Ownership — A complete life lesson
Long time ago, there lived a monk with his disciples. He was a Buddhist monk and Buddhist monks strictly adhere to rules and regulations of their religion. While they were travelling towards a village, rain started to do it’s work and created a huge roadblock which ensured that the monks had to stay in the village. The Head Monk ordered his disciples to find stuffs that are required to build a temporary place for people to sleep and continue their walk after the rain has stopped. He split his disciples into groups and gave each group a task. One group had to collect food, one group had to collect the wood and one group had to take care of the shelter.
The monks who had went to collect food stumbled upon a shortcut which will make sure that they get food easily. One of the monks went off track and it was hard for other monks to find him. When they finally found the missing monk, it was too late to fetch food. They returned empty handed. Seeing this the monk got angry and started to question the people. The head monk of that group came forward and explained everything. He was forced to take a decision between finding food for his friends’ vs finding the missing monk and he took the decision because it felt right. The monk also told that it was his mistake, to take that decision but he did that because it felt right for him.
The monk was pleased to hear that because his disciple trusted in his values and took complete ownership of the incident. The monk then started to speak, “This is called as ownership. You take responsibility for your own actions and don’t blame it on others. The monk didn’t know whether he will find the monk or not but he took responsibility for his own actions and acted upon it.”
Work is also like that; we take responsibility for our own actions and take ownership of our mistakes and being accountable of our results. What makes a life happier is taking ownership of our own actions than chasing happiness. A company thrives when there is individual ownership being given to people in the organization. This makes them feel that their actions will create an impact for the organization as a whole which ensures that less people will fail and will increase a sense of self-awareness among the people. When our goals are aligned with one another, our dedication levels shoot up as high as possible. Although it is not an easy task to take ownership of certain things, we can do it. This brings up positive results to the company. The difference between accountability and ownership is the difference between feeling responsible for your task at the company and a generalized sense of ownership regarding the company’s success as a whole. Ownership also increases the teamwork which ensures we people work as a family and not as an individual for the development of the company.
