The Hindu Business Line : Poor ownership the result of poor leadership

(This is the second of a two-part article that 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.)

Ganesh Chella

It is the task of leadership to create the enabling conditions for high ownership. In other words, the problem of poor ownership is the result of poor leadership.

In this concluding part, we will examine the drivers of ownership that leaders must pay attention to:

Time for a Second QWL movement

F. W. Taylor, who propounded the principles of scientific management in the early part of the 20th century, believed that jobs should be specialised, simplified, standardised and routinised.

However, psychologists and social scientists concluded that too much of all this was leading to dehumanisation and employee alienation. The resultant work of people like Herzberg in the 1950s led to the birth of the quality of work life (QWL) movement which emphasised the need to design jobs with people and not just efficiency in mind.

In our rush to build organisations of global scale by breaking jobs into narrow fragments and off-shoring them, de-skilling jobs and making them too tightly defined to leverage global cost advantages, more and more Indian organisations are embracing the Taylorist principles all over again. The only problem is that this time around we are doing it with a workforce that is a lot more aware, a lot more educated and a lot more ambitious. The result is a workforce that is low on ownership.

While the West might benefit by sending out the so called “low-end” jobs to India, we will end up inheriting the problems of alienation. That is why I am convinced that it is time for a second QWL movement and this time around, it has to be born in India!

Make theory Y assumptions

While every leader will swear that he makes Theory Y assumptions about his people, his actions are mostly Theory X. Organisations love managers who run a tight ship, who micro-manage, who are directive and quickly jump in when things are going wrong. Things like the Blackberry only make this easier. When you demonstrate theory X assumptions, your people will live up to the prophecy of being irresponsible or at best do what is asked of them. Theory X managers can never create ownership. Given the pressures of performance and the lack of preparation for leadership, I am afraid that India faces the grave danger of breeding more and more Theory X managers.

Show them the big picture

It seems easiest to hire people with the promise of a job, a brand and big rewards. Showing them the big picture seems the hardest and few leaders have figured this out.

While we are doing a great job of setting measurable goals, we are doing an increasingly lousy job of inspiring people to buy into these goals. When employees see the big picture, they extend themselves and take ownership. In my work with teams in start-up and crisis situations, I have seen a high level of ownership because the big picture is clear — they must survive and succeed.

On the other hand, I have seen complete lack of ownership in large, well established organisations, including many MNCs, because very few can see the big picture or even if they can, only very few buy into it. With tightly defined verticals, high emphasis on political savvy and excessive emphasis on financial rewards, they push individuals to “do their bit” and not take ownership.

I must clarify that when I say “show the big picture” I am not referring to the vision statements displayed in the office lobby.

Showing the big picture is all about communication, inspiration and inclusion. What is easily understood in the early days becomes a problem as organisations grow in size. Big picture is also contextual. For a front-line retail clerk, big picture is being able to see the connection between his or her daily work duties and repeat customers. I say this because leaders are often unable to see the various shades of big picture and attempt to fix all of this through broad spectrum antibiotics such as town hall meetings, newsletters and group mails.

Some real recognition

Chances are, the last engagement survey pointed out that an overwhelming 75 per cent of your employees did not receive recognition in the last seven days and you are wondering how to fix it!

While most leaders conceptually understand that spontaneous recognition triggers acts of ownership among employees, few are able to do something about it.

In my mind, the problem has to do with both organisational and national cultures.

Some organisations have an inherently strong culture of encouraging, recognising and celebrating and some organisations don’t. This can be traced back to the personality of the CEOs, their own self-esteem and their own belief system of spotting people when they get something right. Such positively oriented CEOs end up building organisations with a high level of ownership. On the other hand, CEOs who wait for “perfection” to happen and do not recognise spontaneously, tend to dissipate all ownership. For many of us in India who were brought up to believe that performance was our duty and that appreciation might actually “slacken” our efforts, recognition was considered inappropriate or at best understood to have been granted. Hopefully, this will change with greater global influence.

So, dear leader, the next time you lament lack of ownership, please look at yourself in the mirror and ask what you could do to make ownership happen. I am sure you will find plenty of answers!

(Concluded)

(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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