With this in mind, what happens in your organisation when your people don’t have the feeling of ownership for what they are doing (and achieving)? There are probably some bad things happening, such as people missing deadlines and a lack of teamwork to resolve problems quickly or people simply avoiding doing what they should be doing. In fact, if you leading people at a distance, you can’t even see them not doing what they should be doing.

For today’s leaders who are often required to lead people across distances and cultures, getting your people to both take on the Feeling of Ownership and keeping that ownership is key for your leadership success. It all starts with the right mindset, a mindset of Outcomes & Ownership (Achievement Ownership).

An Outcomes & Ownership Mindset
There’s a great story that highlights the power of your people taking an outcomes mindset to their work versus an activities mindset. Many years ago, General Bill Creech took over the TAC – Tactical Air Command in the U.S. Air Force, an organisation then of about 170,000 people spread around the world and focused on repairing and maintaining airplanes.

When General Creech took over the organisation, it was organised by function, with workers directed by sophisticated computer systems to each aircraft to maintain and repair the airplanes. He understood the power of teamwork, and re-organised the entire organisation into teams, and assigned teams a number of airplanes to maintain (to keep flying). The teams shared best practices with each other and performance for the whole organisation increased dramatically.

General Creech went around visiting all the locations, and was always asking his people how they liked the new way of working (in the teams). One team member replied with a question back to the general:

When is the last time you washed a rental car?

This team member was saying to the General…

Before: They were activity focused – on their individual activity
Now: They are OUTCOME focused – is the plane flying?

There’s a huge difference when YOUR people are outcomes versus activity focused.

An OUTCOMES focus is a focus on Achievement.
An activities focus is a focus on busyness.

Ownership
This team member was saying that the teams now took ownership for the outcome (the plane flying), and helped their fellow team members to fix the plane faster. Because…if the plane has 5 problems and only 4 problems have been fixed, it’s still not flying! In fact, they painted their team names on the side of the airplanes, and that signalled real ownership. They realised that:

OUTCOMES drives Ownership, and Ownership drives Commitment.

Pride
Actually, the General’s target was beyond OUTCOMES, Ownership and Commitment, and to the word PRIDE. People who have pride in what they do, will do it well; and also continually search for ways to do it better. Now in today’s world, PRIDE often gets a bad name. Why?…because pride is often confused with EGO. Pride without humility is ego. However…

Pride + Humility = MAGIC

When you instil pride in your people and throughout your organisation, they will truly deliver magical performance for you. Do your people feel the pride in what they do?

Delegating & Asking Questions
Remember, as a leader, when you are discussing and delegating outcomes, you are first talking in the language of achievement, and getting your people to take ownership of the achievement (the OUTCOMES). If you delegate an activity to your people, who owns the outcome it supports? That’s right, you do…the leader.

Successful leaders focus on delegating outcomes (not just activities) and asking their people for the milestones on how they are going to achieve them. Your people will take far more ownership in milestones they give you, than in the milestones you give them.

Don’t be too quick to provide your people the answers to all their questions too! So, here’s a question for you. Two people are having a conversation, one is asking all the questions, and one is giving all the answers. Who controls the conversation? That’s right…the one who controls the questions. Now, what this means is…If you are a leader who is answering your people’s questions all day long, then that means that they are in control of every conversation with you! Is that good? Probably not…

Every time you provide an answer to your people’s questions, and you could have asked some questions for them to find their own answer, then you have saved them from thinking.

Save them from thinking, and you save them from growing.

Also, will your people have more ownership in your answers than in their answers? Now, you can’t go all day without ever giving an answer! However, getting the right balance of questions and answers will drive more ownership in your people. How was the balance of questions versus answers for you this past week?

