Definition
Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.”
Explained by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy
Ownership that leadership principle is a mindset and a way to behave and in many ways, it’s the most attitudinal of all of these leadership principles. Yes, it means when you tell your team, you’ve got something, that you’ve got it.
And that you don’t have to be reminded constantly of getting it done. But it also is a way of thinking about the business and the company that’s more holistic and long-term. Great owners are always asking themselves, what would I do if this were my personal money? And we used to talk about this anecdote a lot, which is the difference between renters and owners. So if you have an apartment and it’s Christmas time and you buy a Christmas tree, sometimes a renter will actually, amazingly, nail the Christmas tree into the wood floor. You would never do that if you own that apartment and those wood floors. We have to think like owners.
I was speaking with a young professional, actually just a few weeks ago, and I was asking that person about their new job—they don’t work at Amazon—I was asking them about their new job and, and, and the store that they work in. And, I was asking them if they had any ideas for how they could increase the revenue of the store that they’re working in. And they said, “well, I’m not really that interested in that, you know, I don’t get paid more if I come up with an idea for more revenue, I don’t get a commission on that. It’s not really my area.” And I thought that’s not ownership.
By the way, this young person will get this. This is a really young person. But my point is that’s not how we think about ownership. That’s not what we want. We want people who feel like owners who think about problems more holistically. If they see an issue and they don’t know if it has an owner to resolve it, they find that owner. They don’t just assume that Sarah or John has it.
If they see something that looks like it’s half-finished or they don’t know if there’s going to be the right pass off to somebody. They make sure that there is that pass off and if there isn’t, then they take care of it themselves.
Owners ensure the problems are owned, that they have a path to resolution and they drive it themselves as needed. And when there’s a hard problem, owners don’t punt it for somebody else. Owners figure out how to pull a group of people together to find the right solution for customers.
They think about the issues from an entire company perspective and they think about it long term. That’s what we want and owners and that’s what we expect.