Ownership thinking vs. Stewardship thinking

Recent happenings with clients have caused me to solidify my thoughts around this issue. For years I heard that you ideally wanted your employees to "think like an owner". Although I smiled and nodded my head in agreement when I heard it, there was always a part of me that felt it was impractical. How can we expect someone to "think like an owner", and therefore act like an owner, when they aren't an owner? 

Is it possible? Perhaps. 

Is it realistic? Maybe not. 

Is it a fair? I don't think so.

A more realistic, and frankly more fair approach, is to expect our teams to think & act like a "good steward". The basic definition of stewardship is to 'take care of something', with the implications being 1) to do it well, and 2) that it belongs to someone else. Depending on your beliefs, even as an "owner" you may not feel that the company is yours so-to-speak, but that is a larger topic for a different time. Expecting our teams to act as good stewards simply means that we expect them to take care of their responsibilities as if their actions affect others, which they in truth do, whether we are talking specifically about the owner(s) or all the stakeholders of the entity as a whole.

Instilling an attitude of good stewardship is much more practical than preaching ownership thinking in my opinion. As an owner, I can honestly expect a team member to take care of the organization as if their actions matter to the company as a whole. Also as an owner though, I've always felt it slightly unreasonable to expect people to "think like an owner" when that actually wasn't the case. It just didn't seem fair.

If you would like to talk about how this applies to your own business, feel free to reach out. I'm always happy to have a conversation around building better teams.

Mark Goldman