The four areas where we can encourage entrepreneurship within The New Organisation are:
1. Sharing leadership within an organisation, department or team
An entrepreneurial culture can only emerge if leaders themselves take the lead. This is possible if leaders themselves trust their people and dare to be vulnerable. In doing so, they cultivate mutual trust ... ‘trust is built by trusting’. Thus, the way decisions are made is often the ultimate test. When it comes to decision-making, team members enter into a dialogue to decide together once the decisive criteria have been discussed. The leader is part of the group and intervenes only when it appears that no consensus can be reached. He or she then makes the final decision, but not before the group itself has tried to make as many decisions as possible.
2. Employees distinguish themselves and take responsibility themselves
This involves making room for individualised roles in line with individual competences and affinities. Talents are systematically identified and opportunities are sought together. Team members thus become multi-skilled and more broadly deployable. However, this is not limited to standard executive tasks but also includes organisational tasks and coordinating tasks. It goes without saying that the manager will assume a crucial facilitating role here in which ‘learning to let go’ should not be an empty slogan.
3. Developing a sense of initiative
Employees who for years had only to perform are now going to have to learn new adapted behaviour and this takes time. Old habits are loosened and new routines installed. Therefore, managers themselves will initially have to move away from a controlling, directing style towards a coaching, strengthening style with a focus on support (‘servant leadership’) and a sense of cooperation. They will have to gauge employees' needs, listen to them and think about creative solutions together.
4. Encourage personal discipline
In old thinking, restrictive actions had to oblige employees to behave correctly. Discipline, after all, is always the result of right insight and starts at the top. The leader shows in/through his behaviour what is important, what is valuable. In this way, employees are inspired by their leader's personal behaviour. To expect discipline is to immediately allow oneself to be judged for sustained disciplined behaviour. It also helps employees to follow up. Follow-up leads initially to support, secondarily to improvement and, if nothing else, to corrective adjustment. Finally, we can also argue that shared agreements are better agreements. If you want employees to keep disciplined agreements, make sure the why/reason for an agreement is clear. Organisations that truly embrace the New Organising succeed in letting discipline become a personal choice and this from a commitment to the organisation's vision and values. The individual then ultimately imposes the necessary discipline on themselves.
