Although an entrepreneurial stance is essential
for individual success in big business, and entrepreneurial development
is a
vital source of innovation and organisational growth, most companies
need help.
Here are guidelines for developing entrepreneurship in your
organisation.
1. Get the picture
In the twentieth century, big
business needed
conformity and compliance for success. Staff needed to fit their
positions,
follow their job descriptions and adhere to organisational protocol and
values.
It was an industrial age in which work was modelled on machines.
Now we are well into a new economy in which big
business needs ingenuity and innovation for success. People need to
personify
their roles, invent their job descriptions as they go, and lead
organisational
culture by example.
The best way to describe the new knowledge
worker is someone with an entrepreneurial approach. Such a person has a
strategic view, is driven by purpose and passion, operates as if in
their own
business, and lives out of the box.
People need to be helped out of their comfort
zones to awaken their entrepreneurial spirit, and then to align this
with
organisational vision. They need to contribute by being themselves and
realising
their potential through adding value to the business.
The adage that “people are your biggest asset”
now needs to be a deep truth pervading your business. It is a cliché to
talk of
a paradigm shift but this truly is. Success in the people economy means
an
existential change, from thinking to being.
2. Start where there’s pain
Getting people to “be an entrepreneur in the
organisation” is a tool for them to self-actualise and strengthen the
business
at the same time. The outcome is a win/win. The best place to start is
where
there’s a pressing need, some sort of pain.
Start where there are problems because the
development process will turn the problems into benefits. Also, the
need or
pain is a hook on which to promote the project. It is your selling
point to the
organisation.
3. Grow a new language and culture of success
Corporations wanting to foster entrepreneurship
as a competitive strategy, or develop an intrapreneurial mindset in
their
business units, face the primary obstacle of how to foster a new
culture using
their old language. To get from where you are to where you want to be,
you need
to begin to communicate with a new consciousness and language of
prosperity and
true wealth.
Internal entrepreneurs have a deeper and more
empowered relationship with the organisation than people with an
employee
mentality. They know themselves and see their purpose unfolding through
the
implementation of the business vision.
To actualise, they need to love what they do,
share their enthusiasm, and work towards sustained and true success for
themselves, the organisation and your customers. Leaders need to do
this
themselves to open the way for others, then promote and facilitate it
over
time, living the new language.
3. Take responsibility
Entrepreneurial people take responsibility for
their lives and business results. They are committed to what they are
doing on
a personal and a collective level, and do not see a separation between
the two.
When doing what is right for you and doing what
is right for the business are one and the same, your contribution takes
on a
new level of intensity, ingenuity and sustainability. You begin to
build a life
and an organisation that matter and that benefit all stakeholders in
the long
term. This results in a much more profound experience of success.
Because your new culture encourages
authenticity, it welcomes mistakes as the fertile breeding ground for
growth
and uniqueness, your differentiator in the market. It is no longer a
defensive
and adversarial culture but a creative and thriving one, built to last.
4. Make entrepreneurship your Human Resources
strategy
An entrepreneurial culture must be driven from
the top as well as everywhere else in the organisation. It is an
empowered
stance and driver of action at all levels and in all areas of the
business.
Human Resources, which grew from a staff
administration function in the 1980s to a people management specialist
in the
1990s, is now at the forefront of business strategy. Human Resources is
now not
only on the board, it is the way forward. It must lead the way by
developing
internal entrepreneurship.
Best practice and compliance are stale and they
can even cost you your edge. You need a simple and compelling vision
that
integrates meaning with value and gives people with potential the
avenue to
realise it by being of service. Entrepreneurship gives you that vision
and
method.
5. Manage alignment
People are becoming increasingly insightful and
expectant in their careers, which they are now managing with increasing
depth
and purpose. To attract and retain the best, you need to offer them
opportunity
to self-actualise and build the life they want. To do this, your
organisation,
and you the boss, need to be actualising.
Intelligent businesses realise they are not
monoliths
but communities of contributors serving broader communities of
stakeholders for
mutual benefit. Leaders of these businesses encourage the alignment of
individual purpose with organisational strategy, and manage this
alignment as a
living and evolving creative process. It’s exciting stuff!
6. Manage Process
This existential evolution in modern business
should not be seen as a problem to solve, but as a process to manage
and,
ultimately, a mystery to be lived. Many of the challenges today are not
resolvable
as an either/or scenario because they are a both/and opportunity.
Entrepreneurship means working with polarities and capitalising on the
creative
tension between opposites. It is a spiritual endeavour.
Developing entrepreneurship means developing
spiritual, emotional and interactional intelligence, not just the
intellectual.
It is helped by being and doing and hindered by theory. It must focus
on
producing mutually beneficial outcomes, not making any one person or
party
right or wrong. It can feel indefinable, which is also what makes it
impossible
for competitors to replicate.
Entrepreneurship differentiates. It needs to be
led by experienced and bullish custodians and entrepreneurial examples,
who can
stimulate, direct and support the right energy.
Entrepreneurship in big business happens on all
levels and results in true wealth. It is an awakening and growth in
organisational intelligence and it is your best shot at sustainable
success.
Robin Wheeler
is a leading business thinker, writer and speaker, and the founder of
people
development consultancy BEntrepreneurING. His latest book, INSIGHTS,
is available in book stores. www.bentrepreneuring.com.
