Leadership Tip: Figure out a way to make your employees own it!

“In the history of the world no one ever washed a rental car,” John Kunz would say to my business partner Rick Diamond and me as he groomed us to run a bigger company.

John Kunz was President of Dun and Bradstreet, and he acted as a coach to us, as I do for clients today.

He would offer many sayings like this to us as part of our learning. This one was to teach us the lesson of understanding why employees would often behave differently with company-owned property than their own. Of course, not all employees behave this way. The key is to help every employee see that the organization is theirs, and then they will treat company-owned property with respect.

Have you ever washed a rental car? Do you treat your organization as a rental car?