4 steps to encouraging an entrepreneurial mindset in your employees

It’s not enough to just have a leading entrepreneurial mindset. A business model to match it is necessary, as is a culture that aids success from the top down.

Besides building camaraderie, this type of culture enables employees to think outside the box, develop innovative ideas to push the company forward and pushes personal growth.

Instilling this sense of entrepreneurship throughout your company is a fourfold process:

1. Recruiting

The first step toward establishing such culture is hiring the right people. While it’s necessary to have more process-oriented employees who work hard to avoid mistakes, you also need employees interested in driving the business forward. Look for the following traits when identifying entrepreneurial-minded people: curiosity, an ownership mentality and the ability to take risks.

Of the three, the most important quality is calculated risk taking. Too often, risk takers are thought of as gunslingers who shoot from the hip and ask questions later. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, economist Daniel Kahneman claims there are two ways of thinking. The first is fast, instinctive and emotional. The second is slower, more logical and rational. You want to hire the latter. While speed to market can be critical, you want teammates who are inclined toward making thoughtful, evidence-based decisions. These individuals take smart risks.

2. Incentivize

Schemes with a wide variety of rewards and recognition encourage innovation. At Google, developers are not only rewarded financially, but they’re also given a round of applause from peers when their ideas are presented.

Push employees to relate with the whole cycle of a suggestion -- from the initial idea to its end product -- and you’ll be on the right track.

3. Training

Hiring the right people and incentivizing them isn’t enough: You have to train them, too. This means bringing people together and asking, “How can we be better?” Once usable ideas are in place, help your employees understand how to identify those that work.

Allow employees to ask the right questions and encourage a creative process for honing their best thinking. They’ll help build an entrepreneurial culture and improve your business.

4. Empowerment

Give your employees the room to try and fail. This isn’t easy, as most owners believe they don’t have much margin for failure. But an even greater risk is not innovating at all. Recognizing good instinct allows you to empower employees to experiment, making them more likely to take risks and recognize opportunities.