Does Everyone Need To Be An Entrepreneur?

Last week I wrote in defence of the Corporate Intreprenuer, and how they deserve more respect for the risks they take to bring new ideas to life for the business.

But I wanted to quickly follow this with another post because I don’t want to be misunderstood.

Just because I am incredibly inspired by intrapreneurs- and I think no organisation can sustainably survive without them- doesn’t mean I want everyone to become one.

I live, breathe and sleep innovation; my friends are fed up of me interrupting conversations because I want to point out how the new product they’re showing off actually has a supercool business model behind it (they just wanted me to admire their new loo roll subscription).

But that doesn’t mean it’s the right path for everyone. Yes, it’s fun. Yes, it is quite sexy and shiny. Yes, it can be incredibly rewarding, exciting and career changing when you get a new business off the ground; when you create your companies future; when you find a new way to work which changes everything.

But as I mentioned in my last post, it’s also sleepless nights, the return of your teenage spots because your complexion can’t take the stress, cancelled plans, and the risk that you pour blood sweat and tears into an idea you ultimately kill with no financial return.

It’s not for the faint hearted- and without being truly truly passionate about not just your idea, but also this way of working, it can destroy you.

You have to be someone who can’t just handle uncertainty- but loves it; who wants to throw themselves face first into the fuzzy, unknown space where the answers aren’t googleable and even the experts don’t really know what’s going to happen. You have to love to fail when you get it wrong, because that failure is what gives you real learnings to get it right faster next time.

And it’s not even just the fact that this style doesn’t suit everyone and help them thrive.

Imagine if everyone truly was an intrapreneur… what would happen to business as usual.

As soon as the idea moved from searching for a business model to executing one, it would be dropped- at the exact moment it really begins returning the investment for the organisation. It just wouldn’t work.

So let’s not fall from one trap directly into another; from denegrading the intrapreneur to lauding them as the one true, future proofed career path.

Instead, I’d like to posit another approach: not everyone needs to know how to be an intraprenuer, but they do need to respect them enough and be motivated to, get out of their way.

The biggest risk in the corporate environment isn’t actually everyone wanting to be an intrapreneur, or noone wanting to be one- it’s the fact that, for those that do want to be one, they keep getting attacked by a corporate immune system which isn’t ready to accept that someone is doing something differently.

The system senses an alien bacteria and quickly moves to kill it:

• Someone who isn’t the customer relationship manager is trying to build a real relationship with the customer to work out how to serve them better
• My employee won’t let me determine how they adapt their solution to meet my departments needs before the customers
• They aren’t giving our brand the respect it deserves (they keep putting things out that have bugs, aren’t polished to perfection, and may not even be ready to sell yet)
• They’re refusing to give me a 5 year business plan

So the corporate innovation tells the intrapreneur to get back in their box; stick with your job; and follow the way we’ve always done it.

This is where innovation dies.

This poses a challenge for corporates who want to put innovation at the heart of the agenda, because it changes the game- it’s not enough to empower and inspire the individual to act- now you need whole organisational transformation.

The good news is this transformation isn’t as big as some organisations try to make it. You don’t need everyone to go through a corporate accelerator program; or to second your whole organisation to work on a startup accelerator program.

You need to get them to buy into the why; and to understand the how- so that when they see an intrepreneur working differently, it doesn’t feel like an unknown threat, but just a parallel approach which they can understand the logic for.

For me- this is where we have to do two things:

1) Help our employees understand the very real risk that if we do not innovate, we will die

2) Train employees in the truly transferrable skills of the entrepeneur

For point 1) this doesn’t work if we sugar coat it. It means we have to serve up our shrinking margins on a plate; to put the stew of startups swarming into our space front and center; and to own the fact that while our business model may be successful today, it rarely guarantees success in the future.

For point 2) in my opinion this means three masterclasses everyone in an organisation should go through:

1) Lean Startup Methodology: teaches us any new idea is big pile of guesses; and the biggest risk is these assumptions leading us to build the wrong thing. The only way to avoid this? Test with real customers constantly, so we’re never left relying on our gut too long.

This works for any new idea as an approach to derisk it. Whether for an internal process, a product optimisation or an entirely new business.

2) Customer development: the art of talking to customers and really finding out what they care about. There’s so much lip service paid to “customer centricity” and “customer first” but the practical skillset to do this isn’t about how to setup a survey, or ask open ended questions; it’s how to get really good data even when your customer inadvertently lies, and doesn’t really know what they want

3) Finally, business model innovation. The currency of innovation is no longer technology; today, technology enables new business models; and increasingly this is how new entrants disrupt traditionally defensible markets to take down the megaliths and make their mark. If we can get the organisation as a whole to embrace not just the truth that we need to get good at this to stay in the game; but the exciting reality that this is a tool which can be used to sustain the business going forward.

These masterclasses could be face to face or digital (if you need global scale) but either way I’ve been blown away by the capacity of this kind of training to deliver not just practical help, but genuine mindset shift- an “ah ha” moment which can translate into real cultural change and an understanding of the need to support, not stamp on, intrapreneurship.

Of course there are other techniques that need to come into play:

Incentivisation should be actively geared to reward not just intrepreneurs, but those who tangibly support and accelerate their work.

Governance needs to put in place clear funding and processes to select ideas which reduces dependency on intrepreneurs being asked to spend months perfecting a business plan which hasn’t been tested in the market before they pitch for funding; and to stop them having to come back with their begging bowl everytime they want to spend on an experiment.

Corporate Comms also have a clear role to play in rewarding successes and even harder failures which give learnings as return on investment. They are also responsible for not just letting intrepreneurs become the poster children of innovation, but actively seeking out and singing the praises of the otherwise hidden heroes who free up, counsel, and lend any kind of hand to accelerate the speed of intrepreneurs learning.

These are just some ways to encourage everyone to understand and embrace what an intrepreneur is- even if they don’t want it themselves. I’d love to hear what you have seen work or damage this in the wild.

Because if we don’t fix this; however much we can support our intrepreneurs, we’re asking them to push water uphill. Some will manage it, but many won’t, and with them, you’ll lose the ideas that could have been your future, and the talent that could have taken you there.