Organizational Design Democracy And Ownership

There are moments where the lightbulb comes on for you and things that have been bouncing on the tip of your brain just drop into place. This week I had one of those. And it was about why people leave companies, and how to help them stick around longer.

As an added bonus it is probably applicable to western democracies and the initiation of revolutions. But hey, we're not in the middle of anything crazy with a democracy so you can probably ignore that application...

Ownership is one of the things that everyone is looking for in their employees. People who take high ownership are the ones that keep things going, that tackle the hard work needed, that work extra when things go sideways. They are engaged.

But there is another side to this type of employee engagement.

If people with high ownership are not able to see their impact in the organization they start to feel powerless. They start to feel that they are not valued, and that they have no way to create change that they feel is needed.

But change is scary for an organization. And bureaucracy is the way that organizations slow change. Or seek to make it predictable. It slows things down to make them manageable.

That means that Ownership and Bureaucracy live on opposite ends of a spectrum. And that when you are hiring, or building a team, you should look at what level of bureaucracy you have and match your candidates to it. Don't sugar coat it. Don't make things look sunnier then they are. Make sure that they are going to be happy, and not feel powerless in an organization that might not be a good match for them.

This also means that as you grow if you want to keep your high ownership early employees, that you need to provide them opportunity to be heard, and to influence the organization. With out those things it is likely that in addition to your organization growing in size it will also face large scale turn over.

So the takeaway: People who have high ownership are amazing employees. But they will leave if they don't see a way to influence your company in a direction they feel is important.

The extensions: this applies to democracies as well. If people feel powerless they do what every they can to try and influence change. The roots of democracy rely on everyone involved feeling like the system works, and that they can influence change. That it isn't rigged. Lose that and you lose everything.

Originally published in my newsletter.

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