Behave like you're in business for yourself.

An excerpt from The Employee Handbook of New Work Habits for a Radically Changing World

Your employer wants more than your body, more than just your arms and back and brain. Your employer wants you to act like an owner.

Why is this? And what does it really mean?

One reason why you need to think and behave like you’re in business for yourself is because organizations are breaking into bits and getting flatter. There’s less hierarchy. Fewer layers. The move is toward small scale, decentralized business units—sort of like mini-enterprises, or self-contained work groups—that operate more independently.

Organizations are reshaping themselves in an attempt to become more entrepreneurial. They want to get closer to the customer. They want decisions to be made by the people who are closest to the information. And they want to be able to move faster. The idea is that only small units are agile and adaptable enough to thrive in today’s world of high-velocity change.

So now we’re seeing a lot of self-directed teams. “Empowered” employees. The management ranks are shrinking rapidly, and this means more power, information, and responsibility flow through to you.

You’ll need to assume more personal responsibility for the success of the entire enterprise, rather than focusing narrowly within the boundaries of your old job description. To act like an owner you need a sense for managing the whole. You need peripheral vision.

Consider how you—personally—can help cut costs, serve the customer better, improve productivity, and innovate. Constantly think in terms of commercial success, how you and your group can add directly to the financial health of the organization.

This could prove to be more “freedom” than you prefer. For example, if you’ve found comfort in “working for somebody else”—e.g., having other people call the shots, supervise you, and stand accountable for problems and results—you may start to sweat. On the other hand, behaving like you’re in business for yourself gives you the chance to really shine.

Besides all this, though, thinking of yourself as “self-employed” is the mindset that serves you best in the years to come. Organizations simply aren’t going to look out for people’s careers like they did in the past. Odds are you’re on your own. Much like an independent contractor, you have to “build your business,” uphold your reputation, and satisfy the people who pay for your work.

So operate as if you’re self-employed, and carry personal responsibility for your own career mobility. Whether you look at it from the perspective of your employer, or from the angle that you’re a one-person show, it pays to behave like you’re in business for yourself.