He’s worth $21 billion today, but 10 years ago, Elon Musk was flat broke.
During the 2008 financial crisis, Tesla and SpaceX were on the verge of bankruptcy. Rather than let his companies implode, Musk opted to go personally bankrupt, pouring all his remaining cash into the businesses.
It worked. Today, SpaceX is valued at more than $20 billion, while Tesla’s market value is near $48 billion.
Musk is a leading example of how pursuing stretch opportunities with an ownership mentality increases accountability—and leads to stellar business results.
Musk’s decision to go bankrupt is part of a pattern of fully owning his risky endeavors. When he founded Tesla in 2003, he knew the idea was so radical—and the probability of success so low—that he wouldn’t even take money from investors.
Instead, Musk put up the money himself.
Business leaders often confuse stretch opportunities with unnecessary risk-taking. But this view is driven by a fear of failure.
In reality, providing healthy stretch opportunities is a key ingredient to building a team with members that are fully invested in their jobs, as we pointed out in our last blog, “Owning It: Why It’s Time to Stop Renting Your Job.”
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True accountability comes when your team members aren’t afraid to fail by taking risks, but rather feel empowered to stretch beyond what they’ve done before—maybe beyond what they thought they were capable of.
If you can successfully encourage the people in your organization to pursue stretch opportunities, they’ll not only increase accountability, but also productivity, collaboration, and results. What’s more, they’ll get comfortable with “failing forward,” effectively learning from mistakes to achieve more next time.
So, how can you encourage people at your organization to pursue stretch opportunities with an ownership mindset?
Here’s 3 strategic ways to empower your team:
- When you assign a stretch project, talk through the risks, expectations, consequences of failure (they must be tolerable), and learning opportunities.
- Consider what projects you can delegate that would be stretch opportunities for others on your team.
- Encourage people to take on projects that will be powerful learning opportunities for your team.
- Encourage people to collaborate on stretch projects (“You’re not in it alone”), and make it clear that ownership doesn’t mean doing it by yourself.
For more support in empowering your team to take on stretch opportunities, check out BRODY’s interactive workshop on accountability, which helps managers and leaders Create a Culture of Accountability to increase operational efficiency, drive higher levels of employee engagement, and encourage results-driven collaboration between employees and managers. You can download a full outline of the workshop here.