CHAPTER SEVEN
Ownership Thinking for the Long Term

Companies are pretty good at starting things, but not very good at following through with them. I will be discussing several suggestions in this final chapter that will help you to successfully implement and, more important, sustain Ownership Thinking in your organization. Let’s start with the most important, which is involving the stakeholders in its implementation.

One of the most common reasons that initiatives fail (or never realize their full potential) is that the stakeholders are not involved in the implementation and follow-through of the initiatives. Business owners or leaders will read a book, hear of a successful strategy from a friend, hear a speaker, or be exposed to something in a group they belong to and become enthused (and perhaps hooked). So they run back to their respective organizations and push the initiative down on all of their employees, without carefully explaining the initiative and its purpose, much less involving them in the implementation itself. Now, I don’t know about you, but I know what I do if people try to push an idea down on me: I push back. Why? Because it’s not my....or its effect on me