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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The most innovative companies encourage their employees to experiment. If you’d like to push your team to be more entrepreneurial, here are some things to try.
o Start by encouraging people to bring their outside interests to work. Ask your employees about their hobbies. What do they enjoy doing on weekends? What are they proud of outside of work? Employees who feel comfortable expressing their full, authentic selves are often better at coming up with new ideas.
o Creating a culture of experimentation also requires a fairly hands-off approach to leadership. Don’t be a micromanager. Instead, show employees that you trust them to get work done, even in ways that haven’t been tried before. When people have a sense of ownership, they feel more freedom to try something new.
o And finally, get comfortable with failure. People won’t take risks if they’re afraid of what will happen if a project doesn’t work out. Measure someone’s performance by their level of ingenuity, not their ability to play it safe.
Adapted from “How to Encourage Entrepreneurial Thinking on Your Team,” by Sergei Revzin and Vadim Revzin
Here’s a direct link to dozens of other Management Tips.