“Nothing succeeds like success-
Stay Alert, Updated, Relevant and Determined to last longer”
To complete any project or assigned job successfully, you need ownership, commitment, focus and determination. Ownership will draw commitment which will demand focus and determination. It is very important for you to own the organization and align yourself with the vision and mission of the organization. You will enjoy doing your job, even if it is a tough going. Likewise, if you own your family members, you will have the commitment to protect and support them. Ownership gives happiness and pride in whatever you do. You do not require supervision while performing your job. You will happily commit to putting in an extra bit to achieve excellence. Indeed, you will be self-motivated and people around you will also get inspired. Ownership can relate to anything say a pet, child, family, organization, institution, job, house, car, town, city, state and Nation.
Ownership. Ownership is the sterling quality of any leader/manager. If you own something, you will be proud of it, protect it and will not let any harm come to it. Ownership offers the pride and motivation of the employees to deliver results on-time and within the approved budget. Ownership demands accountability. In fact, without the employee’s ownership and accountability, no business can progress. Ownership is all about taking initiative and responsibility for your work and decisions made by you or by your team. When a team exhibits both ownership and accountability, a high-trust work environment is created, and you will see its transformation to a high-performance team. Ownership and accountability create improved competency, commitment to work, increase in focus, high morale and work satisfaction. It also promotes creativity and innovation as employees get committed to the growth of their organization. It is the responsibility of every manager and project/team leader to create a culture of ownership and accountability. Ownership will infuse very high integrity where you always speak well about your organization, your team and your family. Some important areas for ownership as related to the career building and future growth are:-
- Make ownership and accountability as work culture. You must own your team and feel proud and happy working with them. All decisions made by you or by any member of your team, are your decisions and you must stand by those. Take care of the welfare of your team. By your personal example, create a work culture of ownership and accountability in your workplace. Your employees must get inspired to appreciate the company’s values and willingly accept additional responsibilities to achieve organisational objectives.
- Goal setting and self- assessment. Encourage your employees to set their own goals which are also aligned with the vision and mission of the organisation. Each employee must periodically conduct self-assessment and strive for continuous improvement. It is difficult to ensure accountability without measurable goals and clear timelines. Therefore you and your team should adopt a SMART strategy for goal setting – Specific (S), Measurable (M), Attainable (A), Realistic (R) and Timely (T).
- Judicious delegation. Most employees like the freedom to work and not close monitoring since micro-management by their boss will lead to resentment and suppresses their initiatives. You should trust the capability of your employees and delegate work according to their capability. Instead of micro-managing your team and frequently looking over their shoulders of team members, you should seek their commitments and manage those but not them. Give your employees an opportunity to problem-solve on their own rather than doing it for them. Don’t consider you as know-all and cling to every task to do it your way. A judicious delegation will bring many ideas and innovations leading to your success and growth of the organisation.
· Become an active listener. If employees are taking ownership of their work, it’s your job to support them do their job, better and faster. You become their coach to facilitate their talent to bloom and not to act as their team manager. You must encourage your employees to express themselves and share their ideas with you without any hesitation. The first step in this direction is to be a good listener. A patient listening to them shows that their opinions are respected by you and that matter to the team/organization. Let them propose a plan to implement their ideas, and you support them to make it happen.
Commitment. After you have established your ownership, the next important aspect is commitment. A commitment is a full assurance given to the stakeholders that given job/task will be done on-time, of required quality/ standard and within the agreed budget. A commitment may be verbal or in writing, it always confirms that you mean what you say and you say what you mean. You and your team must meet the deadlines given by the customer. You stand by your commitment and you do not require reminder or monitoring. Likewise, you must standby yours/team’s decisions and take full responsibility for their outcome. Your commitment to the customers, vendors, business partners, team, seniors and the organization will go a long way to establish you as a dependable asset, both by the employer and the customers. Showing your commitment can demonstrate your leadership and inspires others around you to rise to the occasion and put in their very best. Likewise, you too must fulfil your commitments towards your customers, vendors, seniors, team-mates and family members. Some important commitments are shown below
- Commitment to your job. No business can survive for long unless employees have their personal investment in its success. Commitment brings energy and urgency to take initiative to complete the job on time. It also creates a dedication to the work and enhances team productivity. Every employee should feel excited about what he/she is doing. Committed employees do whatever it takes to excel, even if it means taking on extra work or staying in the workplace beyond the working hours. The organization will reward such employees by offering chances for advancement and/or monetary /nonmonetary benefits. This will also benefit the organization as it will reduce turnover, and attracts other applicants who are willing to show a high degree of commitment. You must demonstrate your wholehearted commitment to your organization, institute, company, boss, team, business partners, customer/clients, vendors /suppliers/sub-contractors.
