If you’re like most entrepreneurs, your business was thrown for quite a loop in the midst of the strangest year of our lifetime. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur in the traditional sense, it’s likely your job endured considerable changes throughout the past year. As humans we tend to resist most forms of change. However, there’s a mindset shift regarding your company that will not only be good for business, it will also help with job satisfaction and employee retention. I’m referring to the mindset shift of taking ownership.
Taking ownership of a job well done can be accomplished at any level of a corporation or small business. This concept is shown most brilliantly in a story my dear friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin tells about a young woman who worked at a grocery store and drudged through her job, day after day. After meeting the Rabbi and taking his advice to view the grocery store as her business, her boss as her client, and the customers as her very own, she began to show up to her job as if it were her own business. People started noticing her and even waiting a bit longer to be in her line at the checkout. One day a man noticed what a standout job she was doing and offered her a position that paid several times what she had been making at the store. The moral of the story is when we take ownership of our job and treat it like our own business, people notice.
As an owner of a company, empowering employees to treat the business as their own increases satisfaction and retention and creates a much better experience for the customer as they interact with happy people at every level. As an employee, taking ownership of your job makes you stand out to customers and colleagues alike, ensuring you’re the first to be promoted because you truly care about the company and its future so much more than someone who sees their job as simply a paycheck.
Overall, taking ownership of a company is great for both owner and employees. Besides increasing employee retention and satisfaction, ownership mentality also creates a culture of people who are in it together and want the best for the company and all who work there. Taking ownership at every level leaves customers feeling great about the business because they’re consistently interacting with people who treat them as their very own client and not a random customer.
Regardless of what challenges 2020 may have brought your business, I encourage you to take ownership of 2021! Start by owning your work and encouraging those who report to you to make the company and its customers their very own business!
Reina Rose, The Soul Nutritionist, is an international best-selling author, TV show host, and speaker, and is represented by Luminary Leaders. To learn more, visit www.luminaryleaders.com or www.reina-rose.com.