The “O” in the PEOPLE acronym stands for “Ownership.” Simply put ownership means that you own something and are responsible for it, and have control over it. In other words, responsibility and accountability. This is a piece of the puzzle that sometimes gets overlooked by management. People are given responsibility and are held accountable, but don’t have control of the process or parts of the process.

If you are given a car and unequivocally  told to get in the car and drive a certain distance, and the car runs out of gasoline prior to arrival, are you responsible? Perhaps. Can you be held accountable? Maybe. If you had no gas gage or means of purchasing fuel, did you have control of the situation? No. A simplified example to be sure, but it makes a point. (I hope.)

Unless you can have personal control over a situation, it is impossible to be held totally responsible for a given outcome. If you can’t control the process, then you can’t predict your responsiveness, either. Before someone can truly take ownership of a process they need to know who they need to respond to, what they are responsible for and levels of accountability.

These can be tough things to define, but until you really examine them, you can’t begin to solve barriers that may be holding you back.Ownership, properly defined, can help take your processes, employees and thus your business to the next level.