What gives the entrepreneur the courage to choose a route away from the “safer” world of employment? I’m fascinated by this and the motivation to take an idea and pursue it relentlessly, not to mention the host of characteristics that enable entrepreneurs to make a success of business opportunities.

There’s often a dose of good luck involved as many successful business owners will have an equal number of “failures” to report. And while it would be facile to suggest that all entrepreneurs possess the same traits, just as it would be naive to suggest that all large companies lack entrepreneurial spirit, there are some traits that I believe are present in most, if not all entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial traits are becoming more and more attractive to senior leaders as they realise the competitive benefits they can bring. If these characteristics are identified and nurtured within large organisations, the results can be transformational.

In my experience, there are three primary traits found in most entrepreneurs and they’re the Holy Grail (or maybe more accurately the Holy Trinity) for business leaders looking to nurture them within their organisations.

1. “Can do” attitude

Entrepreneurs have a “can do” attitude. So often, large organisations suffer from a lack of flexibility. There is often a feeling that getting anything changed is pretty much impossible. So complex and slow moving is the bureaucracy and decision making process, any entrepreneurial inklings will be quashed as they get beaten down by the culture. An entrepreneurial entity has a clear edge in a competitive market as it can move quickly and adapt its offering to suit the customer.

The introduction of more flexible attitudes within an organisation has to come from the top and work its way down. “This is how it’s always been done here” attitude will need to be challenged in a positive way. Employees need to be encouraged to bring forward suggestions for improvements, new products, new services etc. Mechanisms need to be set-up to take forward suggestions and new thinking. You can expect considerable resistance and inertia, which is where external facilitation is often necessary to structure, challenge and support senior management as they seek to shift the culture from “can’t do” to “can do”.

2. Playing to their strengths

Entrepreneurs play to their strengths – they set up doing something they’re good at and find that success follows. It’s so much easier to be passionate about something when it comes easily.

Unfortunately the prevailing performance management approach in most organisations is to look for employees’ weaknesses in their current role and to address these through training and development.

A workforce who play to their strengths are naturally more engaged, and this leads to a more proactive mindset. The organisations needs to ask themselves: How do we encourage all our employees to find their strengths at work and find ways of playing to them as often as possible?

3. Proactivity

Entrepreneurs are proactive. They are always on the lookout for an opportunity to sell, a connection to make or a way of doing things differently.

Too often staff at all levels are very busy just reacting to all the demands put on their time, allowing little or no time to reflect, question how things could be improved or to pursue new opportunities.

Shifting from a reactive to a proactive culture doesn’t happen overnight. It demands that the current use of time and effort is questioned and that low-value adding activities are eliminated to release “head space” and time. This “head space” then needs to be redirected towards proactive thinking and activities. Senior management can also support and encourage this by celebrating proactive behaviours, and crucially ensure that they create positive change i.e. that the ideas and efforts don’t wither and die from a “can’t do” attitude and lack of openness to change.

Starting the journey

I believe that the first step to a more entrepreneurial organisation is simply to start thinking about how things could change. Once an awareness is established, then highlighted, the focus starts to shift. As the saying goes, “where attention goes, energy flows”, and this is true of encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit.

Through training and workshops with senior management, it is possible to create an understanding about what characterises entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organisations, and where there are cultural and structural blockers in their organisation. From this a strategy for introducing an entrepreneurial mindset can be developed.

It takes a lot of determination, commitment and a well-planned strategy to introduce an entrepreneurial culture in large organisations, but the benefits are massive, indeed they may be necessary to ensure long term survival against smaller nimbler entrepreneurial businesses.

What is your experience with entrepeneurial skills and mindset within large organisations. Do you have an opinion on how it can be harnessed by larger businesses? We would love to hear from you.