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Taking Impact Ownership: How it Helps Organizations Redefine their Value Proposition
Taking Impact Ownership: How it Helps Organizations Redefine their Value Proposition

June 8, 2023

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We are amidst the fourth industrial revolution. Industry 4.0 has enormous potential to disrupt the way we transform and evolve the ways organizations can redefine their value proposition to customers.  At the centre of this evolution is a need to provide incredible customer experiences. Leveraging the power of information and communication technologies is therefore key to build unique value propositions that are relevant and competitive. Any organization that is considers itself a leader in its domain and is powered by technology today must be agile to adopt fast-changing, disruptive technologies. As leaders, ensuring that we balance these imperatives with sustaining our value proposition and creating value is key to building a brand that epitomes customer delight.

Outcome Ownership to Impact Ownership

However, in competitive industries where the pace of change is so rapid, this is easier said than done. Organizations need to create very structured organizational processes to ensure reliability, repeatability, and agility. An important organizational principle therefore has to be "Impact Ownership”. Ownership is a concept that emphasises the importance of being accountable for the results of one's actions and decisions. In an organization, Impact Ownership is about going beyond defined job responsibilities and tasks like creating products and features - which we can call the Output for associates. Once this Output is in the hands of customers it leads to a variety of Outcomes - it may solve the problem it was designed to resolve, create entirely new possibilities for the customer or lead to behavioural changes. Outcome ownership will ensure that the experiences are positive. Taking this to the next level, beyond outcome ownership is Impact Ownership - where associates in the organization take accountability for the impact that their work has on the organization’s financials and customer delight. Associates should be encouraged to think of themselves as stakeholders invested in the success of the organization itself. Leaders like Elon Musk and Carl Pei have shown us the levels of motivation and productivity that can be achieved when organizations enlist their associates to take Impact Ownership.    

3 Stages to Impact Ownership

A strong sense of purpose will be needed to move the needle on the various facets of ownership:

  1. Ownership of Flawless Delivery
    It is important for business units and each associate to have a strong execution focus, thus ensuring the outputs of our actions are strong, and that they deliver the right quality in a right timeframe. The ownership of flawless delivery is the foundation for subsequent stages of ownership. Answers to these questions will quickly ascertain this level of ownership:
    • Was the solution delivered on time?
    • How many defects were leaked?
  2. Ownership of Outcomes
    We own Outcomes once we hold ourselves accountable for the success of our customers. Answers to these questions will quickly ascertain this level of ownership:
    • Did the solution meet with the customers’ expectations?
    • Was the solution onboarded at the customer end seamlessly?
    • Did it yield to positive customer experiences?
  3. Ownership of Impact
    The most rewarding level of Ownership is when we believe we have the remit to own the impact. Very simply put, taking accountability for the impact is when we secure win-win situations for our organization and for our customers. Ensuring that the delivery is flawless, delivers to customer expectations, and is profitable or leads to growth, completes the cycle of Impact Ownership. Answers to these questions will quickly ascertain this level of ownership:
    • Did we ascertain that the organization make the revenue and profits from the solution?
    • What was the happiness quotient (NPS) from our customer?
    • Did our customer become a reference customer?
    • Did our customer come back with another problem statement?

Important steps to implementing Impact Ownership

Creating a culture of Impact Ownership will need leaders to execute on multiple dimensions:

  1. Clarity of Purpose
    Ownership of flawless delivery is already somewhat baked into the processes of most organizations that have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for associates. Ensuring every single associate should be aligned to the purpose of the organization and should have extreme clarity on her contribution to the same. Communication of the purpose, cascading the strategy to the organization, building aligned team wise strategies that solve to the purpose is clear.

During a visit to the NASA Space Centre in 1962, President Kennedy met with a janitor. He asked him: “Hi, I'm Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?” The janitor responded: “I'm helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.” That is the power of purpose.

  1. Moving from an Outcome Mindset to a System Mindset
    A lot of us want to learn from failures. Several times, when we succeed, we don’t know why we did. It is therefore, important to conduct retrospectives equally about on why something worked well and or where there is scope for improvement. Learning from successes helps us build a set of best practises. Learning from failures helps us to learn what we should not do. Both are strong tools that we should have.

Cricket fans will know this. Several matches have been won or lost because of an extra ball that was given. It is important that success is evaluated ad much as the failure. Answers to these questions will help:

    • Was the flaw / strength in the strategy?
    • Were there actions that led to the result?
    • Did we take any calculated risks?
    • What should be the Continue / Start / Stop levers to learn from?
  1. Success criteria: Definition and Measurement
    What gets measured, gets delivered – this is a simple life mantra that I always follow. The clarity of purpose coupled with defined success measures is key to setting up a performance driven culture. Understanding what good looks like will enable them to be creative and fast paced.

Impact Ownership: Transforming Cultures Every Day

Organizations that create a culture of Purpose Driven Communication, of High Performance and of Empowerment will be better positioned to redefine their value proposition. Inspiring associates to understand the power of their actions, will enable them to create a higher impact on the success of the organization. Delivering Customer delight,and enhancing competitive advantage promise to be great benefits of this culture transformation.

Cultures are not transformed quickly. Build a plan that revolves around diverse forms of communication, purpose driven actions and a framework that rewards these behaviours. Drive the culture change with purpose daily.

 

broadridge

 

 

 

 

Author: Sheenam Ohrie, Managing Director, Broadridge India 

 


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