Imagine you were witness to the following scenes:

The employee at the photocopier is half way down his copying when he encounters a paper jam. The employee moves to another machine instead of getting this one fixed.

It is 6.00 pm in the evening and the client deliverable is far from ready to ship and the consequences of delay are serious. The team leader responsible for the project gives the team members a few instructions but is the first to leave.

The manager is a member of a cross-functional team that is working on a new product launch. In the course of all his interactions, it is becoming clear to the manager that the product is destined to fail. He has significant information and insight about this. He, however, chooses to “play his role” and ignore the feeling in his gut.

The customer service representative, who received the call, has finished listening to the customer who has explained the serious problems he is facing and the emergency help he needs from the company. The employee knows what exactly is needed to solve the problem but chooses to follow the process and just logs in a regular request.

The CEO who is reviewing the progress of some of the major organisational initiatives that he and his direct reports had agreed to drive and implement is anguished to find that little progress has been made on any of them and his team members seem to be giving him all kinds of reasons for their not doing anything about it.

“Why don’t these people take ownership?” you would say, if you were to witness these scenes.

Talk to any CEO and he would say the same thing about his people!

“So, why don’t they take ownership?”

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