ePayPolicy Leadership & Management

What are the best practices you follow to cultivate ownership on your team? Where did you learn these practices?

Here are some best practices I’ve used to cultivate a sense of ownership and empowerment within an engineering team. Fostering innovation, accountability and motivation are vital. Which makes having a clear vision and goals important. We make sure to establish a clear vision with specific, achievable goals. Engineers at ePay understand the larger purpose and see how their contributions matter.

We follow rubber ducking methodology in software design and development to foster a collaborative culture, sense of empowerment, sense of responsibility and feeling of ownership over the outcome — while providing guidance and continuous learning. 

We maintain transparent and open lines of communication. Encourage team members to voice their opinions, ask questions and provide feedback. We also recognize and reward contributions and achievements through formal recognition programs or simple acknowledgments.

All of the above have fostered camaraderie, shared responsibility, increased productivity, innovation and job satisfaction — resulting in a high performing team. I have built these core values and practices over my 15 years of leading product and technology teams.

How has a culture of ownership positively impacted the work your team produces? 

This culture of ownership and empowerment has resulted in us being able to meet our product and engineering committed roadmap timelines 90 percent of the time — so our projects are only delayed 10 percent of the time. 

We deliver a highest quality product — less than 10 escaped defects in a year — resulting in a customer net promoter score of 80. 

And most importantly our team retention rate is 98 percent.

What advice would you give to other engineering leaders interested in fostering ownership on their own teams?

Cultivate a sense of ownership and empowerment within an engineering team to foster innovation, accountability and motivation. Also cultivate a culture of employee team players versus individuals. Lay down clear expectations and goals.