The Hindu Business Line : Why employees don’t take ownership

All in it together: In today’s flexible work environment, employees are encouraged to rely a lot less on hierarchy and a lot more on shared responsibility.

Ganesh Chella

(This two-part article explores the much debated but little understood subject of ownership as a value and behaviour in organisations – what does it mean, why it is important and why employees don’t display enough of it.)

Imagine you were witness to the following scenes:

The employee at the photocopier is half way down his copying when he encounters a paper jam. The employee moves to another machine instead of getting this one fixed.

It is 6.00 pm in the evening and the client deliverable is far from ready to ship and the consequences of delay are serious. The team leader responsible for the project gives the team members a few instructions but is the first to leave.

The manager is a member of a cross-functional team that is working on a new product launch. In the course of all his interactions, it is becoming clear to the manager that the product is destined to fail. He has significant information and insight about this. He, however, chooses to “play his role” and ignore the feeling in his gut.

The customer service representative, who received the call, has finished listening to the customer who has explained the serious problems he is facing and the emergency help he needs from the company. The employee knows what exactly is needed to solve the problem but chooses to follow the process and just logs in a regular request.

The CEO who is reviewing the progress of some of the major organisational initiatives that he and his direct reports had agreed to drive and implement is anguished to find that little progress has been made on any of them and his team members seem to be giving him all kinds of reasons for their not doing anything about it.

“Why don’t these people take ownership?” you would say, if you were to witness these scenes.

Talk to any CEO and he would say the same thing about his people!

“So, why don’t they take ownership?”

When you listen to the CEO’s passionate plea, you are tempted to conclude that employees in general shirk responsibility and by nature have a low sense of ownership. Unfortunately the truth lies elsewhere.

To understand this all-important issue it is necessary to first try and describe the behaviour of people who take ownership.

People who take ownership

People who take ownership direct all their efforts and actions to achieve results. They can be completely relied upon to get anything done. They go beyond their role, exert extra efforts and do “whatever” needs to be done to get things done. They worry not only about things in their work area but also about the results that are finally necessary. They are conscious of consequences and are concerned about resources. Phrases like “I have done my best”, “this is not my job”, “what can I do”, “don’t ask me”, “it’s not my problem” are not part of their lexicon.

People who do not take ownership

People who do not take ownership typically feel victims of circumstances around them. They will always lament about how they were let down by the other person and can therefore not take any responsibility. The typical sales person will tell you how the operations folks cannot be trusted to fulfill their orders or deliver good quality and for that reason cannot achieve the numbers. The typical quality head will lament the lack of a quality culture in the company and how the “numbers focus” is making his job impossible and that he therefore cannot take responsibility for quality.

Why is ownership suddenly becoming important?

Ownership was always important but a lot more now than ever before.

Organisations are increasingly overlaying their functional structures with process-based structures and work flows, given that value is really added only through these process-based relationships and chains. They also expect employees to rely a lot less on hierarchy and a lot more on shared responsibility.

The need for a very strong customer service orientation, given the competitive pressures of today, means that employees must go all out to solve customer problems and retain them.

In today’s world of flexible work arrangements, supervision has little meaning. Employees are expected to take ownership and get things done and not expect to be closely supervised.

Finally, the notion of leadership being bestowed on a single person who has all the 150-odd magical competencies is fast disappearing, given the futility of finding such a leader and also the complexity of the very task of leadership today.

Leadership is today expected to be shared by the entire leadership team even though there is one designated person who is still accountable.

Do we have a crisis of ownership?

Many believe that we have a crisis of ownership in the corporate world. Those who have seen the pre-liberalisation days are also quick to blame it on the all-pervading greed.

While I do see a problem of ownership I must confess that the general level of ownership today is far higher than what we have seen in the past.

We are able to rely on one another to get things done far better today than ever before. We are far more results focused and feel like victims to circumstances a lot less.

However, given the complexities of the world on one side and the far higher levels of empowerment (in terms of knowhow, resources, awareness, rewards and so on) on the other side, we could do much better. Given all that we do have today, employees are certainly not taking as much ownership as they should and they can.

(To be concluded)

(In the second part of this two-part article, we will examine why employees do not take ownership and what we can do to get them to take ownership.)

(Ganesh Chella is the founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR consulting firm. He is also the co-founder of the Executive & Business Coaching Foundation India Ltd. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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