Ownership and Building Great Things
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
We wrote an article previously about curiosity and initiative, two of our necessary, non-negotiable values that we look for in new hires. When we talk about curiosity and initiative, though, we usually bundle them in with a third value that completes the set: ownership.
In our definition, curiosity drives a person to know not just that something is happening but why something happens; a curious person is one who would be bothered and restless if they didn’t know what was driving a particular effect. Initiative is the inertia-breaker that starts the movement from knowing things to doing things - it drives the creation of project concepts, starts the conversations between team members and stakeholders necessary to get everyone on the same page, and generally pushes to break the barrier between knowing something is wrong and fixing it.
When we wrote about the first two values, we wrote about them as a set within the confines of a single article. This is because of how clear the relationship is between the two. It’s a relationship that closely mirrors how we think about thinking and doing, about planning and executing. Ownership is also closely related to both concepts, but in a way that bears a bit more explaining. Ownership is how we get from shipping a product to shipping a great product, and how we progress from merely making a product to producing something more dynamic that changes and improves constantly during its lifespan. We think that called for a full article; read on to see why.
Ownership is Staying Power
In the narrow scope of a single project, we like for people to treat ownership in a way that implies that having their name on a project means something. A mindset that the kind of work a person puts out has something to do who they are is important; it’s the difference between forgetting about a deliverable forever when it ships or considering the body of work a person has put out over their career as part of the real, living and tangible body of evidence speaking to who that person is.
It’s easy to see this in play when we look at people with bigger, more visible projects. When Paul Graham talks about Y Combinator, it’s pretty easy to see he cares about it. He talks about the early days with affection, and his love for the organization filters through many of his articles. It’s part of his legacy; he cares about it because what it is (and becomes) reflects on him.
Believing that what you are doing matters is also a big part of it. It’s not a tech-world example, but look at how Matt Damon talks about issues relating to clean water:
It’s clear he cares about it. And because he cares about it he does a ton of work on that issue, far beyond just giving a few dollars. He’s the global face for the issue, because he thinks it’s important enough to pour his time and sweat into.
It’s a little bit harder to consistently feel the way about “smaller” projects, like an important but perhaps not very visible update to a product or a single call with a customer. But these things build up. Those small product updates and projects taken as a whole define what your company is and how well it does it’s work. All the contributions an individual makes, no matter how small individually, build up to represent their body of work and what they offer professionally.
Developing and maintaining ownership in these cases requires that kind of understanding, an intentional wide view that takes in the bigger picture of a company or a career. When thought about in that way, ownership encourages endurance; it’s what motivates an individual to keep track of all the little product updates they’ve made and do what it takes to make sure they continue working. It’s what makes a customer service representative ensure that every customer contact is as productive and positive as possible. It’s what keeps an HR person showing up every day and dealing with hard problems in a complete and satisfactory way.
Ownership is Creativity
It’s not easy to show up for a job day after day and perform as expected. We all end our workweeks tired; none of us lives without stress. Doing extra work on top of that is even harder. Going above and beyond is a real cost that an individual team member really feels; if you are exhausted just checking the boxes of your job duties, then it’s legitimately hard to find the inspiration to figure out how to do things better and faster.
But that’s what everybody wants; it’s what makes your processes better and what keeps your output at high levels of quality. Without people who push for better, things stay the same and companies are out-competed by people who did have what it takes to reach for new things in addition to just maintaining what they already had. Beyond endurance, this is where ownership shines - it’s the only consistent way to motivate someone to do more than the minimum required.
When Clipboard Health hires, we tend to look for people who get similar things out of their job as they do their hobbies. When people pursue hobbies, they naturally are doing it for themselves. It takes a lot of work to build a ship in a bottle or to train to run a marathon, but the people who do spend a lot of time and energy on those pursuits and enjoy it because it’s a part of who they are. We aren’t looking to monopolize our employee’s free time, but we are looking for that enthusiasm and attitude; we are looking for people for whom wanting to do better applies to the work they do, for whom living a fulfilling life also includes doing good work.
When you have that kind of ownership, it seeps into everything you do. It’s the difference between someone who does just good enough and someone who changes the face of a company.
Ownership Needs Freedom
It’s easy to say that you want the people in your company to show ownership in their projects, but as with anything it doesn’t come free. Clipboard Health has noticed the main cost of ownership is freedom; we don’t mean taking it away, but instead giving people more of it, providing the time, space and autonomy they need to make something their own.
There’s no quicker way to demonstrate to someone that they don’t have ownership of something than to take it out of their hands. The more control you exert on a project someone is working on, the more proof they have that it isn’t really theirs and that they are a “mere doer” as opposed to someone with a real stake and real control. Asking for someone to demonstrate ownership while micromanaging what they do is like telling someone they can drive your car but refusing to give them the key; it won’t take them long to figure out that ownership in this sense is just a fancy way of saying “work harder”.
Giving real ownership means giving someone the space to make mistakes and accepting the risk that they might break something. But this risk is what makes genuine ownership possible. In accepting that someone might break something and allowing them to do things their own way anyway, you are simultaneously also giving them the slack they need to modify, create and improve.
This means that a culture of ownership has to flow downwards; control has to be relinquished from the c-suite to department heads and all the way down, step by step, to the newest and greenest employees. This doesn’t mean oversight is abandoned, and it doesn’t mean managers don’t keep track of what people are doing; Clipboard has very high expectations of our managers' involvement in projects in addition to placing a very high value on ownership, for instance. But it does mean allowing people to be “in charge” of their own projects, able to make real decisions and then having them deal with the rewards and consequences of those decisions.
Ownership is worthwhile, and we think it’s the only way for your company to grow. But ownership isn’t and shouldn’t be “safe”. If your company has a stated standard of ownership and it’s not causing a single problem, that’s a red flag. Ownership is a good trade, but a trade none-the-less; if you don’t see the costs, there’s a good chance you aren’t seeing the benefits either.
Bo Lu, our COO, often points out that breaking a plate while washing dishes means that you were at the very least washing some dishes; if you can’t tolerate a few broken plates, then you also can’t expect them to be clean. Tolerating some risks means being able to give your employees freedom; giving your employees freedom in turn means they have the elbow room to have real control over their projects, to own them and get invested, to move quickly within a known tolerance for risk and make real improvements. It’s not free, but it’s worth it.
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