How much do you love your job? Let’s assume that you work for a corporation with many employees and ask yourself whether everyone in the organization shares a high level of engagement and commitment. Unfortunately that’s a rather unlikely scenario.
Brad Ham, author of Ownership Thinking, suggests if workers behaved like they owned a piece of the company, their work style would change significantly, as would their level of job satisfaction.
Ham points to what he calls entitlement thinking. “Entitlement has become more pervasive in our culture over the past few generations. It not only damages our economy and organizational productivity, but, ironically, it destroys self esteem.”
Ham suggests that the mentality of business owners is focused on the health and wealth of the business where as employees focus on themselves.
While the owner is concerned about risk, competition, their employees, costs and profits, the average employee concerns themselves with their paycheck, benefits, job security and getting their own work done. According to Ham, if companies can learn how to get employees to think about themselves and the concerns of the business, the rewards will be abundant.
“When employees are given the tools, information, and training to become more engaged in the business, the business will become more profitable — guaranteed.”
Companies that don’t practice the idea of ownership thinking are missing out. The average amount of unrealized profit (we call this profit that is “falling through the cracks”) in small to medium sized companies, and across all industries, is approximately eight per cent.”
– Craig Lund, is the President of Marketing services firm Marketing Talent Inc. and can be reached at clund@marketingtalentinc.com or on twitter @craiglund
