There are only 2 truly important assets in your company: customers and employees. There is a third important asset, which is thinking. Based on this last asset, let’s think about how to turn our employees into entrepreneurs within our business.
When workers are happy and motivated (when they are passionate about what they do), they tend to be much more productive and effective, which makes our company more competitive. According to Robert C. Pozen, a professor at Harvard Business School, in his book Extreme Productivity, to get entrepreneurial employees we need to give our workers a sense of ownership. In other words, if our employees feel that they own their own areas, they will be continuously motivated and inspired, and they will bring out all the creativity they have inside them.
On the other hand, if we treat our employees as work machines who are only there to receive orders and carry them out, that is simply what they will do, until the day they stop doing it.
1. Set goals for projects.
At the start of each project, make sure your employees know the objectives and limitations of each task. Give them some room for manoeuvre when setting deadlines for those goals (let them choose the deadlines), because when workers are able to choose their own timeframes for finishing a project or task, they tend to feel more responsible for meeting their goals.
2. Give them the resources they need.
Your employees must have the resources they need to carry out the project. If there are budget limitations, as the company’s manager you need to analyse whether the project could really be completed with the means available within the set time frame. At this point, either we give the workers the means, or we step back and consider whether the project is really realistic and viable given the lack of resources.
3. Tolerate mistakes.
If we want our employees to come up with new ideas and lose their fear of taking on more risk, we need to be more forgiving when our workers make mistakes. We shouldn’t tolerate mistakes that come from apathy or carelessness, but we should tolerate a “well-intentioned” mistake.
Practically all of today’s big companies, from Google to Ikea, have entrepreneurial employees on their staff, and that is why these big companies never stop innovating and creating new divisions, services, products and so on, since no single person could come up with all these ideas. This brings us to the fourth point. (Read: 6 things the world’s most innovative companies do)
4. Brainstorming.
Very few companies have the healthy habit of spending a morning or an afternoon listening to their workers. Some companies devote a whole day to brainstorming business ideas, where each worker sets out what they think could be worth creating, changing, adapting… After all, our workers are also consumers when they finish work, and they can see many things that managers miss. Secretaries, cleaners, operators, team leaders and so on: every idea counts. Do it and you’ll discover that your workforce is more creative than you thought. (Read: How to run a business ideas brainstorm)
Under no circumstances, however absurd a suggested idea may be, should you humiliate anyone, because you would be holding back another worker who may have a crazy idea, one of those that stop being crazy when they turn into one of the most profitable businesses you have ever known.
If we manage to create an atmosphere of trust between employees and manager, over time employees will make meticulously thought-out decisions, as if they were spending their own money.
And I’ll say it again: very few companies spend time motivating their workers and boosting the creativity of their most important asset, the workers. And that’s a shame, because some companies never manage to discover all the talent and value they have within their own business.
Further reading
- The good leader: lessons in smart leadership
- The main characteristics of a leader
- 5 things that kill productive time at work
Featured image: Steveonmz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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