What Ownership means for an Employee?

If you are an employee working in an organisation with multi layered management structure, I am pretty sure that you must have heard the term "Take ownership" whenever a work is given to you or mostly when something goes wrong!

As one grows with experience in an organisation, one finds out a way to beat this question. How? Well its simple, ask the same question to your subordinate ;-). Actually productive employees at senior level do not care about such stuffs, as they know what they are doing and they know very well that as long as they focus on their work alone, nothing is going to stop them from success. But what about a new guy, who has newly joined an organisation? What about guys with less experience at their job and even less experience in people management? The answer that they have is, "Why should i take responsibility? it's your company not mine" and this is where the blame game or the passing of the buck starts.
I hope this article will help you understand what should the meaning of  "Ownership at work" should actually mean....

Are you Waiting for a Sign? Don’t!

Now, I have come across many events in my life and it intersects with life of many others. So when I write this article, I know what I am writing about. If you are following this blog of mine or know me on Facebook or Twitter, you would know that I created this blog very recently. The reason was simple; I wanted to share my experiences of corporate trainings on a different platform other than the trainer’s podium. This idea was lingering in my mind for the past two years and I actually had thought of lot of article to write about and share about, but my bed always held me back and my sleep pattern was not motivating me either ;-)

TETRAPHARMAKOS - The Unsung Cure for Happiness

Recently I came across this “Four-part cure,” a remedy by the Greek philosopher Epicurus for leading the happiest possible life. As I went through this, my respect for Epicurus went even higher. I mean, here is a man whose thinking was way ahead of people of his times, and yet not many recognized the message he wanted to convey apart from the Epicureans (his followers).

It is called as Tetrapharmakos, and it goes like this-

“Don’t fear god,
Don’t worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure”

The “Tetrapharmakos” was originally a compound of four drugs (wax, tallow, pitch and resin); the word has been used metaphorically by Epicurus and his disciples to refer to the four remedies for healing the soul.

As someone said “Meaning is what you give to it” the following is an attempt to decode it in our modern times along the lines of how Epicureans understood the concept. If you find it useful for yourself i would encourage you to think further, if not then you will always have another beliefs to help you seize the day!

As I was reading them, I thought why not have a go and see how this can be linked to people with a business point of view i.e from an employee point of view and hence my article follows.