Owner’s Mindset — Hard to Define, Easy to Describe

I feel the best way to promote values and affect organizational culture is by sharing instances from within the company. And I feel it because I have lived this experience throughout my professional journey. When team members display company values in their everyday work, it sets the course for acceptable behaviors — what gets appreciated, what is expected from team members, etc.

Ownership Mindset takes the cake in making all the difference between a good and a great team member. Simply put, Ownership Mindset means wholly owning up to your responsibilities beyond the definition of your role. I’ll tell you an example of one of my team members that will make this concept very easy to understand.

I recall when we had just started building the sales team at Hevo. We were figuring out the parameters on which to hire. There were numerous discussions on what kind of people to hire, who would be the right fit, etc.

The speed at which we were moving to close these hires seemed very slow; it was not as per my expectations. I wasn’t happy and expressed my concerns to our Talent Acquisition lead.

He assured me that things would pick up pace and committed to a 3-week timeline by which the offers would be rolled out. I had a fair idea of where we were in terms of the candidate pipeline, so I was far from convinced that my TA lead would achieve this target. Nevertheless, both of us signed off on the timeline.

Just a few days before the target date, we had a candidate who I cleared in the final round. I was keen to extend the offer, and I was elated that my TA lead will be able to meet his challenge!

He was very skeptical for some reason and wasn’t moving as fast as I’d expected. 3 days went by, and he sent me a few WhatsApp forwards. He was doing a background reference check, and we discovered a few serious things about the candidate and ultimately decided not to extend the offer.

My TA lead missed the deadline that he had committed to. It was so easy for him just to hit his target, but he didn’t. He then worked super hard to make up for the lost time. Finally, we rolled out offers to other deserving candidates 2 weeks later.

Through all this, I was curious to know why he let go of his initial target. A few weeks later, I met him in person and asked him why he did what he did.

He mentioned — “My job is to build an A+ team and not just close the position.”

This is what I call the Owner’s Mindset. I don’t have a very concrete definition, but this instance is the closest I can come to describing what it means.

A lot of such examples surround us, of people who are diligently owning up to their roles and raising the bar for the entire organization. These folks are the unsung heroes who are instrumental in creating legendary companies out of fragile startups.