What is ownership?

The past few months have been an interesting turn of events within the company with new leadership, new changes and transitions within the organisation. We’ve seen multiple changes across the years, but this change got to be the biggest yet. With every evolving company looking to scale, there are several challenges that the company will need to overcome, and this needs to be done through alignment of values, people and processes in order to succeed!

As I was speaking to one of my mentors during a chat, the topic of ownership came up and one of the key questions asked was:

How does one continuously drive ownership, and why is that so?

Here’s my attempt at verbalising some of the thoughts and experiences I’ve had so far.

Ownership is driven by end outcomes

I thought about this topic alot as this is something that I’ve always pushed myself towards, especially towards driving great ownership. Breaking this down into the Why, I constantly want to drive things because I know that I'm helping to set better paths and direction for the future, even though the battles may be a tad challenging. By having a single-minded goal and vision that I’m working towards, it has helped me shape up what I need to learn, do and try to get closer to the goal everyday. The choice of going horizontal versus vertical is something that I’ve chosen to take in order to elevate myself, and in the process, elevate the team alongside me.

While I may not be at one location or position forever, I know that what I'm doing now will hopefully set directions for the future to come, and that keeps the ownership in me high enough to continuously push for new initiatives, learn new skills, help and support more people.

Motivation and inspiration around is important to ensure continued ownership

There’s a saying,

Finding inspiration in the success of others is a common way to find motivation to follow through on your goals. - Ronald Valentino, Habits

I see people, both leaders and members, around that I continuously want to learn from and by constantly creating opportunities to interact and absorb, it gives me the motivation to want to learn and do more as well. Being able to start seeing things from the lens of the different stakeholders in the organisation provides perspectives that you’ve never had before. This then helps create new opportunities and new grounds, stirring new inspirations with and around the teams.

When you find yourself lacking motivation, take charge of the situation and revitalise it by speaking and gaining in new knowledge from others. You’d be surprised at how effective a simple conversation can be!

Team really plays a part

One of the key reasons for my horizontal growth and ownership, is also because I know I have teams to account for, and ensuring that they are growing alongside me is one key factor of my continued ownership. Nothing too complex about this, really.

I may be a young leader and I too, like many others, face similar challenges of imposter syndrome, ‘fake it til you make it’ and more, but I take it upon myself to ensure I am enough for my teams. This comes through several different forms of learning, be it online courses, articles, books and mentorship, but the sheer motivation of elevating my teams keeps me going.

External learning and internal application

One interesting thing I realise is that I'm very driven to apply what I learn externally to things I do in the job, whether is it design thinking, strategy, business frameworks etc. Most recently, I’ve been diving into learning about content, SEO and strategic frameworks, and I almost immediately tried to apply them into my work. Might not be perfect and mistakes are made, but that learning itself keeps me wanting to continue to own and push.

This also made me realise that having the space to learn externally can in turn motivate someone to apply internally, and we should be creating spaces for members to learn and apply as well. Often enough, we run at such a fast pace that we’re unable to apply anything new, even if we’ve taken a stab at learning. This needs to be driven from within and aligned across, which is definitely far from perfect at the moment. Take a step back and giving members time may benefit us more than we’d think, if we’re willing to try.

So there, some thoughts for the start of yet another new adventure in Circles.Life, but sure, let’s go forth and do some new things!