Date – 21/1/20
Hello Folks,
We missed Saturday. I had this written by Friday but somehow time just swished by! When you own and enjoy something in life, you really don’t get to know where the time went.
On that note of ‘own / ownership’ – I had a pretty interesting conversation with a good friend of mine where he was playing a devil’s advocate against my decision of working only with people who think and behave like owners and not employees. His argument was that it’s wrong for me to expect ownership from people because only owners can behave like owners and others don’t have an incentive to do that. Next point was that the employees don’t have a lot to lose – it doesn’t fire up the belly. Another was that what’s in it for the person – it benefits the organization far more. Well, one can say that these are quite reasonable arguments. But in case a few will agree with his logic, just wait for it 🙂
So let’s start with the last argument first –
What’s in it for the person?
A quite significantly higher probability (compared to thinking like an employee) of big money, growth, and learning. And in this one time life, a chance to become great. Let’s see how.
If you think like an owner – any wrong decision or action you take, would hurt you. When it would hurt you – you would try to make sure that you never repeat it. Then, you would understand why the decision went wrong. After understanding, you would gain more knowledge to avoid the mistake. This would repeat every day and you would gain hundreds of skills in a short span of time.
If you think like an owner – you would try to grab any opportunity that you can, to improve the organization. In that endeavor, you would have to upskill yourself. You would push your boundaries. And guess what happens when this becomes a habit – evolution, a lightning speed compared to usual.
If you think like an owner – like attracts like – and you end up working with people who also think the same. And working with owners is so much fun, like really fun – that you tend to work a lot more. And when we work a lot more, we learn a lot more.
Let’s move to the second argument. Employees don’t have much to lose.
Yes, they might not. And the loss can seem trivial….but only if we were to discount a particular kind of loss. The loss of hours of life which are never coming back. Look – one got to spend some time (whatever amount) at work – that’s a bare minimum. And if one is spending the most precious currency of life – why not get something substantial out of it!!! Think of it like when you go to a buffet – you know you have paid the money and then you try to hog as much as you can. Think of work as a prepaid buffet of time – the only choice is how much skills and knowledge you can take home.
And money, fame, and success have a habit of chasing great skill and knowledge. What else will it chase – gauchery and ignorance – don’t think so!
I didn’t have to break his first argument. He gave up 🙂
Simply put it’s in selfish interest of every individual to think like an owner. One just can’t lose. And thus, I can expect people to be selfish and logical (read owners).
