Our reader poll today asks: When you have an underperforming employee who you know you need to move on from, which dynamic best explains how you handle the situation?
I act quickly and decisively (sometimes a little too quickly, perhaps) – 7%
I act after careful deliberation, but I don’t wait to take action – 43%
I hold out hope and keep them for longer than I should but then I act – 36%
I delay way too long on taking action until it’s clear I’m acting too late – 8%
I never take action and simply ignore the performance issue – 6%
The cost of inaction. More than half of respondents say they’re too slow to act when taking required action with an underperforming employee who needs to move on. While it can be hard to fire, demote, or move someone to a different role, the cost of that delayed action can be significant. They’ll continue to underperform in their role, be dissatisfied with their work, drag down and frustrate their colleagues, and cost you more time trying to manage them. It’s best for everyone involved to move quickly once it’s certain the person won’t be successful in their role. That lets you move someone into the role who will perform better and helps the underperformer move on to a different role where they can hopefully be more successful. All delays come with a cost. It may feel easier to avoid the situation but you’re simply creating new problems by not taking decisive action.
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Stopping and considering decisions before you make them is only the start to critical thinking.
Let’s look at the importance of critical thinking. So many times when people ask us, “Can you go solve this problem,” we rush off and start solving it without stopping to think before we do.
We’re facing new demands that require extensive amounts of information before we can make a decision. There are multiple departments involved in all of your problem-solving efforts, and each department is contributing its own input. As part of your problem-solving process, there are going to be multiple stakeholders involved. This increases the complexity of trying to get to an answer.
When you do ultimately come up with a recommendation, those big decisions will involve numerous trade-offs. Not everyone is going to be happy with what you recommend. There are going to be long lag times in acquiring the required data to make your decision, and when you finally do make the call, there’s going to be high scrutiny over whether you were right or wrong. And a bad call can have both business as well as personal and professional implications. Add to this unforeseen bottlenecks in getting the process done of getting to that answer, multiply it by the number of problems you’re trying to solve every single day, and then divide by the limited amount of time you have to get to an answer.
The importance of stopping and thinking critically before you rush off and undertake all these very comprehensive efforts is very high. That critical thinking process is what’s going to differentiate you and the solutions you develop versus rushing off without any thought at all.
Distinguish causes vs. consequences
As you begin your critical thinking efforts, I’d like you to think about causes and consequences. One of the biggest challenges we’re going to face with any problem solving is that desire to rush off and get to an answer quickly because we feel like we’re being responsive to our stakeholders when we do. But think about it.
Have you ever solved a symptom only to find out there are other symptoms that arise after you solve it? Have you ever put in place a recommendation only to find out you created new problems down the road? When you’re going through this critical thinking process, first, consider causes.
Look at the symptom that is problematic. Then figure out the real reason it’s happening. And come at that possible symptom from multiple perspectives. Once you generate a recommendation, stop and think critically. What new problems can you create if you implement this recommendation? What are the new symptoms that will be caused? Think that through before you implement your recommendation.
Let me offer an example. I know a client situation where the organization was going to roll out a brand-new website that would be facing their customers. The problem was they continued to miss deadlines for rolling the website out and going live. Now let’s look at causes and consequences. What was the cause of the website not rolling out? Well, the code wasn’t ready. Yeah, but that’s a symptom. That’s a symptom of a problem. Why wasn’t the code ready? Well, the specifications weren’t done. Okay. Well, that’s also a symptom. Why weren’t the specs done? Well, because they didn’t agree on the features and functionality of the new website. But let’s not stop there. Why was that symptom happening? Well, they weren’t given clarity by leadership around one aspect that was a major strategic decision in terms of how they would roll the website out. That was the cause of all these issues and why the rollout wasn’t happening.
Now let’s think this through. Once that strategic decision is made, what are the consequences of it? So leadership finally decided to make the website a closed network. Therefore, new customers would have to call in to register instead of registering on a website. Let’s look at the consequences of that decision and the new problems that can emerge. New customers are now going to have to call a call center associate. That’s then going to flood the call center with incremental calls. The consequence of that is the staff in the call center is going to be over-worked. And then the consequence of that is current customers are going to experience service issues. They won’t get their calls answered as quickly. And then the consequence of that is we might lose current customers.
