I tell my kids almost every day that “actions have has consequences, good and bad.” The other day our neighbor parked in the street and his car got a boot put on the tire. In our hood you can’t park on the street. When my daughter saw what happened her first response was: “Actions have consequences.” Needless to say, I smiled.
Equity is a commodity. It is not a natural resource and it is far from unlimited.
We all have a “tank” that holds our equity. It is similar to a bank account. You can make deposits as well as withdraws. We spend and save so we want to store up as much equity as possible in that tank because at times we need to leverage our equity.
We earn equity in several ways. When we under promise and over deliver it helps. When we are true to our word and do what we say it goes a long way. When we execute and bring value our equity grows. Supporting others and championing them and their ideas to victory also helps stockpile equity.
Then there are times we lose equity. When we make mistakes that are controllable, unforced errors, it hurts our equity. When we fail to communicate it erodes value and removes equity from our tank.
Further, we can spend equity. Sometimes when we know that there is an idea or a plan that is a “sure win” or a chance we feel we have to take we might risk or bet some of our equity in order to get others to support and back our plan. Spending equity can be massively wise or cost us, but when done properly it is awesome and can win us even more equity than we had leveraged.
As creative people we seem to remember the equity we are adding to our tanks. We love the wins and we often even overvalue the equity we earn in a win. Then when something goes wrong we undervalue the impact it has on our equity. We never want to think we have lost value with people or our organizations.
But ultimately, we are in control. We control our efforts and actions. We choose how we approach our work, what battles we are choosing to fight, and what decisions we are making. You get to control the equity you have in your organization, with your boss, or with your team. What are you going to do with it?
