Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.
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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.
Today’s Management Tipwas adapted from “New Project? Don’t Analyze—Act” by Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer, and Paul B. Brown.To read that article and join the discussion, please click here.Also, you may wish to check out the new book, Management Tips from Harvard Business Review, by clicking here.
Leonard A. Schlesinger is the president of Babson College. Charles F. Kiefer is the president of Innovation Associates. Paul B. Brown is a longtime contributor to the New York Times. They are the authors of Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future (Harvard Business Review Press, March 2012).
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