Take the lead and win

If you lie in bed at night thinking about ways to improve your employer's bottom line, refer to your employer's customers as "my customers" or develop customer service or competitive strategies in your spare time, you probably have a "self-employed mentality", an attitude valued and sought after by many employers.

Nick Baylis, CEO for advertising agency Foote Cone and Belding (FCB), employs 50 staff. He says people with a self-employed mentality are "hungrier", more self-motivated, and more appreciative of a company's financial position.

"Other kinds of employees often don't think about how much things cost or how they can save you money."

But isn't treating your employer's business as if it were your own a bit of a cliche?

Can salaried workers really have a "self-employed mentality" and if so, can it be adopted overnight? Can it be nurtured by employers?

Success coach and corporate consultant Tania Mana says a self-employed mentality does exist and can be nurtured, but also tends to be innate and unrelated to whether an individual has been self-employed or not.

"After all, an individual can be disastrously self-employed. Also, some people - most often on a salary - operate with a kind of learned helplessness and lack of initiative. They're less motivated and get into the habit of asking for help instead of doing their own problem-solving."

Mana says the classic example is the "well, that's our policy madam" customer services person, someone who sticks doggedly to the corporate line without warming to the customer or looking laterally for a solution.

Conversely, she says people with self-employed mentality have greater levels of autonomy, cope better with stress, and find it easier to make decisions.

"They see the big picture and know where value is created for the business. They understand the different departments of HR, finance, manufacturing, and marketing and how these interact."

Mana says the management trend towards providing more life-balance perks is good for attracting and encouraging people with a self-employed mentality.

"If people feel their employer has been good to them, they want to be good back, to treat the business as if it were their own. If people do not feel they are being treated well they can be inclined to 'self-perk', help themselves to stationery or whatever."

She says employees who want to treat an employer's business as their own should start by talking well of it outside work hours and not revealing confidential problems.

"If it's your own business and a customer is not happy with a sales rep, you're not going to say, 'Oh, I know. We don't really like him either.' You are going to be diplomatic."

Andy McDowell, an employee of Baylis and director for Interaction FCB NZ, understands these precepts well. He recently ended a decade long bout of self-employment when he sold his direct marketing agency and took up a salaried job.

"As an employer I had all the [employee] games played on me so I'm not about to play them myself."

McDowell says using his self-employed mentality in a salaried position became preferable to staying self-employed.

"When you run your own business it is difficult to get peer review and feedback for what you are doing. Coming back into a team has been an enormous boost to my ego and there is the intellectual stimulus of working with like-minded people."

He says while he was looking for a new place to work and learn from, 10 years of successful self-employment left him unable to thumb-twiddle at a desk from nine to five. Instead, McDowell sought a job that would let him maintain a sense of freedom while delivering responsibility and reward.

"It was difficult to imagine answering to someone else again. But FCB opened a door for me, creating an autonomous division. It gave me the opportunity and challenge I was looking for."

Baylis says FCB is pleased to employ people such as McDowell and that people with a self-employed mentality can be identified by their confidence, self-motivation and aggression.

"They listen more closely to customers and actually have an opinion," says Baylis.

However, some employers don't take well to the idea of employees with opinions that may differ from their own.

Baylis says many New Zealand companies are non-confrontational and prefer the status quo.

"They employ people empowered to say no rather than yes, because if something goes wrong, no one can point the finger and say it's their fault. As individuals, New Zealanders might be innovative and pioneering but as organisations we are quite compliant."

McDowell says some employees are also better-suited to work environments in which autonomy is not encouraged.

"Some people just want to work nine to five then leave. And it is not necessarily in every corporate interest to give people more autonomy and responsibility."

So how can those with a self-employed mentality ensure they end up in a challenging and supportive work environment? And what should employers be doing if they want to attract people like this?

Mana says it comes back to matching like values and work cultures - something that's easier said than done.

"Of course it's hard to be sure until you're actually working there, but you can research. Find someone who used to work there and talk to them. A trial period can also work well for both sides."

McDowell says it's important to remunerate people who treat a business as their own on a performance basis because they already understand the need to perform and enjoy bonus and incentive schemes.

Baylis says self-employed thinkers need to be empowered. "I think it is quite easy, actually. Someone with a self-employed mentality is after freedom and better income. You can easily create areas of responsibility and freedom with working hours, and give the employee a clear perspective on how their efforts will grow the business."

Mana agrees it's important to communicate key results and strategic directions and to tie staff performance to those indicators.

"Some companies issue shares, others ensure their employees share in their triumphs and marketplace wins. Somehow the employer has to create an environment that the employee is proud of."

If both sides can achieve these aims, it's likely to be worth the effort. McDowell now has all the benefits of being self-employed without the ups and downs of a self-employed cash flow and Government compliance requirements. Baylis says he can confidently leave McDowell to it, knowing the job will be done.

"People with a self-employed mentality know how to get off their chuff. That's imperative in our industry which is about fresh and original ideas."