How can you make your life as a business owner or manager easier?
Imagine what your business would be like if your workforce continually amazed you by developing innovative and creative solutions to every-day problems.
Are your employees are your greatest asset? Are you maximizing their potential?
Quite often we allow people to get ‘stuck in a rut’ at work. The everyday grind becomes monotonous. People lose interest, disengage and morale lowers. This ultimately results in an unstable organisation that is underperforming.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs[1] is a superb framework for helping to understand what motivates people. It shows us areas of importance for your employees and how moving up these needs can increase motivation and impact on the bottom line. You can access some great resources on Maslow in www.the-academy.co under the Management Direct resources, but if you're not an Academy member yet, don't worry, we'll share some further thoughts on our Facebook page soon...
Get your organisation to benefit from your employees’ abilities by introducing the concept of improvement projects to your people. Improvement projects can be undertaken as teams or by individuals and should deliver meaningful results for your company. Check out www.nextlevelimpact.com for case studies and examples of improvement projects.
You cannot motivate others (motivation comes from within), but you can create the conditions for others to self-motivate. You can create these conditions today - all that’s required is trust in your staff! Try the following:
- Give your employees control. Empowerment is the first step to creating entrepreneurial characteristics in people.
- Be aware of bureaucracy in the business; simplify paperwork, streamline procedures and keep meetings short and to a minimum.
- Encourage job rotation systems and cross-training. They will create and maintain an employees interest in other departments and give them the confidence to express ideas on different areas of the organisation and can create ‘whole view’ perspectives.
- Allow individuals more autonomy in their working day. Get them out of routine and on the right track to making decisions of benefit for the organisation.
- Implement improvement projects!
“Organisations need to stop and think about the human need for optimum levels of challenge stimulation, creativity and variation.” [2]
With these new practices an employee’s energy and growth potential will be much improved. Ability to deal with risk and multi-tasking will be developed, team skills matured, and a clearer orientation towards returns and improvement.[3] A team of ‘entrepreneurs’ with a leader for guidance.
Here's a pretty cool video by Dan Pink that takes the concept further...
What are your thoughts on how to turn employees into entrepreneurs?
[1] “Abraham Maslow: the Hierarchy of Needs,” CMI management thinker 09.
[2]Anon, “Beating Boredom at work.”, Professional Manager, July 2009, pp 30-32
[3] Hadzima, J., “Seven Characteristics of Highly Effective Entrepreneurial Employees,” Boston Business Journal
