Owners vs. Renters: Creating ownership to drive engagement
In their book, How Google Works, former Google execs Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg share a number of eye-opening stories that give readers a glimpse into the culture of one of the world’s most admired companies. But there is one anecdote in particular that has always stuck with me; one that involves a simple memo:
“THESE ADS SUCK.”
Those were the three choice words that Google CEO Larry Page decided to write on the top of a pile of printed results from the company’s AdWords engine. On a Friday afternoon in 2002, Page was playing around on Google’s site and was unhappy when he found completely unrelated ads appearing as results for his search queries. Instead of calling a meeting or sending an email to the AdWords team, Page opted to print out the search results that he did not like, highlighted the unrelated ads, and posted them on a bulletin board in Google’s kitchen (with THESE ADS SUCK in big, bold letters across the top). Then he walked out and went home for the weekend.
By the following Monday, a group of five engineers had sent out an email that not only analyzed why the problem was occurring, but also described a solution — including a link to a prototype implementation of the solution that the group had coded over the weekend. Their fix resulted in the creation of “ad relevance scores,” which — ultimately — revolutionized the AdWords engine and helped propel Google into a multi-billion-dollar business.
These engineers weren’t even on the AdWords team. But they understood Google’s mission — “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” — and decided to fix the problem. Why? Because they felt ownership.
Instilling a culture of ownership within a company is an incredibly challenging task; however, the organizations that do it well report significantly higher employee engagement, productivity, and results.
What exactly constitutes “ownership”? To put it simply, when individuals feel ownership, they are actively finding ways to impact their company or team. They obsess over the little details and feel responsible for both short-term as well as long-term results. They are inspired not only by their leadership, but also by the actual mission or larger goal of their group. As a result, they are fully invested and doing everything they can (regardless of their actual role) to help their group achieve that mission.
A recent documentary by MLS Insider about legendary Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and one of his former players, Jay Heaps, serves as an excellent illustration of this concept.
Jay Heaps was recruited to play soccer at Duke and went on to win the MAC Hermann Trophy (college soccer’s equivalent of the Heisman) in his senior season. He then went on to play professional soccer for the New England Revolution for eleven years, and currently serves as the team’s head coach. At Duke, Heaps also walked-on to the basketball team.
According to Krzyzewski, Heaps was “the ultimate team player.” Although he rarely saw the court (Heaps only logged 70 minutes of playing time in four years), he was totally inspired by his coach and completely engaged in the team’s mission: to win a National Championship. For example, during Heaps’ senior season, he took it upon himself to spend extra time working with Shane Battier — a young, rising star who needed help building his confidence shooting the ball.
Heaps stayed late after practice every single day to feed Battier balls so that he could work on his shooting. He could’ve been in the gym doing his own workout or on the soccer field preparing for his impending professional career. But he wanted to find a way to impact his team. Despite the fact that he personally barely got a chance to play, Heaps still “would’ve given anything” to help his team win. That is ownership exemplified.
The key question, then, is how do you — as a leader — empower individuals to feel that level of ownership, let alone an entire company? How do you get everyone to buy into a “team-first” mentality?
Here are four tips on how to cultivate ownership within your team or company:
(1) Define your WHY.
At Google, their WHY (as in, why they exist as a company) is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That purpose is ingrained in the DNA of every Googler, and they use it as fuel in the work they do. Every decision that is made or new product that is released is done with the higher-level intent of helping others to succeed. This reinforces and encourages behaviors of leadership and cross-team ownership. While each employee has their own individual role and responsibilities, they all know that they’re working together to achieve a greater goal.
(2) Separate coaching from performance evaluations.
To steal a line from Jim Keenan, coaching is NOT a performance review. If you coach an employee and their results don’t immediately improve, do you move in quickly to beat them up about it? If the answer is yes, then that employee most likely is too concerned with their job security and personal performance to feel any sort of larger ownership. Small improvements in rituals and behaviors are a leading indicator; results are a lagging indicator. As such, coaching and feedback have to be seen as a tool for improvement and growth.
Teams — both in sports and in business — cannot “win” all of the time. But if you work to develop a culture of ownership, you’re putting your team in a much better position to be consistently successful.
(3) Create trust and safety.
In his TED Talk, “Why good leaders make you feel safe,” management theorist Simon Sinek talks about a concept that he calls the “circle of safety.” His argument is that if leaders create an environment that minimizes internal fears (e.g., getting fired for a mistake), then their teams are more likely to be highly engaged.
“Innovation requires risk; experimentation; failure. If people fear they might lose their jobs, they might not try. There is no innovation if that risk exists.”
When people don’t feel safe, they waste the majority of their energy lying, hiding and faking their way through each day trying to conceal their weaknesses, manage others’ perceptions, and — ultimately — protect themselves. It limits the amount of energy that they can pour into actually doing their job. But when they feel protected, their level of trust skyrockets, and they feel like they have a license to take risks and experiment. At Next Jump, our CEO instituted a “No Fire Policy” to create a circle of safety and help empower employees to invest in failure. The results: decreased turnover, increased engagement and accelerated employee growth.
(4) Carve out opportunities for anyone to contribute.
During my second season playing soccer in college, I didn’t appear in any games. I sat on the bench for the entire season. But my coach deliberately set up an environment in which I felt empowered to have ownership in the team. I helped to organize our off-season weight lifting program; I coordinated community service events with local non-profits; I even helped scout other teams that we were going to play against. I was given opportunities to participate in important decisions and make a meaningful impact on the team’s success, even if it wasn’t in the form of scoring (or, in my case as a goalkeeper, preventing) goals. And I knew that my coach trusted I would represent him, my team, and the university in a manner that was consonant with the values and the culture that he was trying to build.
When individuals believe that they have opportunities to add value and are trusted to lead their own initiatives, they’ll feel ownership in the company or team as a whole.
