‘Entrepreneurial mindset’ is one of those terms that people like to throw around these days. But what does it actually mean? Does it only apply to startups and Silicon Valley companies, or is it something we all should care about?

The short answer is that we ALL should care about it and strive to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset in everything we do. In my mind, ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ or entrepreneurial thinking means that we 1) care personally and deeply about what we’re doing, 2) take a forward-looking and proactive approach to thinking through future challenges and opportunities, and 3) feel committed to do what needs to get done, whether someone tells us to or not.

I recently listened to some courses on LinkedIn that suggested you should revisit your job description regularly to ensure that you are doing what is expected from you and thus advance your career. I think that’s terrible advice! It might work for highly repetitive jobs (think retail checkout person), but not for the majority of jobs we have today and even less for the future’s work requirements. Most job descriptions are written without a complete picture of what needs to be done (yes, managers make mistakes), and even if they were perfect, times and demands change way too fast to keep up with them.

If you want to achieve greatness, you need to do what needs to get done. Not what someone has told you to do. Sometimes you even have to ignore what others are telling you.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can ignore your core job responsibilities. Not by a long stretch. What it means is that following those gets you to mediocracy. To be great, you need to go beyond expected and documented tasks and develop your own sense of what matters and what needs to get done.

To be great means to take ownership, to think critically, to propose what needs to get done, and to think beyond what your manager understands – after all, you know your space better than anyone else. To be great means to look at your work as your own business that you want to make successful and exceptional. To be great means taking the entrepreneurial perspective.

Don’t wait for others to tell you what to do. Look at your work as your personal business. Decide what needs to get done (and what doesn’t). Take control!

I saw many of those exceptional behaviors as people stepped up and thought out of the box to deal with COVID. Keep up that mindset, and it will serve you well regardless of the circumstances you find yourself in.

---

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.