In my work I am often invited by big and medium companies to present workshops about entrepreneurial mindset and after doing this many times I spotted some patterns and wanted to share here my findings.
First, the entrepreneurial mindset is not necessary about creating a company. It is about the shift from being reactive to become proactive and they are two different worlds. I often see people in companies who have zero initiative, they expect things to happen to them and have zero tolerance for new stuff.
And when I see this I explain to them the big difference between the paradigm of success and the one of failure. Let’s say that you need to spend with a company 8 hours a day or even more. In my work life I am guilty of having days when I work 12–16 hours and even went to sleep under my desk. So don’t take me as an example. I am here to share from my experience but also to learn about how to improve my work-life balance. Let’s come back! So let’s say that you spend 8 hours with a company. You have two choices:
- To be as lazy as possible because the time will pas anyway, to appear in the eyes of others that you are working and to trick the system just to get by and receive the paycheck. If you are doing this sooner or later you will become — such a person and will never perform if you change your job, start a business or else.
- To make the best out of the time spent there. To find ways to create more value, more revenue for the company, and overall to give more in value than what you receive as payment. And, oh boy, from this paradigm you will become a very successful person no matter how down the economy will go in the future.
When I say this to the audiences I always add as a disclaimer the fact that this is not an idea suggested by the management but is the most important thing to say for the kickstart of the workshop. It is easy? Of course not! Is it worth doing? Of course, you see, the time will pass anyway.
And I want to add the fact that in today’s very competitive space and with technologies appearing today and being replaced in few months by new ones being reactive is even more dangerous.
People at any level want to earn more, it is normal to want more just that there are many companies where the salary level is so high that people lose what is called the hunger for more because they don’t feel any type of hunger. But even if they are comfortable still want more (at least in theory) but blame everything else besides themselves for not achieving that.
In theory but also in practice to earn more you need to deserve more. And I always say to my audiences that the time spent working in a company at the end of the day is an investment in their professional career. So if they are not pleased and happy they should acquire new skills, move to other departments or even between companies.
I observed that so many valuable people are not in sync with the concept of continuous education which I embraced more than 10 years ago and for me was a life and career saver. In few years many of the jobs perform by people today will be taken over by robots. And the only chance for humans is to develop special skills which can’t be done by robots. In many company cultures, the management really takes care of the staff and I saw things and benefits which were impossible for me to touch in my struggling entrepreneur years. So even in this cases many people saw trainings like obligations, attended them psysically but were with the eyes in their phones and such. Why is that?
I’ve learned the hard way that growth come only outside of the comfort zone. And many people needs to be taken out from their comfort zones as to say by design, on purpose and guided towards growth because, if they are left by themselves don’t have the drive to do more and be more.
Still there are company cultures where people are simply afraid of putting new ideas on paper because some time ago am manager fired X for having new ideas. I believe that even in firms with very strict procedures there is always space for new ideas if they are communicated.
People in general tend not to be or feel responsible for their own growth or mistakes and are looking to make other responsible or to blame for their mistakes. The problem is that they don’t behave in this way only at work but they apply the same principles when dealing with their families and friends which is pretty bad.
I always enjoy speaking at medium at large companies even when I sense a lot of resistance from the audience. When I feel this it is a sign for me to adjust my tone and provide more value.
Originally published at medium.com