Psychological Ownership: Why Your Team Won’t Step Up Without It

2026-02-10

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Send a textIf everything still runs through you - decisions, approvals, follow-ups - it’s not a motivation problem. It’s an ownership problem.In this episode, I sit down with Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First, Clockwork, and his newest, All In, to unpack why capable teams stall and what actually causes people to step up. We go far beyond culture, perks, or performance pressure and get into Psychological Ownership, the missing system behind self-managing teams, clean handoffs, and sustainable scale.Mike shares how high-performing organizations recruit A-p...

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If everything still runs through you - decisions, approvals, follow-ups - it’s not a motivation problem. It’s an ownership problem.

In this episode, I sit down with Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First, Clockwork, and his newest, All In, to unpack why capable teams stall and what actually causes people to step up. We go far beyond culture, perks, or performance pressure and get into Psychological Ownership, the missing system behind self-managing teams, clean handoffs, and sustainable scale.

Mike shares how high-performing organizations recruit A-players through education, build safety that unlocks real honesty, and design environments where people take responsibility without being managed into burnout. We also talk through why culture often fails, how community changes everything, and what it looks like to lead people with dignity through every season.

If you’re scaling, investing in systems, automation, and clarity, but still feel like the bottleneck, this conversation will reframe how ownership is created, sustained, and shared.

Books Mentioned

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz
Fix This Next by Mike Michalowicz
The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz
Surge by Mike Michalowicz
The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz
All In by Mike Michalowicz

If you want to go deeper, Mike’s work, books, and podcast can all be found at mikemotorbike.com, including free chapter downloads and his podcast Becoming Self-Made.

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