By stopping and thinking about causes first and then consequences, once you do make a recommendation, you’re going to identify the true problem that you need to solve and, hopefully, you’ll be able to avoid causing future problems. When you go out to solve a problem, think backwards about the causes and think forward about the consequences.
As you go to apply these notions to your critical thinking processes, I’d like you to think about a problem you’re working on. Look at the causes. Spend some time thinking about what’s really causing this issue. Continue to work backward until it’s clear you’re solving a problem and not a symptom. Then, once you’ve generated a recommendation, think through the consequences. What are the new problems that could emerge if you implement your recommendation? Think about a problem that you made a recommendation on where it didn’t go so well. Which of these two did you miss? Did you miss the real root cause? Did you miss possible consequences of your recommendation?
By spending this extra time thinking about these aspects and putting in the critical thought, there’s a much higher likelihood that whatever recommendation you come up with is going to solve the true problem and you’re going to account for some of the possible consequences down the road.
Want to learn more about critical thinking? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning about critical thinking. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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A leadership story about scaling operations, and demonstrating how clear decision boundaries, accountability, and culture helps teams to adapt without losing trust.
Today’s post is by Dan Leiva, author of AMPLIFIED: The Operator’s Playbook for Scaling Human Potential in an AI World.
The alert came in just after 2:17am. This alert did not signal that there was a system outage, it showed something worse. Everything was working exactly as it was designed to. But that was the problem.
A product rollout of global scale had just gone live, and the systems had been optimized and automated – ready to go! They were fast. Faster in fact, than anything the company had deployed before.
However, it only took a few minutes for the customer complaints to start coming in. The complaints were not about bugs or failure. Instead, they were about the decisions that the system was making on their behalf.
Inconsistent discounts had been applied, and service prioritization felt arbitrary, especially when long-standing customers were suddenly being treated as if they were new ones.
When sunrise finally came, the executive team was looking for an answer to a simple question: Who owned the decision? They were met with silence.
The fact is that the engineers had worked hard to build what was asked of them, while the data team had ensured that models had been trained properly. In addition to this, the operations team had signed off on the workflows, but still nobody could clearly identify where human responsibility ended and system autonomy began.
These moments reinforce an important leadership lesson when it comes to scaling large-scale operations: efficiency is great – but without accountability, it is not progress. It is risk.
In essence, when organizations start to grow, there is a natural instinct to optimize, reduce problems, increase speed, and automate decisions.
While these steps are essential, scaling often fails to account for a critical reality: every system functions as a decision-making engine. Without clear governance, scaling simply amplifies ambiguity.
In fact, ambiguity does not happen when things are working. It happens then they aren’t, and unfortunately by then it is already too late.
This brings about an important and immediate lesson: before you scale a system, you must define its decision boundaries.
You can do this by asking three questions:
What decisions is this system allowed to make?
What decisions must remain human?
Who is accountable when outcomes don’t meet expectations?
Most organizations can answer the first question easily; however, they may take more time to answer the second question. The third? Few can answer clearly.
The early morning call had confirmed that it was not a technology failure, but a gap in leadership design. In fact, the system had been executing perfectly, even when conditions changed, and while it had been built for efficiency, it had not been built for adaptability.
This is where lesson number two comes in: resilient systems are not the ones that are faster. They are the ones that can adapt when under pressure.
Better code does not promote adaptability, instead it depends on how people interact with the system.
Can someone pause it? Can it be overridden? Can it be questioned without causing problems? If the answer is no, then what you’ve built is no longer a system, it is a constraint.
As the day continued, the team started to make an important change, and decided not to start by rewriting the technology, but instead by redefining its ownership.
This was done by assigning proper accountability for decision-making layers, and creating paths of escalation, where humans can step in quickly. Perhaps, more importantly, they made clear and visible intervention points within the organization.
The result was a system that didn’t slow down. Instead, the organization gained confidence in how they used it.
This leads to the third lesson: culture and governance are as important as technology itself.
Without a clear understanding of when to trust a system versus when to challenge it, even the most sophisticated infrastructure remains dangerously fragile.
People either disengage and think “the system knows best,” or they often overcorrect “we can’t trust this at all.” Unfortunately, neither is sustainable.
Strong leadership encourages teams to stay engaged with the system and not become subordinate to it. This creates a middle ground.
In other words, organizations need to build habits, and not just tools. In addition to this, it is crucial that automated decisions are regularly reviewed, so that there is space for feedback from frontline teams. It is ultimately about rewarding people not just for being efficient, but for practicing sound judgment.
