How to Make Your Employees Think Like Entrepreneurs

As your small business grows and expands, your role shifts from jumpstarting the business to managing your employees. Managing people requires an entirely different skill set, and there are many entrepreneurs who can jumpstart a business successfully but cannot handle managing employees.  One biggest challenge for you as your role shifts is understanding that not everyone can be like you — e.g. the people you hire may not think like you. The employees may not look at things that way you as an entrepreneur does.

However, there are some ways that you can help your employees to start thinking like entrepreneurs. From the book The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business by Chip Conley, here are a few ideas on how to make your employees think like entrepreneurs:

• Post the critical numbers on a scoreboard in a fun, visual format.
• Conduct basic financial training and develop strategies for making an impact.
• Review the success of those strategies and best practices .
• Play a game with a critical number and make it the goal-of-the-month or something.
• Set up a reward bonus system and give recognition as often as possible.
• Communicate the results throughout your organization.
• Ask new employees to comment on the company s business practices after their first 30 days.
• Have a brainstorming party or game with prizes for the best ideas.
• Have managers visit competitors and gather after a week to compare notes.
• Have regular meetings with frontline staff to wring out all the information they learn.
• Give your managers a free subscription to the industry magazine.
• Study a role model company or a competitor, you could all go on a retreat or buy managers a copy of the role model company’s literature.
• Write a book with funny stories about how your company serves its customers.

 
Recommended Books on How to Manage Employees:

• Engaging the Hearts and Minds of All Your Employees: How to Ignite Passionate Performance for Better Business Results
• Hire Tough, Manage Easy : How to Find and Hire the Best Hourly Employees
• A Manager’s Guide to Coaching: Simple and Effective Ways to Get the Best From Your Employees
• 100 Ways to Manage Better