Think Like an Owner: Building the Culture That Makes Employee Ownership Work

Employee ownership creates meaningful potential, but that potential is only realized when the organizational culture actively supports it. ESOP ownership combined with a strong ownership culture is what drives higher performance; the structure alone is not sufficient. That is the foundational premise of a recent NCEO webinar led by Matt Hancock, Principal Consultant at Praxis Consulting Group, who offered a practical framework for building a workplace where every employee can think, feel, and act like an owner.

What does it actually take to build that culture? Hancock organizes the work around five building blocks: Leadership, Education, Communication, Participation, and Rewards. Leadership forms the foundation upon which the other four are built.

Start by Defining Ownership

Before employees can think like owners, your organization needs to articulate what that actually means in your context. The dictionary definition of ownership is a starting point, but it doesn't go far enough. Companies like King Arthur Baking have done the hard work of translating ownership into specific individual and collective behaviors: assuming positive intent, seeking transparency, holding one another accountable, always striving to improve. Defining ownership in concrete, behavioral terms gives employees something real to work toward.

Create an Employee-Owner Committee

One of the most effective structural tools for building ownership culture is an Employee-Owner Committee (EOC). The EOC sits alongside the management structure, consisting of members from across the employee base, and serves as a vehicle for education, communication, and engagement. Setting one up effectively requires a clear business purpose, a management liaison, a formal charter, and an annual work plan that is regularly evaluated and refreshed. Without those guardrails, committees tend to drift or lose momentum.

Invest in Business and Financial Literacy

Employee-owners can't fully think like owners if they don't understand how the business works. Hancock frames financial literacy around three straightforward questions: How is the game played? What does each position do? How do we keep score? Bringing employees into the financials — through training, open-book practices, and tools like a company scorecard — builds the context they need to connect their daily work to business outcomes, ensuring people understand the playing field.

Give Employees a Voice Through Continuous Improvement

A thriving ownership culture can shift decision-making closer to the work. In a traditional organizational structure, thinking sits at the top and doing sits at the bottom. A continuous improvement culture redistributes that, pushing problem-solving authority toward the people who are closest to the processes. Involving frontline employees in identifying and solving problems is both a practical efficiency gain and a signal that their ownership is real.

Support Leaders to Lead Differently

Ultimately, culture change lives or dies with leadership. The shift required in an employee-owned company is a move away from purely technical competence toward coaching, developing, inspiring, and holding people accountable. Organizations that are serious about ownership culture hire and promote for these behaviors and, importantly, don't tolerate leadership that undermines the culture they're trying to build.

The webinar's second half covered additional practical strategies for strengthening each of the five building blocks, including communication practices and reward systems that reinforce ownership thinking. 

Watch the complete "Think Like an Owner" webinar to get:

• Praxis’ full ownership culture framework with all five building blocks
• Specific, actionable steps you can implement this immediately
• Real examples from employee-owned companies
• Answers to the questions that came up in the session

 This blog post is based on an NCEO webinar featuring Matt Hancock of Praxis Consulting Group. The webinar was part of NCEO's ongoing education series available exclusively to NCEO members. Not a member yet? Learn more about membership and join to access our complete library of resources.