The system was still in place at the end of the week, and while the automation did not disappear, it did start to operate differently. Boundaries were clearer. Oversight was stronger, and there was a renewed sense of ownership, as the technology had not changed nearly as much as the leadership approach had.
Now for the final takeaway. The future of scaling is not about replacing human decision making. It is about amplifying it.
An organization that gets this right won’t only move faster, they will move with intention, and understand when to trust their systems, and when to trust their people.
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Our reader poll today asks: Which of these two activities do you find to be more challenging?
Retaining great employees – 38%
Recruiting great employees – 62%
Is your role compelling? Two thirds of you report finding it harder to recruit than to retain great people. What are the challenges for recruiting? Is it a limited talent pool? Competitive options you have to beat out? Lack of a compelling role? Discomfort with the recruiting and interviewing process? Whatever is holding you back, put focused time into solving that problem. If it’s the talent pool, figure out where else you can fish to find “non-traditional” candidates. If it’s competitive options, focus your pitch on areas where your role is different (e.g., advancement, mobility, stability, professional development). If you’re not comfortable with interviewing, find a mentor who can help you improve. New employees are what keep you growing and improving. They bring new skills, new perspectives, and new energy to your organization. Don’t be satisfied with simply saying “it’s hard to find great people.” Go do something about it!
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Follow these three principles when putting together a strategic plan for your organization.
What is a strategic plan and why is it important? A strategic plan defines what your organization stands for. It assesses the market where you compete and determines how you compete in that market. It’s the definition of the goals you’re going to pursue and more importantly, the initiatives you’re going to execute to achieve those goals. The process will determine how to allocate your very limited resources to pursue those initiatives and reach those goals.
Why is a strategic plan so important? First, it provides focus for your efforts and your limited investments. Next, it gives your team something to rally around and be excited about. And last, it identifies the risks and opportunities you’re going to face in the market, which enables you to plan for those risks or exploit those opportunities.
There are three principles of strategic planning that you should follow.
1. Set a clear direction
First, set a clear direction and stay in your lane versus meandering and pursuing strategies that change every year.
2. Say no to distractions
Second, say no to distractions. It’s easy to get caught up in the, wow, that looks like a cool initiative. Let’s pursue that. But a good plan keeps you focused.
3. Diversify your bets
The third is making sure you diversify your bets. You have limited pools of money and people and time. shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. You should instead pursue initiatives that are spread across different time horizons, different markets, different products.
If you follow these three principles of strategic planning, you’re going to have a clear direction that you’re able to follow over time and drive achievement of your goals.
Want to learn more about strategic planning foundations? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to create strategic plans. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Self-awareness is a huge perk of being human. Unfortunately, it can also lead to chronic illness.
Today’s post is by Steve Adams, CEO of Tiger Performance Institute and author of Unleash the Peak Performer Within You.
Zebras are horse-like creatures with beautifully striped coats that fascinate children and adults alike. Zebras have a distinct advantage over humans in one particularly important area of life: how they manage stress. To understand this phenomenon, we need to begin with the concept of interference. In my book, Unleash the Peak Performer Within You, I share the Performance Formula.Simply stated, it reads:
Performance = Skill – Interference
What is Interference?
Interference is a term representing anything that prevents your skills from taking over to produce a high level of productivity and performance. A short list of potential interference includes anxiety, ADD, emotional control problems, and poor sleep. There are many more sources of interference, and they all get in the way of good performance. Eliminating or reducing your interference represents a direct path to improved performance.
As you begin the journey of learning how to reduce interference and change your health trajectory, understanding and strengthening your autonomic nervous system is vital.
The Autonomic Nervous System
What is the autonomic nervous system (ANS)? The ANS is a branch of your nervous system that regulates involuntary functions and is constantly assessing the environment around you and sending information to the brain. This ongoing process keeps you healthy and safe and goes unnoticed as you go about your day. Its goal is to balance your body to its environment.
Functions such as heart rate, salivary secretions, eye dilation, digestion, and adrenaline release are governed by your ANS.
Your ANS has two branches, each at one extreme of functioning. These branches are called parasympathetic (rest and digest) and sympathetic (fright, fight, or flight).