Powering the Ownership (the WHY)
Getting your people to “Own” what they are achieving is your goal, and especially if you are leading people at a distance. You’re not there to see them not doing what they should be doing (& achieving), and there’s an equation of success that really applies to leadership and ownership, and it’s…

WHY > How

Think about it for your own life first. How many times have you wanted to do something…the how was difficult and your WHY just wasn’t strong. You didn’t do it, did you? However, you can probably think back to those times when your WHY was so strong, that you would do ANYTHING to do it (& achieve it).

So, here’s what happens when this equation is out of balance (WHY < how). Your people find the how difficult, they don’t really have a WHY or understand it, and then they simply avoid doing what they know they should be doing. When you are leading at a distance, you are not there to see them not doing it, and pushing them to do. You need PULL power, and that comes from the WHY.

Successful leaders use a combination of PULL & Push. They communicate a powerful WHY that creates the PULL power, and pulls people to WANT to do what they need to. Push power comes from the leaders position, with people feeling they HAVE to do it. When leaders rely on using too much push power, their powers reduce a little each time they use it. Successful leaders use both PULL (the WHY) and Push (their position) to gain the achievements from their people. A key question for you… During this week, have you used the right balance of PULL and push in your organisation?

Outcomes Focused Meetings
How many times have you been asked to attend a meeting, and you’ve heard others say this? (“We need a meeting to discuss…..?”) If you are like many others, you have probably heard this quite often. Is discussion an activity or an outcome? Right, an activity… That means that most people and their organisations are framing their meetings in an activity focus, and not an outcomes focus. Actually, a meeting can only have three outcomes…

1. Agreed decision
2. Agreed action
or
3. Everyone understanding the issue in a consistent way in order to take consistent action after the meeting.

Remember, running poor meetings equals (in your people’s minds) wasting their time. You get more achieved, more ownership, and more commitment when you focus your meetings on OUTCOMES, and not on discussion (an activity).

Your INBOX is Telling You
Actually, your inbox could tell you a great deal about your leadership, and whether you are focusing on OUTCOMES or not.

If you are getting more emails (and questions) from your people than you think is necessary, and if those questions are quite detailed in nature, then you might not be delegating outcomes (and responsibilities), but just activities to your people. They don’t feel the ownership for the achievement, so they keep coming back to you on the activities.

Also, the level of cc’d emails is a strong indicator that you could have some ownership problems in your organisation, as your people feel the need to keep you informed of everything or they don’t want to take ownership on their own.

What is your inbox telling you about your leadership?

The Language of Achievement
Successful leaders think, discuss & delegate OUTCOMES to their people. They know that discussing in outcomes is the language of achievement.

When you speak in OUTCOMES (the language of achievement) in everything you do (including meetings), you get more OWNERSHIP, commitment and achievement from your organisation.

Mark Fritz is an international leadership speaker & Managing Director of Procedor, an international consultancy focused on helping international business leaders to achieve even greater success in leading across distances & cultures. He has lived & worked across the world, teaches leadership at the IE Business school in Madrid, Spain, and speaks regularly on the Power of Ownership in leading today’s organisations. (www.markfritzonline.com / www.procedor.com)

Why don’t successful people and organizations automatically become very successful? One important explanation is due to what I call “the clarity paradox,” which can be summed up in four predictable phases:

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.
Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.
Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.
Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, success is a catalyst for failure.

Read the detailed article at http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/the_disciplined_pursuit_of_less.html

Personally, the only counter argument I could think of is to enhance our ability to create leaders to hand over the reins to of areas where we lose focus.

Also, this quote by Alvin Toffer is quite a good reminder of continuous unlearning and relearning. “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”

Regards,
Ajay Sanghani
Founder, 10xGrowth.com and Talentexcel.com and CEOMAG.in
Cell :91-9820020753 Skype : ajaysanghani
Linkedin : http://www.linkedin.com/in/ajaysanghani
Email : ajay@10xgrowth.com , ajay@talentexcel.com

Come, Meet, Network with Startups & Pitch to Investors

Entrepreneur – Investor Meet – for India’s hottest startups, VCs &  angel investors.

