Get Your Team Thinking Like Entrepreneurs

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Teams in large organizations can easily get tangled in bureaucracy. It takes a long time to execute on projects when waiting for approvals and gathering resources. But, you can get around this by helping your team members think and act like entrepreneurs. Try doing the following:

  • Experiment. Challenge one or two people on your team to quietly push a project forward without analyzing it. Protect them from those who may question this approach.
  • Broadcast results. Share the results of this experiment with other leaders in your company, and encourage them to support the project.
  • Manage it closely. Throughout the process, ensure that the costs never exceed your organization’s acceptable losses, so your team can clearly see the upside of acting fast.

Adapted from “New Project? Don’t Analyze — Act” by Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer, and Paul B. Brown.

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