taking responsibility for achieving a successful outcome on a project. If it wasn’t successful, it’s not someone else’s fault. You’re the leader. It HAS to be your fault, or you will never have the chance to do it differently next time. 

It is learning what works, and what doesn’t, and adapting. It’s accepting losing a sale, and taking steps to understand why, rather than blame the client for not understanding the product. It’s taking hard feedback from someone in your team, and making a change, at the expense of your own ego. 

Think about someone you’ve worked for, who you would classify as a bad leader or manager. How did they take responsibility? Bad feedback? What was their response when things didn’t go well? Now think about a good leader in the same situation. Ownership and personal responsibility is the key difference between good and bad leadership. 

Take stock of yourself right now? If something goes wrong, do you look for things you could have done differently? Or do you look for someone to blame? Remember in my welcome email, I said people follow leaders who say ‘do as I do?” Here is your chance to practice this. 

Think about someone in your team who fell short of expectations. Maybe they forgot to do something. Lost a sale? Had a poor attitude in a meeting, which reflected badly on your team. 

Ownership means saying “perhaps I didn’t do a good enough job of explaining why relationships with that team are so important, and why we need to contribute in a positive way when we’re in those meetings.” 

It means saying “I’m sorry you lost that sale. What happened? How can I do a better job of developing your skills so you can make that sale next time?” 

This take practice. It might feel alien at first. But by taking ownership and putting your own ego to one side, you teach your team that it’s OK to do the same. They will ‘do as you do.’ 

This is a big topic, and one I could write for days about. Thankfully others have already done so, and I don’t need to add to that. 

Check out the following:

Extreme Ownership- Jocko Willing & Leif Babin 

Stoic ‘Wisdom’- understanding what’s in your control and what isn’t 

Stephen Covey- 7 habits of highly effective people (the chapter on this is ‘proactivity,’ although the entire book is worth it. 

In the meantime, start this right now. Choose something recently that didn’t go to plan and ask yourself what you could have done differently. 

Done that?

Good. Start there. 

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