Train for Ownership
If you can’t teach the quality of ownership to someone who doesn’t inherently possess it, is there any point in thinking about how ownership fits into the training process? The short answer is “Absolutely!” Training will not magically insert the quality of ownership into every employee who walks in the door. But any person who does walk in with an ownership attitude can easily have it sucked out of them quickly, starting with the training process.
Most “training” programs are really “telling” programs. Managers or trainers tell the trainees what to do, tell them how to do what they do, tell them policies, tell them procedures, tell them rules, and tell them 23 ways they can get fired in this company. It’s a whole lot of telling that passes for training, and it sets up the paradigm that employees need to do as their told, which is the opposite of the paradigm of taking ownership.
When conducting employee training, it’s important to differentiate between teaching skills and conditioning behavior because each aspect demands a different strategy. Specific skills like running a cash register, using the computer, completing reports, etc. need to be taught with specific how-to steps. These are the robotic parts of the job in which creativity and deviation are not acceptable.
However, any other aspect of the job, like courtesy, efficiency, cleanliness, safety, etc. should not be taught in a robotic how-to way. These are the aspects of the job in which you want employees to be express their creativity, insert their personality, and make an emotional investment. You encourage ownership when you use an outcomes-based training strategy whenever possible. By clearly establishing a desired outcome, giving performance guidelines, and then allowing employees to put their personal spin on achieving the outcome, you will give the seed of ownership room to grow.
As an example, the employees at the Walt Disney theme parks are world-renown for their proactive courtesy. These employees are not taught a series of how-to behaviors that will produce courteous interactions. Instead, they are told that the desired outcome of every interaction is to delight the guest, and whenever possible, exceed the guest’s expectations. They are given guidelines about safety, efficiency, cultural diversity, and cost control, but they are never told exactly what to do or when to do it. They are allowed to devise their own creative solutions based on the unique situation that is in front of them.
As a result of this outcomes-based training, the Disney employees are encouraged to take ownership for each and every guest (customer) transaction, and they remain mentally and emotionally engaged in their work. This is how Disney employees are “trained” to make magic. Employees in any retail business can be encouraged to take ownership and add their own “magic” to their work during the training process. The operational support they receive on a daily basis will then determine if they actually do it.
Support Ownership
If you find yourself constantly having to stay on top of people in order to get things done, then one or more of these statements is probably true:
- You’ve hired people with renter mentality
- Your stifling management style has caused people’s ownership qualities to become dormant
- The owner mentality people have left to work somewhere that supports and appreciates them more
Outcomes-based training can activate the quality of ownership, but only outcomes-based management can keep it alive. Instead of focusing on telling employees what to do and how to do it all day, managers who support ownership spend their day reminding employees about desired outcomes and offering support as the employees work their own strategies to achieve those outcomes.
This release of control is difficult for many managers because they think the reason they were chosen to be a manager is so that they could boss people around. Employees with ownership won’t work for bosses with a controlling style of leadership for very long. And those employees who are comfortable being told what to do will never have a sense of ownership.
In an environment of ownership, the expertise and authority of the manager is best used to eliminate the barriers that make taking ownership difficult or impossible for the employees. For instance, employees who don’t have the magical cash register code can’t take ownership for a return transaction. Employees who have never seen or don’t know how to read the plan-o-gram can’t take full ownership for their stocking responsibilities. Employees who don’t have the authority to make decisions to remedy a customer complaint will never take ownership for service recovery. By removing these barriers, the manager makes ownership possible and keeps the owner mentality alive.
Nobody can eliminate barriers to success more quickly or more easily than a supportive manager who understands the value of ownership. Using your time to eliminate the barriers to taking ownership is time well spent because at the end of the day you will be encouraging employees to rise to a new level of responsibility in their daily activities.
