About 10 years ago my father and uncle made the decision to sell their shares in the company, but not to an outside company. They created an Employee Stock Ownership Plan that put the ownership of the company in the hands of the employees. That ownership then becomes a retirement benefit for the employees working hard to grow the value of the business. One of the major selling points of creating a structure like this is the belief that once employees have ownership, they will think differently. They will start to think like an owner.

I love this concept and believe it to be true! An employee thinking about owning their portion of the company, their process and making decisions accordingly can be incredibly powerful. Empowering every employee to think on a higher level has the potential to drastically impact business performance because it expands the number of thinkers from a select few to many. This is the supercomputer concept. Instead of just having one or two processors grinding through information, you create a network of many that drastically expands the machine’s capabilities. Why not put the same logic to work inside the business?