I had a supervisor (Bob) that used to ask, “Are you a renter or an owner”? It seems like a crazy question in the context of organizational management, so I would usually say “I rent my house, but own my car!” After that, I would usually get his famous LOD (Look Of Disapproval). The look was meant to get everyone to be serious when we were off topic and not focused. Bob continued to ask if we treated the cars we own better than the cars we have rented. Nobody wanted to admit it, but it’s clear we treat the cars we own better than the ones we rent. There are many reasons we do this, but one of the biggest is that we will not be around to see or even care about the long-term effects our nonchalance has on the vehicle.
At this point, we could mostly see where he was going. But the question still stood. How do you get people in an organization to treat it as if they own it? How do you convince people that are only there for a few years at a time to treat everything as if they are going to be there for 20 or 30 years? I’ll admit, it’s not an easy question to answer and there is never a perfect solution. Below are three things you can do to get a start.
- Give ownership to your people. An excellent way to get people to be owners is to give them ownership within the organization. Give them responsibility for processes, people, operations, or equipment. Give them autonomy to work within the parameters you set and allow them to make mistakes, learn, and they will start down the ownership path.
- Deliberately guide the culture. Culture can go a long way to making employees feel like owners. Culture is created from the top down. The leaders of the organization are responsible for showing the rest of the organization what is important. To drive culture, bring all the leaders together and develop a clear path to the culture you desire. Make empowerment and ownership a focal point for the culture and let the team come up with ideas to help move it along.
- Put people first. The greatest and most important way to make your organization “world-class” is to show your people that the organization cares for them. Do things for them without agenda or expectation that the organization will get something in return. A great example is to encourage personal progression outside of the organization. Help your people make progress on their dreams. If this action is taken, you will decrease employee turnover rates and even when you help someone get become qualified in an area outside of your business, you will gain their loyalty. These people will advocate on your behalf to other potential employees.
Apply the above three steps in your organization, and you will be well on your way to converting renters into owners!