(calming music) Hi guys my name is Heinrich and welcome to another coffee break with firm learning. Today the weather is beautiful in Munich, we had a nice brunch this morning together with a good friend of mine, who is actually an entrepreneur, he has a small company here in Munich employing about forty people and we talked about a new employee in his company that's a new guy he just left university he has good grades, seems to be quite good and confident and actually being able to do the jobs well. However, for some reason my friend doesn't seem to be just satisfied with what he is doing at work, and we talked a bit about it and what the reason might be because it wasn't directly easy to grasp and after some time we came to the realization that what this person was actually missing was an ownership mindset. So you may ask yourself what is an ownership mindset? An ownership mindset is a critical mindset that on the one hand side many new joiners and business lack, many new joiners and business lack, if you come from university often you do not have that but on the other side this is really what distinguishes the average guy, the average professional from somebody who really stands out and is perceived as much better than all of the other people in the team. So an ownership mindset is if you receive a task from your team leader or another colleague and you do not only try to somehow get the task done but you feel completely responsible from end to end to getting to the result from end to end to getting to the result that is really needed and why is that maybe a bit difficult for new joiners? Because of course in the beginning of your career if you just started your job in the early months and maybe first one, two or three years of course you are new, you do not have all the knowledge of the organization, maybe you do not completely understand everything, so you to a certain extent rely on your other colleagues, you rely on others checking your work, making sure that your work actually has the quality that is needed and that it just is the way it is supposed to be right? And of course to a certain extent that's okay. It's completely natural and everybody will understand that as a new employee you do not know everything from the beginning, you might even make mistakes, maybe the quality of your work is not as good as maybe the work from a more senior colleague. However, the flip side of that is that people start to rely and to depend on that, what I mean by that is that people start to develop thoughts such as, "Well my team leaders reviewing after what's anyway", "Well if my team leader has it and he wants to change something, well he can still do that, right?" Or, "Well this is just a first draft, I mean its just a first try for me, let the others that maybe will refine it", or, "After myself many other people will still review the document, will still have a look at it and if there is anything wrong with that then they will fix it, right?" I mean this is more or less consciously the mindset that many people have, especially in the beginning of their career. And the truth is that many people do their work knowingly that it's just not enough, knowingly that the end deliverable that they created is just not meeting the standards and just relying or just assuming that other people will pick up the slack, that your team lead will then actually give it a proper review and then fix all the errors, maybe change it to a way and to a level that is actually enough and sufficient for actually what's required. And again from the perspective of your team lead, while on the one side you of course understand that maybe a new joiner isn't as good as somebody who is more senior, of course this is annoying and of course this is annoying and is really bugging your time, right? And from my experience now from working in consulting what of course happens sometimes is that you will trust another colleague maybe a support colleague of yours to get something done, to do something and then you receive the deliverable and it's just obvious that this is not client ready deliverable, right? Its just obvious that other person thought "Well, you know Heinrich in the end is going to fix it, or the other consulting colleague is going to fix it, and it's going to do all the last changes that he maybe needs". So it's clear then the moment that the person created it, it just wasn't done and the person know right, that it wasn't done and this is something that you should really avoid as a new joiner. From very early on in your career you need to develop the mindset that it's not only about getting the to do's off your table, right, pushing it out and just somehow completing them, but to make sure that every little thing you do is actually at the level that it's complete, that actually it wouldn't require anybody else in your team and organization, neither colleague or your team lead to do any changes in order for it to be at a level where it's at least sufficient and okay, right? Of course there are different perspectives maybe you another colleague has another opinion and would like to change something in it a bit, but it should always be at the level where you would feel comfortable in actually handing the deliverable to a client or to an external party or somewhere else where this actually might be needed in the future. An easy little mindset hack that I learnt from my time at Mackenzie that you can employ here and that are taught to early young consultants, is that you should ask yourself the following question whenever you complete a deliverable, a certain task, a document or whatever you are working on, are you confident that you could send this document to a board member of your client