The Ownership Thing

Katherine Hays is the CEO of GenArts, a visual effects technology company headquartered in Cambridge, Mass.  She offers the following comments on creating a culture of ownership:

It comes back to the ownership thing.  If you're really the owner of a piece of work, you're actually excited about the feedback because it's going to help you improve what you're doing.  I think you have to have a culture where being wrong is O.K. - - at least during the process - - so that people can say, O.K., I got this piece wrong, but now I've corrected it and we're moving forward to a better answer.

And then it also goes back to hiring.  You want to hire people who are really strong at what they do, and very confident - - but not overly confident, but I've found that the more talented people are, the more comfortable they are it they find out they are wrong.  They have a lot more humility.  So they're much more receptive to correcting things when someone else points out a way to improve.