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One of the most common frustrations I hear from business owners sounds something like this:
“I just wish my people would take more ownership.”
You don’t want to explain every next step. You don’t want people who simply complete whatever task you put in front of them and then wait for another instruction. You want them to think, solve problems, notice what needs attention, and move things forward without everything coming back to you.
In other words, you don’t just want their hands. You want their brains, too.
That’s a reasonable expectation. But before you decide your people lack initiative, I think you need to look at how you’ve been leading them.
Because sometimes the owner asking for more ownership is the same owner who’s been training his team to wait for instructions.
Start at the top
When I see a leadership problem in a business, I start at the top and work my way down.
That doesn’t mean employees are never responsible for poor performance. Of course they are. Some people really do avoid responsibility, and delegation doesn’t eliminate accountability.
But you’re the leader. Before you decide the problem is their lack of initiative, you need to ask whether the environment you’ve created actually encourages initiative.
Think about the way you normally delegate work. Do you tell people exactly what to do and exactly how to do it? Do they know which decisions they’re allowed to make without you? When something unexpected happens, have you given them enough authority to solve the problem, or have they learned that the safest thing to do is stop and ask you?
If that’s how you’ve led for a long time, you shouldn’t be surprised when capable people become hesitant.
They may simply be doing exactly what you’ve trained them to do.
There’s a difference between a task and a result
Imagine I tell someone, “Sweep the floor.”
That’s a task. I’ve defined the activity. Your responsibility is to perform the activity I’ve assigned. You sweep the floor, put the broom away, and you’re finished.
Now imagine I tell you, “I need you to make sure the floor is clean.”
At first, those instructions might sound almost identical. You may even grab the exact same broom and perform the exact same motion.
But the responsibility I’ve given you is completely different.
If you own the task, you’re responsible for sweeping. If you own the result, you’re responsible for a clean floor.
That means you have to look at the floor and decide whether sweeping is enough. Maybe something spilled and needs to be mopped. Maybe there’s gum stuck underneath a table. Maybe customers tracked mud through the entrance five minutes after you finished.
The task-oriented employee can reasonably say, “I swept it.”
The person who owns the result has to ask, “Is the floor clean?”
That’s the kind of thinking most owners are asking for when they say they want more ownership.
Ownership requires authority
But changing the assignment isn’t enough. You can’t give someone responsibility for a result while withholding all the authority required to produce it.
If I tell you that you’re responsible for keeping a customer happy but require my approval for every meaningful decision, I’ve created a contradiction. I’ve told you to own the outcome while teaching you that I still own the decisions.
Your people need to know where they’re free to act. What can they decide without you? What can they spend? Who can they talk to? How far can they deviate from the normal process? At what point do you want them to stop and ask?
There’s no universal right answer to those questions. Different people, roles, and situations require different levels of authority.
The important thing is that both of you know what the boundaries are.
Otherwise, your employee has to guess. And when people aren’t sure whether they’re authorized to act, many of them will understandably choose the safer option: wait for the owner.
Changing the assignment means retraining the team
This is where the owner’s responsibility becomes especially important.
If you’ve spent the last several years delegating tasks, don’t expect one conversation to suddenly produce a team full of independent thinkers. You’ve trained a pattern.
They’ve learned that you give the instructions. They’ve learned that you know the right way to do things. They’ve learned when they’re expected to ask permission. And you may have learned to step back in whenever someone doesn’t move quickly enough or approaches the work differently than you would.
Changing that dynamic will require work from both sides.
Your employees have to learn to exercise judgment and carry responsibility. But you also have to learn to give them room to do it.
That may mean allowing someone to solve a problem differently than you would. It may mean resisting the urge to jump in too quickly. And it may mean accepting that developing ownership in other people is sometimes less efficient in the short term than simply doing the work yourself.
You’re building capability, not merely completing today’s task.
You can't ask people to think like owners while continuing to manage them like task-doers.
Audit your own delegation first
So before you ask your team to change, start by auditing yourself.
Think about something you recently delegated where you were disappointed by the level of ownership. Maybe the employee technically completed what you asked but didn’t think beyond it. Maybe he hit a problem and immediately came back to you. Maybe you found yourself wondering, Why didn’t he just take care of that?
Before you evaluate him, reconstruct your own handoff.
What result did you actually give him responsibility for?
Not what result you had in your head. What did you clearly communicate that he owned?
Then look at the authority you gave him. Did he know what he was free to decide and where he needed your approval?
The Delegation Handoff Kit we used in the previous issue can help you do this. Run that assignment through the process again, but this time pay particular attention to those two things: the result and the authority.
You may discover that your employee really does need to grow in initiative. That’s useful information.
But you may also discover that you’ve been asking people to take ownership of work you never actually gave them ownership over.
Delegate results, not tasks
You can’t ask people to think like owners while continuing to manage them like task-doers.
If you want people to bring their judgment, creativity, problem-solving ability, and experience to their work, give them something meaningful to own. Define the result. Clarify their authority. Then give them room to think.
It won’t change your culture overnight. If your team has learned to wait for instructions, both you and they will need some practice operating differently.
But the shift starts with you.
If you want your team to really own their work, you must delegate results, not tasks.
To thriving,
- Zach