- Commitment to Family members. In your exuberance for rising in your career, you should not ignore your parents, in-laws, spouse and children, as they need you and miss you when you are away. On some day you may be required to stay late at the workplace for meetings/discussions, while there could be a social or domestic function at home. Both the organization and family are important and have their own time and space. To be successful at the workplace, you need peace at home; else your productivity will drop which will impact your career growth. Hence do plan picnics/outings with family and often have fun and lighter moments. You should keep a judicious balance between workplace and home and avoid bringing work at home. A simple quote explains more:
“Life is a secret lease from God and we should not allow ourselves to be bruised.
Family life is our strength and success.” -Joseph Losery
· Commitment to Children’s education and growth. Children also play a significant role in the selection of your career. The professional path which you took as a childless parent may change once you have children. You may opt for employment with flexible or telecommuting options, or a position that allows you part-time working. If you are a single parent or the sole supporter of your children, you may select a job with higher insurance coverage and children education allowance or a high-earning position with limited travel requirements. You should not educate your children to become rich but educate them to care for human values and be happy. As they grow they will know the value of things and not their price.
“Don’t make love to a body, make love to a person. Don’t talk to your children. Take their faces in your hands and talk to them” --Leo Buscaglia.
Focus. After you have established your ownership and given a commitment to various stakeholders, you must stay focused to complete the assigned project/job successfully. You must keep the focus on the journey, not on the destination and respond appropriately to the emerging situation to reach your destination on time. Our focus gets disturbed when we make too many commitments and mixed up priorities for various jobs/tasks. This gets further compounded by avoidable frequent distractions. You must stay focused on your planned vision with missionary zeal. Any distraction, fear or suspicion should be kept away.
Our life is like a camera where the proper focus will capture good details of the object and the output (picture ) will be appealing to all. If you lose focus, things get blurred and lose relevance. There is always a time constraint and at times you have to do multi-tasking or parallel processing. Your all energies must converge to achieve your goal. Any diversion will dissipate energy and delay your success. Cut out all distractions like unofficial e-mails, WhatsApp’s , massager, facebook and twitter like social network activity during working hours. Do first thing first and review priorities periodically to stay on track in meeting customer requirement. In any field, those who stay focused are the winners and they get laurels and appreciation from many. Most of our work activity is inter-related, where delay by one person can affect another person and the whole chain. Therefore stay focussed on the job.
Determination. After you have followed the above three steps, you must go fully charged up to achieve excellence in whatever you plan to do. You need to have solid determination to keep going and perform any given task to your very best and never give up at any stage. It is related to your willpower and resilience to go through hardships/ obstacles and stay on track. Some basic principles to successfully face various challenges are:
- Keep going don’t quit. You need to have solid determination to keep going and perform any given task to your very best and never give up at any stage. Your willpower will be noticed by the people who matter like your immediate seniors, and senior management. Whenever there is any job cut, you will be retained since you are a determined person who puts in extra-bit to complete the race and win, while others may quit halfway or just short of finishing line.
- Putting your best effort. Although you can’t always get the expected result, yet you must put in your very best always. Irrespective of your position in the organization, it should be your best effort to demonstrate your will to do the best. Demand the best from yourself since others will expect the best from you. Similarly, demand the best from your team. Successful people don’t simply put in hard-work but their best-work to deliver on-time, every time and within the allotted budget
For more information, you may refer to my book/e-book:
Dr Sarbjit Singh
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