You’ve probably heard the saying that “we’re all in business for ourselves.” This statement resonates with me. Everyone is, in effect, an entrepreneur. You may be an entrepreneur with a narrow set of expertise and only one client: an employee, in other words. Yet you are not a permanent part of your employer’s company. As you move on through life, you will be an entrepreneur of your own brand, seeking to move from one client at a time to another. You may become increasingly specialized in your services, but the brand – you – is still something you’ll attempt to promote and improve upon as you move from client/employer to client/employer.
Even if you buy into this mindset, though, it can be tough to think like an entrepreneur in a 9-to-5 job. An employee has a fundamentally different way of viewing the world than an entrepreneur does. One of the main ways you can tell if you’re an employee with an entrepreneurial mindset versus an employee with an employee mindset is this: do you worry about being at your desk at 5:00 PM (and also, 9:00 AM)?
If you have the employee mindset, you’ll want to make sure you’re a team player. You’ll have a contract specifying a minimum of 40 hours per week, and you’ll watch that clock to make sure you are in your seat 40 hours (at a minimum). The employee mindset says that the “where” (sitting at your desk) is more important than the “what” (getting results). The employee is banking on ‘face time’ being the critical measurement of success. If you have ten hours of work to do or two hours, the hours will be the same.
The entrepreneurial employee’s mindset is different. If you’re in at 10 and leave at 3, it doesn’t matter as long as you get the job done. If you need to be there at 5 (or 6, or 7), fine. If you can leave early, also fine. The employee with the entrepreneur’s approach knows that his or her “brand” is based on whether or not goals were met. Whether you sat in your desk an extra two hours after your work was done for the day, just so you were there at 5, doesn’t matter.
Has anyone in a professional career has ever bragged in an interview about how they could always be counted on to stay in the office until 5:00? Employers don’t care. Clients don’t care, either. Skills and results are the only thing that matters, right?
Unfortunately that’s not true. A lot of lip service is given in the corporate environment to work/life balance and the idea that only results matter, but anyone who spends more than a day or two in a cubicle knows this isn’t true. Whether or not you have butt firmly planted in chair at 5:00 matters nothing to your next job, true. But in office politics – the business of surviving in and flourishing in your current job – ‘face time’ is critical. Look around the office and see how many people are coasting, working at less than full potential, simply so they have their tired face visible when 5:00 rolls around. These people may understand, deep down, that there is no real reason to be adhering to a 9-to-5 schedule, but that’s the corporate culture and it seems unlikely to change.
If you feel the desire to be in your seat at 5:00, fine. Many people are more comfortable not rocking the boat. But if you feel that you NEED to be in your seat at 5:00 or you’re going to be disciplined, you’re not in an organization that values results. You’re being paid to fill a budgeted position so a manager can move up the corporate ladder by pointing to his management of a team of 20. And before you think you can just coast along showing up at 5:00, remember this: managers with that mindset weren’t born. They were sitting in your seat 20 years ago, waiting for the clock to move past 4:59…
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