and he would be okay by reading this and nobody would lose face? Are you confident that your work is ready to being sent to a board member of your organization with your name under it? If you are not confident that your work deliverable is at this level of quality then very likely you just haven't done yet what is required from you and should go back and do that. Of course it is great to have other colleagues check your work, to have a four eye principle, to make sure that no mistake is left or anything like that but do not rely on them, do not rely on other colleagues getting your work done, you are responsible for it, you will deliver it, and you will bring it to a quality that you can send it to a board member of your organization. So what specifically can you do to develop this ownership mindset and make sure that your work quality is always where it needs to be? So just a couple of tips that I hope are helpful to you right? That the first thing is if you find out that you actually do not have information at hand for you to complete the task this of course happens frequently, maybe you need other data, input from other colleagues, right? Don't just push over it back to your team lead and tell them, "Sorry I couldn't complete it because I just didn't have all the information that I needed". But reach out yourself to these other colleagues, to these other departments, do some research, collect everything you need and then go back to your team lead and tell them, "Well in the beginning this wasn't sufficient but I made sure that I have all these other inputs and now this is the deliverable that you really need". Another example, imagine your team lead came to you and told you, you need to create a certain document, a certain thing and by that you should include, three certain graphs for instance, three certain charts, with a data visualization that he felt like this is what's required and helpful here but by now crunching the numbers, by digging into the work, you find out that actually these three things that he asked you to do are just not enough and to actually understand what is going on and to really get the full grasp of the situation, it would just be required to include a fourth diagram into the piece of work that you are working on, right? Now what many new joiners do is, they just do exactly what they are told, they create the document, include the three diagrams hand it back to the team lead or the boss or whatever it's called in your organization and then they are like, "Well, I did everything what was asked of me," Right? And yes of course you did everything what has been asked from you but in this instance that just wasn't enough, it just wasn't enough to send it to a board member of your organization because what the board member, he just wouldn't have had the full picture and obviously if your team lead now is looking at it and thinking about this he will likely come back to you and ask you, "Hey come on, you should include the fourth thing because this is just important to do that," and then of course you can do that, but it's always much better and perceived much more professionally if you think one step ahead and directly include that because you know that it's required to include it because nobody usually is as deep into the details of the specifics of the work that you're currently completing than yourself. Very often in these situations it was just not really possible for your team lead to foresee that things like that would have needed to be included because he just wasn't as deep as now you are into the matters, right? deep as now you are into the matters, right? So to generalize this a bit more, what's really important is that you ask yourself, what is actually the intention of this? Why is somebody asking me to do something? What is he hoping to get out of that? And then you make sure that the deliverable that you produce actually enables the other person or whatever the audience is for the things that you are creating, the things that you are working on, to actually answer these questions, these problems that they have. If you're deliverable isn't helpful in actually solving the problem, or answering these questions then make sure to make all the changes and adjustments in order to get there. Right and of course if you feel more comfortable then go back to your team lead and say, "Hey I did one, two, three but now I feel like in order for this to be really helpful, I think I should do the fourth thing," just in case you really want to make sure that he really agrees as your supervisor but be proactive and ask that, but be proactive and ask that, make that recommendation yourself instead of waiting for others to tell you what you already know is required. So guys this is really important, if you want to be successful in your early career but of course also later on develop an ownership mindset, feel responsible for the tasks that you're working on, don't just complete to do's that somebody else told you to actually complete but you are owning it, you are making sure that the things you are working on actually are a great success, if you do not adopt this mindset it will be extremely difficult for you to be successful in pretty much any organization, in any industry you work on. Get that done. So if you took any value out of this video, please press the like button and subscribe to my channel here below, if you have any questions please leave a comment here also below, I will answer all your questions that appear in the comment section, I would be happy to do so. Of course if you have any feedback or suggestions on future videos let me know as well and I will do my very best. 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