I’ve heard it said, “When the wife is away the man will play”:

• Feet up on the furniture.
• Brew in one hand.
• The clicker in the other.
• And his favorite sports team flashing on the TV.

I was thinking about buying boxer shorts for my four-legged little buddy, so the two of us could sit on the couch like a couple of bums enjoying the reprieve from house hold duties. But to my surprise, with my wife Jane away for the weekend with two of her girlfriends, having sole responsibility for the house, launched me into some type of testosterone-fueled nesting frenzy.

The Power of Ownership - A Simple Lesson I Learned at Home For the Temporary Staffing Industry

I was consumed with keeping clutter away, counters cleaned, and our newly refinished floors washed and polished. I vigilantly monitored the garbage levels in the kitchen, continuously ran recyclables to the outside bin, planned meals two or tree days ahead of time, and the real kicker – planning my social schedule a few days out; a task normally efficiently taken care of by Jane.

Initially, I was confused by my level of energy and enthusiasm for these household tasks. But after pondering my new found zeal, the “power of ownership” came to mind. With Jane gone, the wellbeing of the house, the dog, and the cat was totally on my shoulders, and I thoroughly enjoyed stepping up to the plate assigning my signature and pride to the jobs at hand – the power of ownership at work.

My wife is an awesome woman. She has a pit bull’s grip on so many areas of our life at work and home and it truly boggles my mind how well she does it all. The way her masters in fine arts has translated into a mastery of details completely befuddles me. However, her being away created a vacuum in areas that I was surprisingly willing and able to fill.

The Power of Ownership and the Temporary Staffing Industry

A lot of staffing firms are stuck because of people – really good people that are so good at what they do that no one wants to step into their areas of responsibility and give it a crack. For the smaller firms in the temporary staffing industry to move from an entrepreneurial model to a highly leveraged strategic design, staffing executives and professionals from the top down need to create power vacuums in their companies that other people can fill. There is an art and science to doing this intentionally. Staffing managers that learn to let go and empower their employees infuse seismic amounts of new energy into their staffing firms.

Email me ways you’ve choreographed empowerment in your organization – either personally or across the organization – to share in a future blog post with the Mad Staffing readers.

Contact us to discuss how we can support you in your efforts to empower staffing managers and professionals with AST’s staffing software.

Dave Reiss
Founder and CEO
Applied Systems Technology
845-534-7100 X1102
dave@astusa.com
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