Leadership · Organising to Scaling
Ownership in your team
For each team, you know whether the mission and the mandate are in place and whether you're keeping your hands off. And you let the next decision someone else makes stand.
Worth reading first: Mission command, Who decides what
Does this sound familiar?
- You tell your people they need to take ownership. They nod, and the next question still lands on your desk.
- A team leader makes a decision on their own. You don't think it's a good call and reverse it. Now they ask you first.
- In the early days everyone knew why you were doing it. Now the new people mostly know what they're supposed to do.
- Your people spend the company's money more freely than they'd ever spend their own.
- A customer complaint passes through three people before anyone picks up the phone.
Who it's for, and when
For founders, members of the leadership team and managers who want their people to act as if it's their own company, and find that their people wait to be told instead. In Searching and Proving everyone is close to the customer and it comes naturally. It fades from Organising onwards, as layers, rules and meetings pile up, and it matters more the bigger you get.
The model
Zook and Allen looked at why so few companies keep growing profitably for years. The cause was usually inside the company. The ones that kept it up had held on to something from the early days. They call it the founder's mentality, and it has three parts: a mission people want to win, an obsession with the customer and the work on the front line, and thinking like an owner.
That mentality fades as you grow. Layers, rules and meetings pile up, and the voice of whoever talks to the customer gets quieter. Your people aren't to blame. It happens in every growing company, unless you do something about it.
You switch it back on with three things. A mission worth winning, that everyone knows. A mandate: who can decide what on their own, agreed in advance. And you stop taking things back. The third is the hardest. Ownership doesn't come from a speech. It grows when someone makes a decision and you let it stand, even if you'd have done it differently.
You build the mission in two lessons, Why you exist and The BHAG: one big goal with a finish line. Here it's only about whether your team knows it and uses it. You set the mandate in the lesson Who decides what. And the lesson Founder mode is about the founder: a founder who dives in on the wrong work, or never stops diving in, snuffs out exactly what this lesson is trying to switch on.
Chris Zook and James Allen (Bain & Company), The Founder's Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth, Harvard Business Review Press, 2016. Based on ten years of research into why growing companies stall.
A mission worth winning
Bain calls it an insurgent mission: you're there to do something in your market differently from everyone else, for your customer. People who know that can make their own call when something unexpected happens. Test it: ask three people in a team what you're doing it for, and see if you hear the same answer three times.
Why you existClose to the customer and the work
In the early days everyone spoke to customers and everyone saw the work. Later there's a layer in between. Keep the line short: whoever talks to the customer can solve that customer's problem themselves, within agreed limits, without going through three people first.
Thinking like an owner
Zook and Allen describe it as three things: speed, a dislike of bureaucracy, and treating costs and risk as if it's your own money. You can't ask for that. You get it when people have something real to decide and see how it turns out.
Who decides whatStop taking things back
Every time you reverse a decision that was within someone's mandate, they learn the mandate doesn't count. After the second time, they'll check with you first. Let it stand, and talk afterwards about what you'd do differently. Only reverse what can't be put right or falls outside the agreed limits, and then say out loud why.
Pitfalls
Asking for ownership without giving any
'Take a bit more ownership' without agreeing what someone can decide puts the blame on them. They guess, and if they guess wrong, they've got it wrong. Start with the mandate, before you make the appeal.
Taking it back through the back door
You don't reverse the decision, but you make it clear you don't like it: a sigh in the meeting, an email to their customer 'just to set things straight'. The effect is the same. Say what you think in the one-to-one, and let the decision stand.
Watch and read
Zook himself, in three minutes, on the three traits of the founder's mentality and why they decide whether a company ages well or badly.
Watch on YouTubeAllen on how companies lose the founder's mentality as they grow, and what they can do to get it back.
Watch on YouTubeThe predictable crises of growth in three minutes: why the complexity that growth brings slows the growth itself.
Watch on YouTubeRead
The Founder's Mentality
Chris Zook en James Allen · 2016 · ISBN 9781633691162
The book behind this lesson: the three parts, the crises every growing company runs into, and what leaders did to hold on to the mentality. Businesslike and full of examples, just over 200 pages.
View the bookApply it
- 1
Go through the three questions for each team
For every team you lead, or that sits under your managers: does everyone know what we're doing it for, can they decide this themselves, and when did I last take something back? Answer honestly, ideally with the team leader in the room.
- 2
If they don't know what it's for, start with the mission
If there's no purpose or BHAG yet, make one first. If there is one but nobody knows it, use it: mention it when you make a choice in the meeting, to a new colleague on their first day, and when you decide whether to take on a customer.
The BHAG: one big goal with a finish line - 3
If they can't decide themselves, set the mandate
Pick the decisions that come back to you most often, and put them on the role scorecard under Decides alone or Checks first. Start with decisions that can be reversed.
Who decides what - 4
If you took something back, say so and put it right
Tell the person it affected that you were wrong to reverse it, and that the decision is theirs from now on. If the mandate wasn't clear, make it clear now. The next decision they make, you let stand.
Examples
Three questions per team
Team: 1. Does everyone know what we're doing it for? Ask three people. Do you hear the same answer three times? Yes / roughly / no 2. Can they decide this themselves? Which three decisions come back to me most often? Are they on someone's role scorecard? 3. When did I last take something back? What was it, was it within their mandate, and what did they do afterwards? The weakest of the three is where you start this month. Go through it again every quarter.
A decision you'd have made differently, wrong and right
Your service team leader gave a customer with a broken machine a free replacement for a month. You'd have handled it differently. Wrong: you ring the customer yourself to say it was a one-off, and announce in the meeting that this goes through you from now on. Right: you let it stand. In the one-to-one: 'You helped the customer, and that was your call. I'd have offered a repair within two days first; it costs us less. What do you think? Shall we agree a limit for next time?' If you agree a limit, put it on their role scorecard.
When it really has to be reversed
A project lead signed a contract with a penalty clause that's outside their limit. You reverse that, because it could cost the company a lot of money. Tell them yourself first: 'This is outside what we agreed, so I'm reversing it. It's about the penalty, not the customer.' Then look together at whether the limit was clear enough.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- Go to Decision authority. For the second question: here you can see, for each team member, which decisions they make alone, which they check first, and which sit with someone else. If there's nothing next to someone's name, they don't know what they can decide either.
- You look back on a situation from your own work. Only you can read what you write.
- You set a date with yourself, and on that day the app asks how it went.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
6 situations. You need 5 of 6 right. You can try again at any time.
1.You want your people to take more ownership. What helps most?
2.Within their mandate, your planner pushed a job back a week to fit in an urgent one. You'd have done it the other way round. Nothing went wrong. What do you do?
3.You ask three people in the team what you're doing it for, and get three different answers. There's a purpose on the canvas. What's the first step?
4.A project lead has signed a contract with a penalty clause far outside their limit. Can you reverse it?
5.You let your team leader's decision stand, but email their customer 'just to set things straight'. What do they learn from it?
6.A customer complaint goes through customer service, the team leader and you before anyone calls. What fits the founder's mentality?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Read next
- An annual theme · You give the year a short name with one number attached, so everyone in the company knows what this year is about without reading the canvas.
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