Building a Culture of Ownership

Relinquishing and Communicating Control

Welcome to “Driving Businesses by Developing People” written by me, David Huynh. For those who do not know me, I am a people-focused business professional who builds team members to generate results. Thank you for joining me. If you are not on my email list yet and want to dive deeper into the intersection of business and people with me, you may subscribe here:

In a previous article, I previously discussed situations where the manager is over worked and the team members are under worked or vice-versa. We discussed the causes of these as a lack of trust or a lack of visibility. Today, we will focus on an actionable solution, workplace ownership, which boils down to the ability to make decisions. If someone owns a piece of work, they made the decisions to produce the output. 

Since decision making abilities is powerful, there are three problems that come with it: 1) managers who do not trust their team members may not want to give up ownership, 2) team members who do not seek higher level responsibilities, and 3) communication fallacies that do not clearly designate ownership.

As managers, we can build a culture of ownership by relinquishing control gradually, motivating or replacing team members who do not seek ownership, and clearly communicating ownership of specific objectives. 

Relinquish Control Gradually

When managers do not trust their team members, they often do not want to relinquish control. But if control is never relinquished, the cycle will perpetuate, the manager will be found executing the tasks, and the team members will not receive the opportunity to build trust. Relinquishing control gradually means changing check-in frequency and feedback. 

Typically, managers that do not trust their teams will exist on one of two extremes, hovering by checking in too frequently or dismissing by checking in when it is too late. 'Hovering' or micromanagement occurs when the manager spoon feeds answers or next steps as opposed to the rationale that should point the team members towards the answers. In this case, the team member does not make decisions, therefore does not own their work. On the other end of the spectrum, the manager 'dismisses' the team by only checking in right before the deadline. If the team member's output is not satisfactory, the manager will often do the work themselves. A manager should only 'dismiss' or pay little attention to a team member if the team member has already been trained and is providing output up to par.  

Relinquishing control gradually requires the manager to understand the capabilities of her or his team members. Managers need to check-in more frequently with individuals that have not demonstrated their decision making abilities and less frequently with those that have. The purpose of these check-ins is to course correct not with answers, but with rationale that points the team member to find the correct conclusion on their own. As our team members become more developed, our check-ins can become less frequent and we will need to provide less course correcting rationale, gradually giving the team member full decision making responsibilities of their work. 

Motivate or Replace

For team members that do not want to own their work, but instead need to be driven to the solution, we need to either motivate or replace them. Regardless if the role is a call center agent or software engineer, if the team member is not motivated, they will not want to own their work. Unmotivated team members can be identified as those that have clearly been given the opportunity to make crucial decisions, but choose to not form hypotheses to solve the problem. 

I previously discussed Motivating Team Members in a another article, so will not go too deep into detail here, but in broad strokes, we need to find the overlap between an individual team member's goals and the business goals. Once we have found the overlap, we need to highlight it so they understand that pushing business goals will help them reach their individual goals. 

If we have tried to motivate the team members, to little avail, they will either need to be kept as a producing executor or consider the Path to Firing them. At this point, assuming we are looking for a responsible individual to step up and take more ownership, we will need to choose an alternate individual. 

Communicate Ownership

If ownership is not communicated clearly, the manager may assume that the team member owns a particular objective, but the team member will not be aware of the distinction, which is often due to indirect or implied communications. To illustrate, see below for two methods to communicate ownership:

• Implied method: "Management is short handed right now and need more help. Can you own this project?" 

• Direct method: "Our business is growing and we need a few leaders to become decision makers. We believe you have what it takes to become a decision maker. This means, for critical business decisions, you will need to gather the correct evidence or learn the correct methodology. The management team, myself included, will be here to provide guidance daily or as needed. What do you think?"

With the implied method, the manager asks the team member to own the project, but 'own' can be misinterpreted, because the actual action items are not clearly outlined. In the direct case, the action items, making decisions and receiving regular guidance from management are clearly outlined. Furthermore, when questions are phrased as "can you do ___", team members will feel pressured to say yes, which will not give us a view on their level of motivation. Alternatively, if we ask for their buy-in, "What do you think?", their response will provide more nuance in understanding their enthusiasm. 

We can make our communication even more direct by clearly explaining what decisions they should feel empowered to make and what decisions need to agreed upon on together. Note that we are not saying, "decisions that need manager approval", but rather "agree on together". The former gives the impression that the team member is not a decision maker, but rather a follower; the latter says they are a joint decision maker.  If we want to give further support, we can then explain additional steps they may need to conduct in order to make good decisions and aspects where management will provide support.

Closing Remarks

If we are operating in a culture that does not encourage ownership, we need to determine what problem(s) could be causing the stoppage. If the manager does not trust the team, they will need to learn how to gradually relinquish control by altering their check-in frequency and providing feedback in the form of pointed rationale. If a team member does not want to own their work, we will need to either motivate them by finding the intersection of business goals and their goals or replace them. If ownership was not clearly communicated, one-on-ones are needed to designate roles of each individual and to describe how guidance will be provided.

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