An example from animals is in order…
Stress Responses: Humans vs. Animals
When a zebra is being chased by a lion, its blood flow concentrates to core life-sustaining organs. Digestion slows and heart rate increases. When you face a stressful situation, your body will do the same thing.
Once a zebra has eluded the lion, it returns to a “rest and digest” state or parasympathetic response. This is when the body returns to balance with its environment.
Animals are always one-to-one with their environment. This is where the difference between humans and animals becomes evident. Animals live on instinct. We are different; we are capable of conscious thought.
When you experience stress, your sympathetic branch of the ANS is activated. It’s what’s commonly referred to as a “fight-or-flight” response. It’s okay when a mortal danger presents itself. It’s not okay when you chronically respond to everyday life this way.
In fact, when you unproductively manage stress in this way, it leads to common and preventable disease such as type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure to name a few.
Because we are self-aware and have the power of creating theater of the mind, humans can and do ruminate about past events and worry about future concerns. We can literally invent stress in our minds by looking back or ahead.
The fascinating thing about this is that your body doesn’t differentiate between real events playing out in front of you, such as a stranger threatening you, and an event playing out in your mind. Either way, you end up with a stress response. When the conversations you are having with yourself are chronically stressful, you are putting yourself into chronic stress.
The research is settled: chronic stress and chronic debilitating disease are highly correlated. Learning to manage stress properly is one thing you can do to significantly improve your health today and tomorrow.
So now you know why zebras don’t get ulcers, but people do! Our habit of unwittingly placing ourselves in a state where our bodies think a lion is chasing us drives a cascade of reactions in our brains and bodies that make us physically and mentally sick. Our ability to perform at a high level is then severely compromised.
Chronic stress, and all its negative consequences, represents serious interference. Learning to manage stress well will reduce your interference and improve your performance.
How to Reduce Interference
Strategies to improve your autonomic nervous system balance include heart rate variability training, deep diaphragm breathing, optimizing sleep, daily movement, and practicing gratitude. Additionally, learning how to properly process thoughts and not hang onto them, leading to endless ruminations, is key.
The next best step is to assess imbalances in your autonomic nervous system, then seek training from a qualified organization and provider to help you regain control. The goal is to become your own best coach and learn to self-regulate your responses to life’s events. In doing so, your nervous system will then work for you rather than against you. When it does, you will live healthier and become a peak performer based on your definition of success and performance!
Steve L. Adams, MBA is the author of Unleash the Peak Performer Within You and founder and CEO of Tiger Performance Institute. His passion lies in helping high-achieving entrepreneurs, professionals, and CEOs achieve sustainable peak performance through his innovative, hyper-personalized, precision health optimization system and performance training. You can check out Adams here at www.steveladams.com, and learn more about his training programs at www.tigerpi.com.
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Our reader poll today asks: How much pressure and stress are you feeling as a leader right now?
Extreme — I’m at a breaking point – 16%
Significant — Much more than I’m used to – 39%
Some — Things are at a normal stress level – 33%
Mild — There’s minor stress but nothing substantial – 8%
None — Things are as peaceful as ever – 4%
Stressful times. Almost 55% of you report feeling excessive stress right now. Your teams are likely feeling even more of it because they can sense your stress too and if the boss is stressed, it’s another source of stress for team members. Please take care of yourself. Chronic stress and burnout are cumulative. Take your vacation days. Work will always be there when you get back. Don’t let a sense of loyalty to your company drive dysfunctional behavior like excessive hours, weekend work, and sacrificing beyond what you’re paid to do. Loyalty matters to the company until it’s time for a layoff and the company suddenly becomes cold and heartless. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will. As leaders, it’s even more important to manage your stress so you’re not adding to team member stress as well.
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Avoid these pitfalls to get your recommendations implemented.
For you to get good at your problem solving, you need to apply this method to problems you’re working on. And I know it’s going to feel awkward, I’ve asked you to slow down, I’ve added steps to your process. But if you do, you’re going to be much more likely to solve for the root cause. You can’t skip these early steps of the process. And the more you apply the method, the more comfortable you’re going to be with it, the faster it’s going to go, and the more effective it will be in your problem solving.
Pitfall 1: Not Pinning Your Problem
Now, there are some major pitfalls out there. The first is in that pinning the problem step. People want to rush right past it, and I personally have a bias towards rushing past it. I have to remind myself to stop and be disciplined about answering all of the questions and writing a really well-scoped problem statement. Because candidly, the times I haven’t, I’ve regretted it. I’ve regretted it because as I would go through the problem solving, I would uncover things that I would have found out much earlier if I had been disciplined about pinning the problem.
