This is holiday season and one thing
we definitely do during this season is pamper ourselves with a variety of
delicacies. This is the time when we put on some extra pounds but we do not
mind as we work hard for the same all year long. I was thinking about food and
various recipes and a thought came to my mind; if there is any recipe for
excellence? which is simple, easy to make, any one should be able to do it,
should be made from the ingredients available anywhere, etc., etc. So, any one,
from grandson to grandma, can prepare it and enjoy the excellence that they
will experience. Looks like it is my lucky day today and I have stumbled upon
one very ancient recipe which I want to share.
This is very simple and it satisfies
all the conditions which I was thinking before I started looking for one. It
has only one ingredient, available with every one, which when mixed with anything
you are doing, it improves your excellence level and you start enjoying the
superb taste of excellence. The ingredient is “Ownership”. Just mix your
ownership to everything you are doing and you will get an amazing taste.
I want you to do two things; one,
look back and remember the tasks where you feel you achieved excellence and
those where you have not been able to demonstrate excellence to the level you
wanted or the one you normally demonstrate. Be truthful to yourself and
analyze. It is more than likely that you will find that when you had owned the
tasks, you have demonstrated excellence and where you were kind of doing it
because someone has told you to do it but you did not really own it, results
were opposite. Second, observe the
people whom you consider that they always demonstrate excellence in the things
they do and see how they look at things, how they react to the external
disturbances, what kind of efforts they make to resolve problems. Do they take
action, reach out people, try and identify alternatives or they just update their
boss and wait for instructions. You will mostly find that they would be doing
lot of things on their own proactively and are able to find out better
solutions and better results. You will see that they take ownership of the task
they are doing and want to do it successfully. They do not shy away from any
additional work that might come to their plate in order to ensure the
successful outcome of the task they own. You can find these people in the
organization easily; people say that if so and so person is doing the task it
will get done or you will observe that for all complex and critical tasks few
set of people get selected. This is all because, they display ownership in all
aspects.
What does this Ownership really
mean? How can we add it in every task that we are doing?
I believe that Ownership is state of
mind, which gives rise to our thoughts, which translates to our actions, which
we undertake in day today life, which give us the results. It comes from within,
so one needs to work on oneself to build this thought process. One will need to
observe oneself more closely; what thought process goes on in the mind when
various tasks were performed and seek reasons why we were not able to own a
specific task. It can be that you were against it and you had to do it because
your superior made you do it; or it can be that you had information only of a
part of complete task and no idea of the complete task and many times you do
not get it inspite of you asking for the same; or it can be that you are not really
aware of how the outcome of the specific task is going to create an impact on
the organization level or some similar situation on personal side. These
situations are pretty common and found all over, so can we prepare the
ownership recipe?
Yes we can!!
If we encounter any such situation, we should
look at the task on its own merit independently, try not to connect any past
emotions to them, understand what outcome is expected from you and tell yourself
that you will ensure that the specific outcome will be achieved and then go on
doing the task, do all the things that are necessary during the course and
observe yourself delivering the outcome at the desired level of excellence.
This is a slow process and one needs to persevere. One needs to observe oneself
continuously. It is difficult to get complete success in one go and one needs
to be at it, experiment with oneself, observe the results, learn from them and
improve the experimentation. I am sure we can build the ownership trait in our self
and enjoy the great taste of recipe for excellence.
