Conflict starts with control and ends with ownership

"Control" is hardly a new challenge for start-ups, yet it feels too important to dismiss

as conceptual. All too often it ends up as a "whack a mole" issue, eventually getting dealt with post mortem when it should be dealt with proactively. Since control is also a deep part of the human condition it's not easy to shift team attitude, so convincing a team to adopt "ownership" vs. "control" requires real effort to transform bad behavior into a core principle worth genuine team support.

Disclaimer - I know that I have a tendency to repeat the same behavioral threads, but here's why I do so. We easily agree on the value of repeatable execution, and it's not just about product iteration, growth hacking or network effect. It's equally about how we repeat strong principles of behavior/execution, the same way we value source code. Control is a bad ear worm, the mistake you repeat despite knowing full well that it can/should be avoided. It's the "I knew it" or "I told you so" moment, yet somehow we still allow it to happen again and again. No Mas!

Here's a suggested path for managing people/teams that have a tendency towards leveraging control. First, words are cheap, so the secret to squelching control and promoting authentic ownership is in providing clear, daily use cases to anchor your team efforts. Keep it simple and start with a behavioral principles; "own our commitment, own our work, own our trust, own our success". These are contextual mantras (own) that will anchor each employee as you struggle to grow, or deal with conflict. Everyone can contribute their personal kind of success the way they want to. But, like most team principles, "owning" requires discipline and rigorous consistency to cement behavior into your culture.

At endure Partners, ownership vs control gets back to our core philosophy of collaborative velocity, and how any given group learns to collectively own their success with the support of other department players doing the same. It's a purposeful trickle down culture that starts with the executive team, drips to silo teams, then down to individual contributors. We all "own" our mutual success, so fighting over control, execution or logic is dysfunctional. Great work starts with each person owning a task, shaping the logic, bending the ideas and rationale to their satisfaction, and THEN it's the teams job to scrum, pressure test and qualify feedback.

Team leaders need to elect "owners" to kick the ball up field (think soccer goalie) to where everyone touches the ball, whom then pass it to another move the ball forward to score or miss and learn from the task. Nobody wins unless you all win, nobody looses but you all learn forward as you share the task movement from start to finish. It's collaborative velocity, and it's not about win, loose or control, it's about team effort and rapid iteration. Some days you win and some days you just don't. The goal is to get better at moving the ball better, faster, smarter each time.

The collaborative owner is bolstered, motivated and empowered by the team, and is celebrated in victory or applauded for effort in failure. Next week you will be the goalie/owner, so why not move the ball forward and share/own your mutual success equally? Both will make you stronger! Here's the real message, control is a drain of energy and an endless distraction for everyone. Collaborative ownership is simply empowering and pulls you all into a self selected power circle!