Pitfall 2: Analysis-Paralysis
The second pitfall is analysis-paralysis. We all like Excel. I like getting in there, making the graphs, the pivot tables, and the charts. It’s fun. You get the numbers to add, and it looks really interesting. The problem is, you’re not pulling back up to that higher level and saying, “Have I learned anything from all this analysis? Does the problem still make sense? Is my best guess still my best guess?” And if you do that and you do it regularly and effectively, again, you’re going to waste a lot less time on junk analysis, and more time on solving the actual problem.
Pitfall 3: Stakeholder Resistance
The third thing you’re going to run into–and this is one that I have a really hard time with–is those stakeholders who are resistant to your idea. They’re going to put up the roadblocks, and say, “We don’t want to change,” or “We don’t have the resources,” or “That’s a bad idea.” You’re going to face lot of resistance with your recommendations even if it’s right, even if everybody knows it’s right. Some people are still going to resist, and it can be really frustrating. The key to overcoming that resistance is having a really solid set of facts that you’re going to base your assertions and your recommendations on. So, understand those stakeholders, understand why they’re pushing back on you and what their point of resistance is, and then you can make sure you’re bringing the right facts to the table to get them past that and get your recommendation implemented.
If you can avoid these pitfalls and overcome that resistance, you’re going to be really likely to get your recommendations approved by those stakeholders and implemented to improve your business.
Want to learn more about solving business problems? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to solve business problems. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Our reader poll today asks: When your company is having a tough year, how do you approach it?
We take urgent action and double our efforts to turn the year around – 65%
We stay the course and hope things improve – 29%
We give up and say, “Oh well, tough years happen. Next year will be better” – 6%
Push harder. That’s what most of you report your company does when facing a difficult year – you push harder to turn things around. While that’s a good short-term course of action in many instances, you must remain mindful of long-term impacts. Cutting costs, conducting layoffs, and pushing people to work harder and longer can have immediate financial impact. Unfortunately, those approaches aren’t sustainable and can cause long-term problems. Burnout, attrition, and damage to your brand as an employer can create bigger problems down the road. Whatever actions you take to turn your year around, be mindful and ask the question about how these short-term actions will affect your long-term prospects.
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No matter how good your problem solving is, if you can’t come up with a clear recommendation that’s compelling to your stakeholders, it’s all been for naught.
The last step in the problem solving process is coming up with a clear and concise recommendation.
I like to say you need to make assertions. Assertions are nothing more than facts stated to persuade. Now I’ve used this method of making assertions with a project where it was a $4 million telecom replacement where we were going to replace all of the phone systems across our entire division and it was going to cost $4 million. That’s what I was going to the stakeholders asking for. And I needed to make my case, so I put together my set of facts and my set of assertions to make that case and was successful in doing so. And you can do the same thing.
Now, with assertions, you’re going to run into resistance and your task is to overcome that resistance. The key to getting your idea supported is having the right set of facts and articulating them in a manner that’s going to be compelling to your audience. So, the most common types of resistance you’re going to hear, and I bet you’ve heard some of these things already in your past experience.
You may hear, “Well, that’ll never work.”
Well, bring assertions and facts that show it has worked somewhere else, perhaps in a different business unit or even one of your competitors.
You may hear, “Well it’s too expensive.”
The assertions you need to bring to table are ones around the cost benefit analysis of making your recommendation.
You may find somebody says, “Well, our customers won’t buy it.”
And you can build assertions and facts to support it by going and surveying customers or doing a small pilot in the market and gathering data from that.
Sometimes you’ll hear, “Well, we don’t like any of the options that you’ve presented.”
That’s my personal favorite, and that one feels like it’s really hard to overcome. The easiest way to overcome it is to show them the cost of doing nothing. Show them the cost of letting your competitors continue to penetrate the market while you sit there on your hands. It can be a very compelling set of facts to pull together.
So as you’re thinking about your assertions and your recommendations, I want you to think about the recommendation you’re trying to make, what the right set of facts are that you need to pull together to compel your audience. I want you to think of some of these types of resistance you’re going to encounter and how you’re going to overcome it because there’s always a counterpoint to every point they’re going to make.
