Four characteristics of entrepreneurs that can help public servants in their careers

Cultivate that entrepreneurial spirit and transform your organisation

It’s a widely known fact within government that a public servant’s job bars them from running a business. Fortunately there is no rule, written or unwritten, that forbids a public servant from flexing a bit of entrepreneurial spirit.

The entrepreneurial spirit is a loosely associated set of attitudes that include initiative, curiosity, negotiation and conclusivity, all of which make the professional better and more complete. All four coalesce around the drive to innovate, building something new to an excellent standard.

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Why should public servants read this wish to imitate the attitudes of company founders? In this article, I want to persuade you that with these skills you can grow in your career faster, deal better with daily problems and become a reference for others. In my experience as a public servant, these attitudes and mindset took me from providing a regular receptionist service to the governor’s office.

Initiative

When someone with an entrepreneurial mind knows something is wrong or out of place, they seek correction or improvement. This is often called “taking initiative”, but the end to which one does so makes all the difference. For some, taking initiative means exercising their authority to assign blame to others. Others take initiative by simply reporting a problem to the person above them. But an entrepreneurial person takes initiative by first taking responsibility, and then by dealing with the problem in question.

There is a great teaching from CIGS (Centro Integrado de Guerra na Selva), or, Brazilian Army Instruction and War in the Jungle: “Take initiative, as you will not receive orders for all situations. Keeping in mind the final objective”. What is meant here is that even the military, with all its rules and hierarchies, values those who try to solve problems firsthand. An army in which structures of accountability exist yet which does not prohibit individuals from taking action is an integral and dynamic force to be reckoned with. Public service, and servants, can certainly learn from this.

Curiosity

All children are born curious, and are prone to become less so as they grow older. The average child, by the time they have learned to speak, asks about everything. At a certain point, questions about what and where things are evolve into questions about why things are as they are. These “why” questions are the hardest for adults to answer, which is why they stop asking them. This is particularly true of adults in their working lives, which rarely reward curiosity and even punish it if its line of questioning is deemed threatening or impertinent.

Entrepreneurs often quit their jobs because they find their curiosity conflicts with their close-minded employer. Public servants may relate to the second half of that sentence, so it is worth knowing how staying actively curious at work can make you better at your job.

Entrepreneurs talk of creating value within markets, among shareholders, but no least within people’s actual lives.

An incurably curious adult however conducts research, explores ideas through association, and seeks to understand more about a topic. They reason, detail and often discover several answers to a question where at first only one seemed possible.

Negotiation skills

Negotiation is as old as civilisation. Is it perhaps the aptitude above all others possessed by humankind that has allowed us to live among one another without total self-annihilation. It is also a hallmark of successful entrepreneurship.

Public servants will be familiar with the feeling that the average workday now starts upon waking up. As soon as they turn on their phone, they see the day’s first messages, all from people with the most diverse expectations and needs. Negotiation and management of problems and situations starts before today’s public servant has even stepped out of bed. In this, they have an awful lot in common with the average entrepreneur.

Both public servants and business people have together ushered civilisation along the walk of history. As a result, both can attest to how increasingly difficult it is to manage and reconcile different desires, personalities and adjust solutions between all the different parties involved.

Be conclusive

Both entrepreneurs and public servants know that they are required to deliver results, albeit differently and to different ends. Entrepreneurs talk of creating value within markets, among shareholders, but no least within people’s actual lives. This is where public service and business ventures overlap. The aim of both is to do something well enough that enough people benefit from it to give it lasting value.

An entrepreneur who prepares their store with care, imports all the right products, opens their store on time, yet does not sell anything, has failed to do their job. Without the daily return on investment in terms of sales figures, every day is a day closer to bankruptcy. The key to starting well is to set yourself up for delivery.