Are You The Key To Success?

“I didn’t do it. He did it!” “I don’t know why they fired me! All I did was what they asked me to do.” “It’s not my fault. I’m just the…” You’re just the what? Just the manager? Just the secretary? Just the … Accountability in a word is OWNERSHIP. With ownership of the organization comes great responsibility. Do you know the owner looks at his business with a different lens than the people who see them self as “just employees”.

Every single day of the week including Saturdays and Sundays, an employee gets fired! Every day! But the same holds true for business owners. Every day of the week a business owner loses his/her job as owner. How can that be? They own the business don’t they? Who fires an owner? Well here’s my two cents for Saturday. Just something to challenge your thinking for a moment.

Owners of businesses are terminated when they cease to see them self as the owner and they see them self as an employee. They are there to do the job and get out. You would be surprised at the number of business owners who get so caught up in the running of their business, that they lose creativity and perspective. When they live in the world of just working the business, they are no longer an owner, and the business dies. The owner fired them self. And now, they are “just employees.” Like you!

For you as an employee of a business, rather than seeing yourself as “just an employee”, see yourself as the owner of the business. No matter what level you are at in the organization. If you understand that everything you do has consequences to the overall bottom line of the business, you will begin to do things differently. You will take your time and ensure things are done right the first time. You won’t turn your head when someone does something dishonest or something that will negatively impact the organization. Understand the importance of everything you do and every decision you make. When you minimize your contribution to the organization, you are “just an employee.” You have no vested interest in the bottom line of the organization. All you think about is the pay check they owe you for services rendered every two weeks. That’s it.

I know some of you think I have lost my mind. Not so! In these very unusual times we are living in, how in the world could I be saying that YOU must become accountable for the business or organization you “get to work for?” That is what I am saying. I know these are crazy times, but I also am optimistic that if we begin to do some things differently in how we conduct our self on the job, we might actually have a fighting chance to see organizations turn around. There is lot of mess in organizations. But guess what? People make up organizations. So if they are messy, we are the ones who own that. When people are dishonest and we do nothing about it, out of fear, out of survival, or out of indifference, we own it when the organization fails, whether we like it or not. If the organization is not successful, and you lose your job you will take it personally. We should take it personally. But understand, that somewhere in the midst of the madness we decided to let someone else take care of things we knew were not right and they didn’t. Are you just an employee? Do you want to be an owner? Are you the key to the success of your organization? What do you think?

Image Credit: sxc.hu