The real trick is making sure that you have the right of facts and a powerful assertion to overcome that resistance in front of you.
Want to learn more about solving business problems? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to solve business problems. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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When everything feels urgent, nothing gets done, and your team pays the price.
Today’s post is by Liane Davey, PhD, organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author.
The following is an excerpt from the title Thoughtload: Manage The Madness and Free Your Team To Do Great Work by Liane Davey, PhD.
A leader I worked with, let’s call her Rebecca, was struggling profoundly with prioritization. She was smart and ambitious, but that made the task of winnowing down activities difficult because she could make a compelling case for why every investment mattered. As a result, her team was stretched across multiple priorities and working nonstop with no results to show for it. Everyone but Rebecca could see that they needed to do fewer things at once: to focus, get traction, work to completion, then move on to the next priority.
For months, this was the crux of our coaching conversations. But each time we made progress by deleting, delaying, or de-scoping an initiative, one of her team members would call me afterward to ask if I was aware that Rebecca had added multiple initiatives since our last session. I would broach the issue with Rebecca and remind her that her job was to help the team make the hard trade-offs and focus on a small set of the most valuable actions; doing one or two things at a time and then moving on to the next would be much more productive than trying to do everything at once. To her credit, she took the message to heart and stopped adding initiatives. Unfortunately, her compulsion to do more led her to start hiding three projects under one initiative heading, like a mom hiding vegetables in the lasagna. To be fair, I don’t think she even realized she was doing it.
At some point, the dilution of the team’s resources across so many activities meant nothing worked, and the situation reached a breaking point where Rebecca’s job was on the line. Only then did she switch into crisis mode and pick one initiative that would save the team. If they could resolve an urgent supply chain issue, they would solve a lot of problems for the company and rehabilitate their image. The supply chain project became the first and only priority. A couple of team members kept the lights on, but everyone else worked tirelessly to implement the project. It became nonnegotiable. Anything anyone needed to progress became top priority for everyone. I’ve never seen her team more productive, more ingenious, or more energized. What they accomplished in six weeks would have taken them at least a year in their former diluted and distracted state. Even two years later, when new challenges emerged, someone would often mention the supply chain project as an example of what was possible when they were all aligned on one clear priority. I won’t say that Rebecca is cured of her pernicious predilection for piling priorities, but now she knows that it’s an issue she needs to continually manage.
Being a manager is a big responsibility, at least if you care about being a good one. For your employees, you are the key connection to the organization and the primary source of intel on what belongs in their thoughtload: what is important, what is legitimately worrisome, and what is worth the effort. If you abdicate that role, your team members’ thoughtload will run rampant, as it did in Rebecca’s team. However, if you embrace your role in helping your employees direct their attention, process their emotions, and use their energy wisely, you have the opportunity to not only reduce their thoughtload but also increase their productivity and decrease their stress. Said more directly, you have the chance to transform the experience of work for your team.
Liane Davey has spent more than 25 years researching and advising teams on how to perform at their best. Known as the “teamwork doctor,” she works with teams from the frontlines to the boardroom, across industries and around the world, from Boston to Bangkok. Through her work with hundreds of teams, including 26 Global Fortune 500 companies (and counting), she has developed a practical, research-backed approach to solving the challenges that prevent teams from working effectively together. She is also the author of Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work, which tackles today’s most pressing management challenges: over-burdened systems, burned-out teams, and plateauing results.
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Our reader poll today asks: Would you rather work for a large company or for a small entrepreneurial venture?
I prefer large companies – 42%
I prefer entrepreneurial environments – 58%
Entrepreneurial Preference. There’s a clear preference people have for entrepreneurial environments. If you’re a leader at a big company, don’t worry – this doesn’t mean you’re facing an exodus to small companies. It’s actually an opportunity. How can you create a more entrepreneurial environment for your team? Can you relax oversight? Reduce paperwork and administrative work? Can you give people more freedom to operate? Granted, all these actions require some level of risk-taking on your part. That said, your people might surprise you with what they deliver when they have more time and freedom. Stepping back and giving them space can make the environment feel more entrepreneurial but not with the associated risk of working for a small company. If you’re one of those respondents wishing for a more entrepreneurial environment, be careful what you ask for. Leaving a large company carries significant risks and inherent instability. That said, you’ll have more control over the work you do and less bureaucracy to deal with.
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
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