Recognize that there are many ways to skin a cat. Your assessment of how Responsible Parties are doing their jobs should not be based on whether they’re doing it your way but whether they’re doing it in a good way. Be careful about expecting a person who achieves success one way to do it a different way. That’s like insisting that Babe Ruth improve his swing.

Think like an owner, and expect the people you work with to do the same. It’s a basic reality that if you don’t experience the consequences of your actions, you’ll take less ownership of them. If you are an employee, and you get a paycheck for turning up and pleasing your boss, your mind-set will inevitably be trained to this cause-effect relationship. If you are a manager, make sure you structure incentives and penalties that encourage people to take full ownership of what they do and not just coast by. This includes straightforward things such as spending money like it’s their own and making sure their responsibilities aren’t neglected when they’re out of the office. When people recognize that their own well-being is directly connected to that of their community, the ownership relationship becomes reciprocal.

Going on vacation doesn’t mean one can neglect one’s responsibilities. Thinking like an owner means making sure that your responsibilities are handled well regardless of what comes up. While you are away on vacation, it’s your responsibility to make sure nothing drops. You can do that via a combination of good planning and coordination before you go and staying on top of things while you are away. This needn’t take much time—it can be as little as an hour of good checking from afar and it doesn’t even have to be every day, so you can typically slip it in when it’s convenient.
