Creating an Owner Mentality: “The 3 I’s”
What is an “owner” mentality? Owner mentality means taking responsibility for outcomes, being passionate about success and being empowered to make decisions that achieve those outcomes. This mindset means that the job gets done every time to the best quality available. To help your team invest in the success of the business as if they were owners
Innovation
Influence
Initiative
It is important to try to do some of the following.
- Listen to ideas: Innovation
- By listening to the ideas of each employee, you create ownership of these ideas and their follow-through. You can do this by having a suggestion and feedback box somewhere in the office or an email that is dedicated to this, that employees can utilize at any time. Consider every suggestion and if it is not something that is followed up on, thank the employee regardless.
- Influence: Allow Decisions
- A sphere of influence is where each employee can make decisions without having to go through the approval processes. Each decision made by an employee in this sphere must be respected. Although a manager might ask for reasons why a decision was made to create more of an ownership mentality, at the same time lets employees choose as much as possible. This way you don’t have to babysit them when they believe that everything needs to be approved first. Remember that with decisions comes accountability. Hold them accountable for their decisions by requiring reports of anything that can be improved, and recognition of successes.
- Initiaitate: Ask yourself: “What can I help with?”
- By having each employee ask themselves “What can I help with?” every time they have a free moment you increase their impact and productivity in your company. This also improves each teams’ overall performance by helping each other. We at Zany ask this all the time, either for ourselves or our clients. We say “What can I help with right now?” Whenever we have a free moment, it is treated as a }Let’s do it opportunity”. This means that when a staff member has a slow time we go around asking each other what needs to be done, and we get it done.
Having an ownership mentality comes from a company culture of Trust, Innovation, and Empowerment. Creating this balance at Zany and those we work with is something we strive to do daily.
https://www.meddlers.com/resources/3-ways-embrace-ownership-mindset-and-encourage-it-within-team
https://hbr.org/2016/06/the-curious-downside-of-an-owners-mindset
https://forbesbooks.com/the-mentality-of-ownership-thinking/
