In practice far too few managers behave like entrepreneurs even though the mission statement requests entrepreneurship. And yet they exist in every organization and in every company, no matter how bureaucratic it is. Alas they often remain undiscovered or their entrepreneurial potential has been stifled.

Attempt to raise entrepreneurship in your organization using the rapid results method. How does that work? The top management formulates a special challenge, for instance, to double revenue, cut the ‘time to market’ in half or something similar. After that, five to ten managers are invited to implement this challenge in an entirely new form of working within 100 days.

An example: five branch managers of a bank are given new freedom for one of their projects. Certain rules do no longer have to be observed. For instance, they can define their own opening hours or are no longer required to implement the headquarters’ marketing campaigns. Once a month, the entrepreneurial people meet to exchange their ideas. They put their own ideas to the acid test or ‘steal’ the ideas of others. All of them are fully committed to pursuing seemingly unattainable goals. New behavioral patterns are created. Unreasonable barriers are eliminated. After three months, they present their results and answer two questions for all other managers: why did we succeed? Where did we encounter obstacles? Afterwards, all managers start working on the question: what can we learn from our experiences and how do we have to adapt our ways of working?

Tips

  1. Look for and formulate an entrepreneurial, challenging and appealing goal for your company or division that can be accomplished within 100 days – albeit not simply by modifying ‘a few things’ but rather through adopting entirely new methods and ideas.
  2. Invite five to ten of your managers whom you expect to have entrepreneurial potential to your workshop. Introduce them to your aim and the goal. Then ask the managers to draft 100-day projects they will use to achieve those goals.
  3. Establish a learning and evaluation process for your company in accordance with the rapid results method.