If you have an entrepreneurial dream, come let us help you bring it to life!

This is an unmissable opportunity for Startups to pitch to investors & raise funding, meet & network with other entrepreneurially minded individuals, recruit co-founders and team members, go away inspired to take your startups to newer heights!

We are on to building the entrepreneur-investor eco-system in India. If you have anything to contribute – capital, ideas, expertise, mentoring, skills, connections, business opportunities, we would love to have you with us. Join the party!

Nurture entrepreneurship! Come, be a part of this India building exercise!

When : 26th July 2012, 9am to 5pm

Where : Sofitel hotel, Mumbai

Register now! http://meraevents.com/event/destination-india-2012networking–pitching

Smart Money Genius Ideas
Upto 10 pre-selected startups will pitch to investors on July 26th. We are pre-disposed to liking startups which satisfy the following criteria:

• New age businesses
• Highly scalable
• Proof of Concept
• Traction from target customers
• Strong Founder team
• Technology enabled
• Addressing demand in high growth sectors

Please email your pitches to destinationindia@geniusincubator.com by June 28th to be considered for the Showcase.

Pre-selected founders will make 10/ 15 minute presentations to VCs/ angel investors and on the spot feedback provided. Your pitch will be reviewed by our selection committee and you will be notified of your selection to Destination India 2012 by July 10th 2012. Selected founders will be invited to a day of pitching and networking with investors at Sofitel, Mumbai India.

Featuring:

• Top notch VC firms
• Angel networks
• Early stage funds
• Individual angel investors HNWIs from across India

Speakers to be announced soon!

If you need ideas to get inspired, read Genius Incubator founder’s highly popular “10 Big ideas for India”

http://geniusincubator.com/blog/10-big-ideas-waiting-for-entrepreneurs-destination-india-2012/

Schedule:

• Presentations Panels: 9:00am to 12:30pm
• Lunch with Invesors: 12:30pm to 2:00pm
• Startup Pitches: 2:00pm to 5:00pm

The ticket is highly subsidized for the benefit of fund- strapped entrepreneurs – Rs. 2500 for entrepreneurs & Rs. 5000 for investors/advisors.

Join our meetup group – (http://www.meetup.com/DestinationIndia-startups-investors/)

For any advertising/sponsorship queries, please mail to destinationindia@geniusincubator.com

Participants at Destination India 2010

CEOs are starting to wonder if big data is for real and if it can deliver a significant competitive edge to their businesses. It’s critical to qualify the risks and rewards upfront, because big data can get expensive fast. Here are the five questions CEOs need to ask to help ensure return from this gargantuan analytics endeavor.

1. How is big data going to help my business?

2. How much will it cost?

3. How risky is it?

4. How will we measure the return?

5. How long will it take to see results?

Check out answer to these 5 Big Data Questions @ Forbes

Read an  interesting case studies of Thogus ( Google of Manufacturing ) who value serendipity and and facilitiate its happening.

http://www.changinggears.info/2011/09/07/the-google-of-manufacturing-one-company-shows-a-possible-future/

The time has never been good for people with good design sense, here’s why

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/careers/job-trends/Silicon-Valley-Its-designers-vs-engineers/articleshow/12665260.cms

• the ability to project confidence
• an inner sense of purpose
• the capacity to engage others
• skill in articulating ideas, vision, and goals

So why do you need Charisma ? and How do you become Charismatic ?

Check out this detailed article at Inc.

A brain researcher divulges six interview questions–and other clues–to help distinguish innovators from ordinary workers.

1. If you were to assemble a piece of furniture from the directions, how would you go about it?

2. When a deadline is a month away, how do you finish a project—and when?

3. How do you make important life decisions?

4. What would you do if you showed up ten minutes early for a meeting?

5. How would you assert your ideas if you were in a meeting with a group of managers and a confrontational issue emerged?

6. How would you respond if your manager suddenly changed your project?

Check out the article in details of useful interview questions to ask to identify strong innovators