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For many companies, January is the time to sit down and plot out a strategy for the year ahead.<\/p>\n
Did you have a great 2017? How do you make 2018 even better? Was 2017 a struggle,\u00a0 which is not good, considering the economic conditions? What can you or your team do to turn the ship around?<\/p>\n
Here at Thinker, we set aside a Friday afternoon to celebrate our successes and identify where we need to get better. When we’d finished those lists, each of us was asked to identify the improvement projects we wanted to participate in and which ones we wanted to “own.”<\/p>\n
What does “owning” something at work mean?<\/p>\n
Warren Tanner of www.soapboxhq.com<\/a> had a good piece on “ownership” two years ago. He defined taking ownership at work this way:<\/p>\n “We take ownership when we believe\u00a0that taking action is not someone else\u2019s responsibility. It\u2019s the opposite of passing the buck. If you owned the company, what would you do? You\u2019d do the right thing.\u00a0\u00a0Taking ownership is taking the initiative to do the right thing.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0You see a problem and, even if it\u2019s not yours, you step in to be part of the solution.”<\/p>\n In Thinker’s case, the ask was more intentional. Instead of identifying a weakness and voluntarily stepping in, we identified our weaknessnes as a group and asked for team members to step up and lead the change. It’s still a big step. Tanner cited an American Management Association study from 2013<\/a>\u00a0showing that\u00a0many managers have fairly low opinions of people in their offices.<\/p>\n The question was “What proportion of your employees seek to avoid responsibility?”<\/p>\n The results?<\/p>\n Obviously, if you are a manager who would fall into the category of having a staff on which 50 percent avoid responsibility, you may need to look at your hiring practices. If you are in one of the other four categories, perhaps there’s a chance to help them take ownership. Tanner’s suggestions:<\/p>\n If you’re reading this and you are on the other side \u2014 the worker side \u2014 of the table, then you should take ownership of a project when opportunities arise … because it leads to more opportunities.<\/p>\n Jeff Goins of Medium.com<\/a>\u00a0wrote a book, The Art of Work<\/em>, tracing the common traits of all successful people. His research showed that successful people rarely leave their destiny up to circumstance; they don’t merely hope to succeed. Sure, there is a lot of chaos and luck in the world and it plays a role, but successful people understand that they have the ability to influence their outcome.<\/p>\n So how do you “stack the deck,” as Goins says, in your favor?<\/p>\n For many companies, January is the time to sit down…<\/p>\n\n
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