During my time as a General Manager (GM) in a corporate environment, I used to receive annual strategic planning guidance that would frequently include the following direction “create an entrepreneurial mindset within your business unit”. While I fully understood the word entrepreneur and the term mindset was clear, the question remained – how do I establish “an entrepreneurial mindset” within my business unit?   

  According to Webster’s an entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise”.  As the GM, I had full responsibility for business unit profit and loss.  So by definition, was I the only entrepreneur in the business unit?  Clearly that was not what the boss intended in his strategic planning guidance. So how do you establish an entrepreneurial mindset?

Webster’s definition clearly indicates that the entrepreneur is a key “stakeholder”.  So step one of the process is clearly communicating the role that each manager and each employee plays in the overall success of the company.

Here are a few simple rules that may help you:

Rule #1.   All employees must understand that they too are key stakeholders. If managers at all levels and all employees do not understand the key role they play in the overall success of the company, then they will not see themselves key stakeholders. This is a pre-requisite for creating an “entrepreneurial mindset”.

Rule#2.  Every employee is a business developer.  When an employee does a great job for their customer or the support staff does a great job for the employees, they sustain and grow the current business base. Managers serve the same role but constantly look at ways they can better assist their customers (new services for a current customer) or how they could apply their current services to solve a new customer’s need (current services for a new customer).  Senior managers must always have their eye on how their market place is changing and evolving and anticipate and keep pace with those changes (new services for new customers).

Rule#3. Business development is about taking care of people.  Senior managers need to understand the role they play in business development as it relates to taking care of their employees.  If the business is growing and thriving than employees keep their jobs.  In growing businesses talented employees will have an opportunity for promotion and management and, depending on the company’s compensation model, you may be able to return some of the employees hard efforts to them in the form of year-end performance bonuses.

So how do you know if you have created an “entrepreneurial mindset”?  When you walk the hallways and hear managers discussing potential new business or if you walk into a break room and hear your employees discussing, with excitement, the new contract the company has won – then you may be there!

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