Make Employees Owners

It's likely your start-up has work to be done than there are employees to do it. It's time to delegate big portions of your business. Transfer the time you spend doing tasks to empowering your team to OWN these areas. Find an owner for everything.

Have you ever gone down to the drugstore to buy a light bulb to replace the one that burned out in your hotel room?

Or washed and waxed a rental car before returning it?

As Jim Haudan points out in the The Art of Engagement, people don't take care of what they don't own.

Ownership engages employees, creating more self-motivated, willing, committed and satisfied people than their (non-engaged, non-owner) counterparts. It's an obvious productivity boost. Ownership will enable more quality work to get done, build the foundation your company needs to scale, and will free you from needing to get your fingers in everything.

I realize this post does not offer instruction of how to make owners of everything, but rather is a philosophical call to arms. Do you see the value of empowering your employees? What steps do you take to make them owners? What stops you?