--- title: 7 Business Acumen tips to Enable Your Team to Act Like a Start-Up description: Here are seven business acumen tips to help you develop a team that has a start-up mentality rather than a traditional, legacy corporate mentality. image: https://www.advantexe.com/hubfs/innovation-business-acumen.png --- [![logo-advantexe-150.png](https://www.advantexe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/logo-advantexe-150.png?width=150&height=123&name=logo-advantexe-150.png "logo-advantexe-150.png")](https://www.advantexe.com) ![blog-banner-2022](https://www.advantexe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/blog-banner-2022.png?width=973&name=blog-banner-2022.png "blog-banner-2022") ### The Advantexe Advisor Blog - providing a deep and applicable understanding of the system of business. # 7 Business Acumen tips to Enable Your Team to Act Like a Start-Up By Robert Brodo | Aug 7, 2019 8:36:44 AM | [![Share on Facebook](https://static.hubspot.com/final/img/common/icons/social/facebook-24x24.png)](http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advantexe.com%2Fblog%2Fbusiness-acumen-tips-to-act-like-a-start-up%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dfacebook) [![Share on LinkedIn](https://static.hubspot.com/final/img/common/icons/social/linkedin-24x24.png)](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advantexe.com%2Fblog%2Fbusiness-acumen-tips-to-act-like-a-start-up%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dlinkedin) [![Share on Twitter](https://static.hubspot.com/final/img/common/icons/social/twitter-24x24.png)](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advantexe.com%2Fblog%2Fbusiness-acumen-tips-to-act-like-a-start-up%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dtwitter&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advantexe.com%2Fblog%2Fbusiness-acumen-tips-to-act-like-a-start-up%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dtwitter&source=tweetbutton&text=7%20Business%20Acumen%20tips%20to%20Enable%20Your%20Team%20to%20Act%20Like%20a%20Start-Up) [![Share on Pinterest](https://static.hubspot.com/final/img/common/icons/social/pinterest-24x24.png)](http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advantexe.com%2Fblog%2Fbusiness-acumen-tips-to-act-like-a-start-up%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dpinterest&media=) [![Share on Email](https://static.hubspot.com/final/img/common/icons/social/email-24x24.png)](mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advantexe.com%2Fblog%2Fbusiness-acumen-tips-to-act-like-a-start-up%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Demail%20&body=Check%20out%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advantexe.com%2Fblog%2Fbusiness-acumen-tips-to-act-like-a-start-up%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Demail) One of the easiest and most passé things a leader can say to their team is “I wish you all could act like ![innovation-business-acumen](https://www.advantexe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/innovation-business-acumen.png?width=300&name=innovation-business-acumen.png)a start-up company.”  The implication of that statement is that the team should be agile, innovative, entrepreneurial, nimble, resilient, disruptive, and every other cool buzz word that you can think of.  Besides being somewhat insulting, teams in large organizations typically push back on this approach by saying that they “don’t have the right resources”, “they will get blamed for making mistakes”, “they aren’t compensated well enough”, “the systems are old”, and “customers don’t really like change anyway.” Based on my 30 years of experience working with leaders, I believe it is absolutely possible to develop and leverage [Business Acumen skills](https://www.advantexe.com/blog/defining-business-acumen) to be an entrepreneurial leader inside a large company and treat your business and people as if it’s a start-up. Now, I’m sure the first thing you are thinking is, “What are you talking about? But we aren’t a start-up!  We’ve been around for a hundred years and most of our brands are decades old.” *Exactly*. You’ve already lost because you aren’t thinking about ways of disrupting your business, team, or processes! Here are seven suggestions to help you develop a team that has a start-up mentality rather than a traditional, legacy corporate mentality. **Share the long-term strategy** If people don’t know where they are going, any road will get them there. The first and most important thing you must do as a leader is to share the vision of the long-term [business strategy](https://www.advantexe.com/blog/do-you-have-a-business-strategy-or-a-list-of-tasks). What is the ultimate [value proposition](https://www.advantexe.com/blog/the-importance-of-authenticity-in-your-value-proposition) to your customers and how are you going to execute on providing the products and services to your customers that will lead to success? Is your company striving to be the innovators, are you looking to be the cost play? How is that strategy going to change and what are you doing to disrupt your business before someone else does? It will take you 7-12 times to get the strategy message across to your team and your real goal is never to stop sharing it and asking people if they understand it and how it impacts their jobs. **One step at a time** Life is hard; business is harder.  Your team can’t do everything at once. You need to lead them to execution of the strategy by focusing on the small steps to success and having them develop new and disruptive plans and ideas. **Reward people with time to think** The best entrepreneurs demand and use time as a valuable currency.  In a traditional, legacy company people punch the clock from 9-5.  They show up, do their work, go home, and have traditional measure of success such as output.  Start-up companies treat time as a valuable commodity and give their people time to think and brainstorm new and innovative ideas.  You need to give your people 10%-20% of their time to think and explore new ideas of improvement and creating value. **Give people autonomy and great coaching at the same time** People go to work for start-ups because they get freedom to think and innovate.  They have ultimate autonomy. In a corporate start-up, you must give people the same autonomy and you can also give them positive [coaching](https://www.advantexe.com/blog/do-your-managers-and-leaders-have-effective-coaching-skills) and feedback that drives them harder to push the boundaries. **Understand mistakes, rejoice in fixing them** The concept of fail, fast, forward is a given in a corporate start-up.  I also suggest that once people figure out the mistakes, reward them and rejoice as a team when problems are fixed and embraced as a next step in the evolution process. **Don’t tolerate ineffective people** Ineffective team members have no place in a corporate star-up.  They will typically disrupt and frustrate the team. You need a team of aligned members with a common goal of striving for excellence! Your job as a leader is to quickly weed out poor performers and exit them from your business.   **Focus on results through the eyes of your customers** In traditional, legacy situations, the metrics of success are your standard Revenues, Income, Margin Increase, and increases in Shareholder Value through appreciation of the stock, dividends, and stock buybacks.  Corporate start-ups don’t focus on any of those metrics.  Instead they focus on the key metrics of success of their customers and they build their operating models to focus on customer success which eventually will create value for your employees and shareholders. [![Why Business Acumen Matters ](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/1153922/ef562d5a-acb6-45df-86ae-098c09e7fcc0.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/1153922/ef562d5a-acb6-45df-86ae-098c09e7fcc0) ![Robert Brodo](https://www.advantexe.com/hubfs/Blogs/rob-brodo-author.png) **About The Author** Robert Brodo is co-founder of Advantexe. He has more than 20 years of training and business simulation experience. [**](https://www.advantexe.com) [**](https://twitter.com/robrodo) [**](https://www.linkedin.com/pub/rob-brodo/0/334/574) COMMENTS ### SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL ### About Advantexe Advantexe is a gold medal winning training and performance improvement organization specializing in the development and delivery of interactive learning journeys using computer-based business simulations as the catalyst for learning and change in the areas of: Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling learning solutions. 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