Coaching Employees To Be Entrepreneurial

Most companies are becoming entrepreneurial as they move from economic childhood to economic adulthood. They are breaking free of bureaucracy and adopting the freedom that entrepreneurship brings. There is a drawback, a hindrance, however.

While companies are becoming entrepreneurial, their employees are not. Most founders and CEOs have a great challenge with this. It is more like having a great engine and a capable driver but then with adulterate fuel. The result will be that the engine will knock as it happened to many cars in Nigeria when adulterated fuel was introduced into the system.

You cannot train employees to be entrepreneurial. You can only coach them. People don’t become entrepreneurial by getting knowledge and facts but by growing into it and being pulled out of them. That is what coaches those.

A French economist, Jean-Baptiste Say defined an entrepreneur as “someone who takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity”. This means the major role of an entrepreneur is to create value, deliver the value and capture value from it and build a system to repeatedly do that.

So anything that involves creating something that adds value to people and the marketplace and building a business that will sustain it, then it's entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurs need employees who think and act like entrepreneurs. I called such people “Emplopreneurs”.

These employees operate from a place of creativity always. They are focused on No Limit Growth so as to expand the freedom and enlarge the future of their employer. Most employees don’t really operate from the place of creativity but job description. They strive each day to meet the expectations set for them. Employees who are entrepreneurial thrive by creating value.

They are always looking for ways to make things better. They create value to move their employer from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of usefulness and value to the marketplace. They constantly empower resources with the ability to create wealth, become useful. They push their employer forward. They create real organizational progress. They unlock the value creation potential of the whole organization.

I am excited about coaching employees who want to think and act like entrepreneurs. There is no way anyone can thrive in an entrepreneurial organization without an entrepreneurial mindset and capability. The way entrepreneurs think and act is very much different from many others.

Like entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial employees (emplopreneurs) are eager to make ideas bigger and multiply it and are willing to stake everything to make their employer’s future bigger and better than the past. They are constantly increasing the value creation activities within their companies so as to transform their employer’s customers and the entire industry. They are focused on helping their employer change the rules of the game and call the play of the game in the industry. They prefer to trade-off their salaries for a stake in the value they create. As a result, they become rich. Emplopreneurs leverage their employers' system to create value that changes the game.

Entrepreneurs need their employees to be entrepreneurial. The world is changing and most large corporations are staying entrepreneurial. Apple, Google, Amazon, and many more are constantly reinventing themselves to remain entrepreneurial, not bureaucratic. They understand that they will begin to lose their place when they lose the entrepreneurial acumen that brought them to where they are.

1. Contribution Bigger Than Compensation: This set of employees always make sure that what they bring to the table is always greater than what they are taking. That way they make the future of the organization bigger and better than the past. If what they take becomes bigger than what they bring, the future of the company gradually becomes smaller.

2. Responsibility Bigger Than Entitlement: They take responsibility for the success of the organization. They don’t expect anything from their employer except they first created value for it. When they see a challenge, they do everything to transform that into an opportunity that will move their employer forward.

3. Questions Bigger Than Answers: The school system has trained most, if not all of us, to have answers than questions. Employees who are entrepreneurs are curious and constantly ask a question about what should be and then go ahead and create it. Asking questions lead them to make more discoveries and discoveries result in more creativity.

4. Want Bigger Than Need: Entrepreneurs are want-oriented and if they end up employing employees who are needs-oriented, they will be frustrated. Needs-oriented employees make the present to be bigger than the future. The future of such organizations gets smaller and smaller. Those who focus on wants knows that they have to constantly grow to create great value to have what they want. Need-oriented employees do the needful not the necessary.

5. Uniqueness Bigger Than Conformity: Employees who focus on their uniqueness collaborate with others who are unique while those who conform, be like everyone, compete. Employees who compete make the organizational cake smaller while those who collaborate make it bigger. The energy spent and wasted competing could have been channelled to create new forms of value that would transform entire industry.

Employees who are entrepreneurial are inspired and committed to a life of no-limit growth and constant value creation for their people. Is your organization entrepreneurial or bureaucratic? Are your people entrepreneurial or status quo-minded? Liberate and unlock the potential of your people by coaching them to be entrepreneurial. You can’t train them to be entrepreneurial but you can coach them to be. Let us coach and transform them.

Here is an offer: To mark my birthday, I want to give back by giving twenty (20) employees one-hour group coaching. I am offering that opening to you to nominate you and anyone in your life that you believe will benefit from the kind of work I am doing. Anyone in your network of friends, business associates, family, or clients that comes to your mind as a worthy candidate. They can send me a Whatsapp message to +2349071602727. The session will be on the 17th February, 2022 by 5pm. Its open for everyone. But the first twenty will be taken. Hurry up and take your slot.