How to Take Ownership of Your Work & Business

Back when the American frontier was being settled, poker was played in just about every saloon across the west. Because players were suspicious of each other cheating, the players took turns dealing the cards. Each dealer was given a specific marker to put on the table in front of themselves. Most often, it was a knife with a buckhorn handle. That’s where the term “passing the buck” comes from – someone who didn’t want the responsibility of dealing the cards would pass it along to the next player.

Employees who do the bare minimum are a drain of energy in the office. As a manager, it’s your job to inspire them. Make them more thoughtful of their work, give them the initiative, and keep their minds sharp. In essence, you have to teach them about taking ownership.

One of the unique things about being an entrepreneur or small business owner is that you are your first employee. You represent your company every day in two ways: the boss and the worker. Ultimately, your standards are the only ones that matter. That’s why taking ownership in business is so important. You’re taking ownership of your work, your employees’ work, and every other aspect of your company. At heart, taking ownership is about taking responsibility and having the initiative to lead. As an entrepreneur, you’ve already invested in yourself. Anything less than the best from you or your team is unacceptable as an investor. As Marcus has said, “People will work for recognition and opportunity more than they’ll work for anything else.” So here’s how to take ownership of your creation and inspire your team to do it too.

2. Who Doesn’t Want Passionate, Loyal Employees?

You get them by building a culture of trust and responsibility in your company. Every job your team completes is an opportunity to show that you are taking pride in a job well done, and not just attaching your name to work someone else did. Be sure to be a member of the team as well as the manager. As a leader, being enthusiastic about taking ownership is a great way to show your employees how to collaborate. “If you don’t have emotion and you don’t have passion, then you shouldn’t be in business, because money is a byproduct, not the purpose,” says Marcus.

However, if you’re selling products that are unpopular with your customers and you’re not willing to ask them how to make them better, that is not taking ownership. Such was the case when Marcus visited a toy company in southern California. Marcus tried to teach this lesson to the owners by initiating a focus group with children and their parents in order to get valuable product feedback. He also introduced them to a potential licensing partner for their toy race cars that would help expand their market and build brand awareness. At the end of the day, it was the end of the deal. Marcus walked away because the owners kept getting sidetracked.

4. When You Take Ownership in Business, You Can Communicate Your Ideas More Clearly, and People Will Take You at Your Word

You can back up your talk with concrete examples of times when you came up with solutions for your employees, helped customers understand what they needed, and went above and beyond the norms. When you know exactly how each process you’ve created runs, you can build an outline of how each piece in your company is supposed to run. That shows integrity and consistency, hallmarks of ownership.

1. Ask What You’re Doing for Your Business Right Now

You should always be available to your team for questions and insight, but you should also know where improvements could be made. If you rest on your laurels, complacency can set in. When this happens, it’s usually downhill from there. A great example of this was when Marcus met with the owners of a restaurant who sold franchises of their concept in western Pennsylvania. After visiting several locations and speaking with the franchisees themselves, it was clear the owners did not care about long-term partnerships or even long-term growth. In any business, you expect certain things from the owner or boss such as open lines of communication, collaboration, accountability, and responsibility. If the owners of this Greek restaurant concept would have taken more ownership in setting up their franchisees for success rather than just showing up once a month to collect a check, this partnership would have been something worth breaking a few plates over. Lesson learned? Make yourself available to receive information in all shapes and forms. When walking past workers, read the room and determine where slack needs picking up or where pressure needs to be released. Your preemptive care for employee well-being and workload shows that you’ll take ownership in both the good times and the bad.

You would be surprised how many employees don’t want to work through ideas or criticize their boss for fear of losing their job or for seeming like a burden. Remain open, take ownership in business, and let your staff know your goal is their success.

3. Know Your Values and Put Them in Writing for New Hires

Suppose even one employee thinks that you prioritize sales over quality, or that you don’t value inclusion in the office. In that case, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. By taking ownership as a manager, you are becoming responsible for your staff’s actions. Create a culture based on strong values, leadership, and responsibility, and then trust your employees to show it daily.

Take Bank of America as an example. The bank was named one of the 100 best companies to work for partly because 82 percent of employees said it was a great place to be, particularly noting its “sense of camaraderie.” Bank of America also invests in leadership through several management fast-track programs and by providing educational resources. (Aldridge, 2019). Don’t be afraid to task employees with new goals or tasks and help them train for new roles and additional responsibilities.

5. Listen to Your Team and Keep an Ear Out For Defensiveness

If you want your employees to take ownership, you must recognize when someone feels their voice isn’t heard. Sometimes, defensiveness is a sign of not having ownership of projects. “Jim did that part, not me…” or “That wasn’t my idea in the first place…” can mean that you missed an opportunity to recognize a valuable suggestion from one of your team members. If your employees are still handing in good work, but get touchy about team failures, think about rearranging how things operate. Unhappy campers could just have untapped initiative and need a different challenge. You can find new talents everywhere if you keep your ears open.

1. Don’t Micromanage

Although this is almost always good advice, it’s especially true if you want an employee taking ownership of their work. When you don’t let your team do what you hired them to do, it strips them of ownership. They can begin feeling like they’re working for someone who doesn’t value their talents. If you guide them on every step of their project, why should they feel ownership of what they created? Marcus says the best way to do this is, “You have to assign specific tasks to everybody so you don’t bump into each other and start arguing about silliness.” So give your employees a roadmap and let them get to the destination.

When mistakes happen, as a boss, give your team enough time to fix it on their own. Be quick with compliments and slow to blame in the meantime. If employees feel supported, the same mistakes shouldn’t happen twice.

3. Know Where You Spend Your Time

You should take ownership of your work and be responsible for your team. However, keep in mind that not allowing your employees to feel ownership in business will suck the hours out of the day. As a manager, you don’t want to have to follow up on everyone’s daily output because you don’t trust them to handle it independently. Similarly, only spend your time on areas where it’s needed, and don’t be afraid to pick up slack where it’s necessary. You own every step of the process, no matter how small.

Owning a small business is literally a dream come true. It’s your imagination come to life. You own it, and you’re bringing it into the world much like a child is born, raised, and grows into an adult. And just as it can take a village to raise a child, as you take ownership of your work, the rest of your team members should feel that same sense of ownership and duty. That requires trust that everybody is working toward a similar goal and shares responsibility when something goes wrong. Basically, it’s feeling accountable to one another. Trust is key in any business relationship, and this is especially true for Marcus who believes, “If you have trust with somebody, it can survive any downturn, any mistake, any problem. And if you don’t have trust, it won’t matter how good the business is. It will fall apart eventually.”