8 Career Advancement Principles Of Ownership Thinking

Image via Flickr by Lyncconf Games

Howard SchultzSteve Jobs

1. Connect every action to a business focus on customers. Many employees stay self-centered or focused on internal politics as they fight for change, new systems, or bigger budgets, rather than communicate how their interests are really aligned with helping customers and growing the business. Your career will only grow as the business grows.
   
2. Don’t forget to work on the business as well as your role. If your job is processing transactions, you need to work on ways of enhancing transactions from a customer perspective and how to attract more business, rather than just counting transactions. Your boss will see more value in you, you will learn more, and have more fun.
   
3. Be willing to invest in effort, before expecting results. Too many employees expect a raise or promotion before they accept new responsibility, rather than demonstrating their value, getting training and experience first. Every business owner understands the need for making an investment first, before realizing any return or instant gratification.
   
4. Communicate the business justification for your efforts. Being busy or working long hours does not always mean a larger value to the business. Your help in quantifying the return to the business will solidify your career, make your requests for new assistance and new tools easier, and give you the insight to perhaps start your own business.
   
5. Realize that your growth is related to business success. This starts with picking your roles carefully – to be in the right place at the right time. Get out of dead-end jobs, and don’t be afraid to move on to a new company if the current one is not healthy. I advise owners that they have to know when to give up a business, as well as when to buy one.
   
6. Recognize career growth requires changing with the business. If you hate change or don’t see it as a new opportunity, you are not thinking like a business owner. Owners realize that customers and the market change rapidly these days, and innovative change is necessary to keep ahead of competition and survive. Accept and capitalize on change.
   
7. Highlight your productivity and efficiency rather than workload. Quantify your results in terms of cost per transaction, higher customer satisfaction, lower prices, and profit per employee, rather than number of transactions or hours worked. Help your owner get beyond the misleading metrics of employee overtime and salary increases.
   
8. Recommend ways to improve team engagement and culture. Owners know that their success requires that all team members be fully engaged and working together. They see top performers as employees who are the glue that makes this happen, by mentoring new employees, recommending improvements, and jumping in where help is needed.