Cambridge Business Association
Ownership Thinking
Book

Ownership Thinking

How to End Entitlement and Create a Culture of Accountability, Purpose, and Profit

Brad Hams
McGraw-Hill, 2011
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Editorial Rating

5

Qualities

  • Well Structured
  • For Beginners

Recommendation

Whether your experience bears this out or not, consultant Brad Hams believes that a sense of entitlement has swept across America, ruining the nation’s values and workers. He’s retaliating with a plan to win back the hearts of employees who now care more about their paychecks than their employers. Hams wants to replace what he sees as a sense of entitlement with a sense of ownership by getting workers emotionally involved in their companies’ financial results. While his suggestions verge on the simplistic and some might backfire on you, arcing as they do from paternalistic to even patronizing, Hams does offer ideas for motivating employees to change their attitudes from me-first to company-first. getAbstract suggests Hams’s training concepts to executives who want to teach staffers to focus on the fiscal health of their employers.

Summary

Where’s Mine?

Some people in the workforce apparently believe that society owes them a living. They sit back and wait for someone to give them what they want. Employees who share this mind-set think all they have to do to earn their paychecks is to show up at work. Such people do not contribute to your company’s success. Even a few of these deadbeats can disrupt morale and undercut productivity.

Organizations need employees who have an “Ownership Thinking” attitude instead. Such staffers become actively involved in their companies, as if they were co-owners. They work hard to ensure that their employers succeed, and they take pride in their firms. They care as much about long-range profit as they do about their pay, benefits and vacation time. They never exhibit “me” thinking. Ownership Thinking has these components:

“The Right People”

Institute top-level hiring practices to find, recruit and retain great employees. Most likely, your employees work hard and care about results. That’s a good start. However, your goal should be to become “an organization of excellence rather than [of] pockets of excellence.” To that end, an Ownership Thinking program can...

About the Author

Brad Hams, the founder and CEO of Ownership Thinking, speaks to more than 50 audiences in the US and around the world each year.

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