What Is Ownership & Why Should I Care?

Occasionally, someone will hear me talking about ownership and say something like, “Chris, I’m just an entry-level employee. Why in the world should I have to act like an owner? I don’t have stock.” And my answer goes something like this: There are different kinds of ownership. Let me explain what I mean.

Types of ownership

In a company, you have different types of ownership. For starters, you have the people who own the actual company. You might have shareholders, and you might have executives who are invested at a high level financially. This is a very significant type of ownership that also comes with an immense amount of responsibility and weight. These people bear the burden and responsibility of the company in a way nobody else in the organization can or will.

But below this you have ownership of outcomes. The executive team will have ownership for outcomes at a high level, and down the line you’ll find varying levels of outcome ownership with directors, managers, and eventually, individual contributors. And at each level, you’ll find the pressure associated with those outcomes is a bit different.

Outcome ownership is what you’re paid as an employee to have no matter where you work. You are paid to deliver outcomes. It’s that simple. And while you may not have ownership in the company, you must have ownership in your immediate sphere—in what you were hired to do. The whole organization is banking on each individual truly owning what they were hired to do.

What does outcome ownership look like?

Once you understand your goals and what you’ve been hired to do, you have to get to work on delivering those results.

However, chances are there will be opportunities for you to shirk responsibility or take the easy way out. Perhaps you're blocked, so you use that as an excuse for not delivering a result. Maybe you don’t have the budget to purchase the tool you need, so you mentally take that goal off your plate or tell your manager you can’t do it. But this simply doesn’t cut it.

Taking ownership of the outcome you were hired to achieve means bulldozing your way through blockers, finding alternatives to tools you can’t afford, and looking for alternative routes to the goal, even if they’re a bit risky. This kind of ownership is especially important in startups, and employees who don’t take this approach to their work won’t last long in a startup environment.

There will be times where a front-line employee will find himself in an impossible situation with little to no way out, but more often than not, there’s a way through that he has not yet considered. And ownership demands that he does everything in his power to consider and exhaust all options to deliver the outcome.

Again, this is what an employee is paid to do. Now, it’s certainly possible an employee may not be paid enough to care this much, and that’s between the employee and employer to work out and adjust goals respectively. But this is what it looks like to be responsible for outcomes.

But why does it matter?

Cool, Chris. So, I’m supposed to sacrifice my time, mental health, and wellbeing for the good of a company I don’t actually own? This all sounds like some sort of elaborate con.

Well, it matters to you personally for a few reasons:

First, it matters because it’s character-developing to work hard for an honest wage.

Second, it matters because learning to take this sort of ownership will force healthy growth in problem solving, technical skills, and more.

Third, this kind of dedication to problem solving and delivering results is exactly the sort of thing that leads to being rewarded with special projects and promotions (if you care about such things).

That said, there’s a time and a place for intense seasons of growth, and there are seasons where we must prioritize rest and renewal. It’s important to understand where you are in that cycle, and to make sure the work you choose for yourself during those seasons is appropriately matched to your personal goals. But no matter where you go or what you do for a job, there will be outcomes attached.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Startup life isn’t for everyone, and it’s not for most people in every season. Only you can know what you’re capable of owning at each stage of your life. But one thing is certain: if you’re paid to own it—if you’re paid to deliver the results, you must figure out how to do so. Ownership demands you deliver what you promise.

→ Your turn. Take some time in your 1:1 with your manager this week to identify the areas where you could start to show greater ownership. Make a list for yourself of the ways you’ve mentally compromised your ownership, and set a path to course correct.