We are overdue for an Arsenal related post, aren’t we? Don’t worry there will be a nugget here for you non-soccer loving people as well, I promise!
Last week, Arsenal had quite the game against our local rivals, Chelsea. We were playing away in a hostile environment and got off to a pretty miserable start. With more than 2/3 of the game left to play, we were down a man and down a goal away from home.
To say things were looking dire would’ve been quite the understatement.
Down a central defender, the vast majority of coaches would have taken off an attacking player and brought on another defender from their bench. And this is exactly what it looked like new Arsenal coach, Mikel Arteta was doing. He readied defender Rob Holding to come on, before deciding against making the switch at the last second. Instead, he asked midfielder Granit Xhaka to slot in at the unfamiliar left center-back role.
This was a strange decision but it paid dividends.
Gabriel Martinelli scored a fantastic goal to get the Gunners back in the game and Arsenal would come back once again to tie the game 2-2 through a superb finish from the captain on the night, Hector Bellerin.
Down a man away from home, a comeback draw feels a lot like a win and fans everywhere were happy with how the team responded to the adverse circumstances they faced.
Asked after the game about his curious decision not to bring on another defender, Arteta told the media that:
“I was thinking about that and said ‘I don’t want to send that message’ to the team and we decided to keep us as we were, give them a chance and I wanted to see how they could respond to that. Don’t make the response for them because I asked them to be accountable for what they do and I didn’t want to make a decision not to let them decide for themselves. It was a great response from them.”
Ever since Arteta took over the team mid-season he has preached a consistent message of accountability.
Of taking ownership of your actions and those of your teammates.
I loved what he did here. Instead of making the easy choice, he left it up to the players to step up and be accountable for their actions. I believe that if you give people an opportunity to rise to the occasion, they won’t disappoint and this Arsenal game was a perfect embodiment of that. While it is still early days, the reaction from the players to their new manager has been fantastic and I think it comes down to that same message of accountability and ownership.
I think this idea of ‘ownership’ is critically important. Ownership leads to the best decisions and the best outcomes. It is turning around Arsenal’s season and I believe it has the potential to change the course of our lives as well.
How Ownership Changes Us
Ownership changes things. Even a small amount of ownership is an extremely powerful motivator. If you own stock in a company you are more likely to buy their goods and products. Ownership gives you a stake in something’s outcome. It gives you an upside in something’s success.
It aligns incentives.
That is why companies give out equity. An actual stake in a company has a totally outsized effect on how people act. A not-so-secret-secret of the startup world is that, for everyone but the earliest employees, equity in a startup will likely not lead to life-changing amounts of money. Even with this being the case, equity still serves as a powerful motivator to do your best, because at the end of the day YOU are one of the owners. When you are an owner, even a small one, at some level you are working for yourself.
Therein lies the rub if you are early in your career.
For most junior folks at companies, they don’t have ownership. Real or imagined.
Sans ownership, the incentive structure is “work hard and you’ll get rewarded by not being fired and, depending on the company, you may have access to some sort of career progression.”
Raise your hand if incentives like that make you want to jump out of bed and run through a brick wall to do everything you can for your employer.
Didn’t think so.
So what are you to do if you don’t have ownership?
Two ideas:
Phantom Incentive Structures
If you don’t have ownership, but you want it, the best way to get ownership is to act like you already have it. A little confusing, but think about it this way:
If we accept that people who have ownership have the most incentive alignment, and therefore will generally exhibit the most desirable behavior, then the solution is to simply act AS IF you have ownership and suddenly you will have the most desirable behavior for a team, company, or project.
It doesn’t have to be actual ownership in something. Just ask Mikel Arteta.
I call this phenomenon ‘Phantom Incentive Structures’. They are incentive structures that only exist because we will them into existence. There are obviously limits with this sort of thing, but my guess is that you will find that the limit to how far you can will yourself to do something is a lot further than you’d imagine.
Build your personal brand. Build your intellectual assets. Build a flourishing network. These days those things matter a lot more than what is on your resume.
The best way to become an owner is to act is if you already are one.
Act like your incentives are properly aligned and you will stand out from the pack as the person who has the best chance of getting that actual alignment.
Taking the Jump
If all else fails, don’t be afraid to take the jump. The best way to build wealth is, and will always be, having some sort of ownership. Otherwise, you are just renting out your most precious resource, time. There is nothing wrong with doing work that you don’t have ownership in, but if your aim is wealth creation and to reach your highest potential, it is going to be a very hard and slow road without some form of ownership.
If there is no pathway to getting ownership over what you are doing why stick around? If a company doesn’t want to invest in you, why should you owe them loyalty?
I know far too many smart, hard-working, ambitious people stuck in dead-end jobs because they are simply afraid of taking that jump. They are comfortable and the idea of leaving a “just ok” job in search of a great one is scary.
Believe me I get it.
But in my experience, people far overweight career risk. Especially if you are young. We act as if every job is the end-all-be-all but the reality is that most of us will have many jobs throughout our career. I also think people don’t appreciate just how much an entrepreneurial skillset is appreciated in the corporate environment.
People think that if they leave the corporate life behind to blaze their own trail and it doesn’t work out, they will have to come slinking back to their old positions. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Big companies place incredible value on people who have gone out and tried to make something happen for themselves even if it doesn’t succeed. Most corporations are starved of innovative self-starters and the fact that you went out and tried something means you have this skill set that they perpetually seem unable to build in-house.
The reality is, if you take the jump and it doesn’t work out, the likelihood is that you actually would come back to at least where you would have been anyways if you had just stayed and tried to climb the latter the “old-fashioned way”.
For a young, driven, ambitious person entrepreneurial pursuits basically have zero downside. You learn more and you become a much, much more valuable asset to any other company down the road. Now all of this calculus can change based on an individual’s life circumstances, but I still think the idea that people overweight career risk is a truism no matter where you are in life.
Ownership is crucially important.
It is what achieves the best results for companies and it is what achieves the best results for individuals.
If you don’t have ownership, act like you do. That is the best way to get some skin in the game.
If that doesn’t work, start your own thing. No one can stand in the way of you getting ownership in something you start.
Don’t be too afraid of career risk. The real risk isn’t taking a chance and better on yourself.
The real risk is waking up in 20 years with the regret of never doing so.