Those With Ownership Are Not Always Owners

The need for a quick bite on the road this week led me into a Taco Bell. While I was chewing the first bite of my utilitarian meal, an employee walking by asked me, “How is your food today?” I almost spewed beans out of my nose. This is a question I would expect to hear when partaking of the market price fresh Mediterranean catch of the day, not while ingesting an 89-cent burrito. I must have looked either dumbfounded or stupid as I nodded my head and made a food-obscured “Mmmmm” noise.

When I was ready to leave about 10 minutes later, this same Taco Bellman held the door open for me. What was up with this guy? I gave him an amused “Thank you!” and looked at him quizzically. The age… the starched shirt… the lack of nametag… of course! It was the franchise owner.

Who else would bother to talk to a $2.00 customer? Who else would exhibit genuine courtesy in an environment that doesn’t demand it? Who else would care? Only the actual owner who has a personal stake in the daily cash register receipts would exhibit this type of ownership behavior, right?

Last night as I entered a Ralph’s grocery store, I was almost mowed down by a Ralph’s grocery store employee in a full out sprint to the parking lot. I stopped to avoid the collision, and I turned to see what his big rush was. He yelled, “Ma’am!” to stop a woman so that he could hand her a bag with a dozen eggs inside. He said, “We forgot to give you your eggs!” (He gets extra points from me because he didn’t say, “You left your eggs,” or “They told me to give you your eggs.”) The delighted customer enthusiastically said, “Thank you!” and started fumbling for a tip. The bagger sprinter waved her off, and ran back into the store almost as fast as he had run out.

The Taco Bell owner surprised me, but the Ralph’s bagger stunned me. Honestly, what did it matter to him if he caught the eggless woman or not? Would there be a “little something extra” in his paycheck at the end of the week if he caught her? Would he get yelled at, put on probation, or fired if he didn’t? From my observation the energized bagger boy chose to run instead of walk, and he said “we” instead of “they” because he had that same sense of ownership that I had observed in the Taco Bell proprietor.

Ownership is a rare and elusive quality to find in the average employee because it can’t be externally motivated. A sense of ownership is internally born and personally bred. To those with a sense of ownership, demonstrating it is its own reward. Managers really can’t create ownership in people who don’t have the natural tendency for it, but they can cultivate ownership that is latent and they can support ownership that has been stifled by a controlling boss or work environment.

I was standing in the hallway of a large corporate office and noticed a jumbo poster on the wall declaring that “ownership” was one of the company’s corporate values. I walked into their customer service department and heard their reps talking on the phones with customers and saying things like, “The system messed up,” “They can’t get it out today,” and “I don’t have any control over it.” Building a team of employees with ownership is not impossible, but it’s going to take more than a poster to pull it off.