Intrepreneurship harnesses passion

Mod­ern busi­ness­es are dis­rupt­ed by rapid changes in cus­tomer needs, fash­ions, social trends, eco­nom­ics, gov­ern­ments, merg­ers, sup­ply chain and tech­nol­o­gy. Suc­cess in such a fast-chang­ing world comes only to agile organ­i­sa­tions.

An agile busi­ness has a clear over­all vision, which endures through the con­stant changes. It empow­ers staff, con­stant­ly exper­i­ments, tol­er­ates errors and reg­u­lar­ly re-organ­is­es itself. It achieves its objec­tives through infor­mal self-organ­is­ing project teams that work close­ly with sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers.

“It is in times of adver­si­ty that some of the great­est inno­va­tions have appeared,” says Stephen Archer, a direc­tor at Spring Part­ner­ships, a busi­ness con­sul­tan­cy. “In today’s straight­ened times there is a healthy pres­sure to dif­fer­en­ti­ate, become more com­pet­i­tive and estab­lish more intrin­sic val­ue in the organ­i­sa­tion. This does not come from exhor­ta­tions by the chief exec­u­tive, but by estab­lish­ing a cul­ture of free­dom to think and inno­vate.”

The key to suc­cess is no longer telling peo­ple what to do, but encour­ag­ing them to spot new oppor­tu­ni­ties and unfore­seen changes and then imple­ment their own suc­cess­ful solu­tions. This requires an entre­pre­neur­ial atti­tude in staff, which is often referred to as “intre­pre­neur­ship”.

The organisation’s over­all vision and focus on the cus­tomer are the glue to hold every­thing togeth­er and pre­vents chaos. Man­age­ment helps by step­ping back, but encour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing.

“I often say ‘we can do any­thing– we just haven’t yet worked out how’, and that atti­tude has rubbed off on the team,” says Clive Birnie, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Sev­ern Delta, a man­u­fac­tur­er. “The keys are in giv­ing peo­ple space, trust and a safe­ty net to be cre­ative. Give them pow­er, but also the reas­sur­ance that if their idea isn’t suc­cess­ful they won’t be blamed.”

Cre­at­ing an intre­pre­neur­ial cul­ture must begin at the recruit­ment stage. Ash­ley Ward, a direc­tor at Euro­pean Lead­ers, a recruit­ment, con­sult­ing and coach­ing com­pa­ny, says that entre­pre­neur­ship can be recog­nised when can­di­dates get fired up about doing some­thing, not sim­ply want­i­ng to be some­one.

Key to suc­cess is encour­ag­ing [staff] to spot oppor­tu­ni­ties

Many tra­di­tion­al struc­tures and process­es need to be changed. Matt Cros­by, head of busi­ness solu­tions at man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy Hay Group, says that knowl­edge must be man­aged dif­fer­ent­ly; cor­po­rate plan­ning recast; new process­es installed to dri­ve staged invest­ment in tak­ing ideas to fruition; and a new tal­ent man­age­ment pro­ce­dure, from recruit­ment to match­ing tal­ent to where key deci­sions are made. “Inno­va­tion doesn’t come from an excep­tion­al leader wav­ing a mag­ic wand,” he says.

Where­as tra­di­tion­al organ­i­saions have a sug­ges­tion scheme that rewards staff, an agile com­pa­ny encour­ages intre­pre­neur­ship by let­ting them imple­ment their ideas them­selves. At glob­al ser­vices com­pa­ny Ricoh, ideas from indi­vid­u­als go to the board, which agrees a bud­get; the employ­ee then man­ages his or her sug­ges­tion from start to fin­ish, form­ing a cross-func­tion­al team to deliv­er it with­in the wider com­pa­ny frame­work.

“We devel­op tai­lored train­ing schemes to help staff recog­nise inter­nal oppor­tu­ni­ties,” says Rebekah Wal­lis, the company’s human resources direc­tor. “It pro­vides a plat­form for them to fur­ther devel­op their entre­pre­neur­ial skills and helps with staff reten­tion.”

Pro­fes­sor Vlat­ka Hlupic of West­min­ster Busi­ness School says that self­or­gan­i­sa­tion results in “com­mu­ni­ties of pas­sion”, often using social media. They allow peo­ple to pur­sue projects, ini­tia­tives or top­ics that they are very knowl­edge­able and pas­sion­ate about.

The down­side is that if the over­all vision isn’t clear enough, peo­ple could go off at a tan­gent. Pro­fes­sor Hlupic warns that too many peo­ple could pur­sue too many inter­est­ing things that have noth­ing to do with the strat­e­gy of the com­pa­ny or what its cus­tomers want. “They may be very inno­v­a­tive,” she says, “but pur­sue things that may not result in any com­mer­cial ben­e­fit.”

Anoth­er prob­lem is if key intre­pre­neurs who are hard to replace want to flex their new­found entre­pre­neur­ial flair by set­ting up their own com­pa­ny, pos­si­bly even in com­pe­ti­tion. Peter Cochrane, a futur­ol­o­gist, says the employ­er should encour­age them, take a stake­hold­ing and even give them their first order. “It stops them becom­ing a com­peti­tor and makes them an evan­ge­list for the com­pa­ny,” he says.

In today’s tough mar­ket­place, organ­i­sa­tions can only get an edge through inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative staff who can find new ways to work with cus­tomers. Devel­op­ing an entre­pre­neur­ial cul­ture is vital not just for prof­itabil­i­ty — but  sur­vival.

CASE STUDY

Grow the employee, grow the company

As a ser­vice organ­i­sa­tion, it is essen­tial that Accen­ture helps its staff to max­i­mize their abil­i­ty to sat­is­fy its clients. One of its tools is a series of for­mal and infor­mal men­tor­ing pro­grammes to sup­port them in all aspects of their lives.

Every employ­ee is assigned a career coun­sel­lor. “They help to shape and grow the employ­ee, nav­i­gate their career, decide the next career move and find a path to suc­cess,” says Suzy Levy, the company’s human cap­i­tal and diver­si­ty lead for UK and Ire­land.

New employ­ees are encour­aged to select their own peer ‘bud­dy’ to explain the cul­ture, the unwrit­ten rules and the way things work. It helps them to get a sol­id start. Employ­ees are expect­ed to select sev­er­al appro­pri­ate men­tors, to deal with dif­fer­ent issues as they arise.

There is also reverse men­tor­ing, where mem­bers of minor­i­ty groups share with man­agers the issues they face, to help ensure an inclu­sive work­ing envi­ron­ment. “Line man­agers coach peo­ple so that they are con­fi­dent and capa­ble in their role,” says Ms Levy. “But staff can raise oth­er issues with men­tors. Men­tor­ing is a lit­tle like dat­ing, you need to have a chem­istry between indi­vid­u­als, based on shared pas­sions, so there is a spark.”

Men­tor­ing extends beyond the work­ing life. In one exam­ple, an employ­ee suf­fered long spells of ill health. Their men­tor helped them to look at the issues caus­ing it and two years lat­er the employ­ee com­plet­ed an Iron­man triathlon.

Ms Levy is per­son­al­ly men­tor­ing more than ten employ­ees. She says that men­tors get plea­sure from see­ing peo­ple blos­som and grow. It also gives the men­tor the abil­i­ty to see the organ­i­sa­tion, and the world, from a dif­fer­ent view­point.

“The flow of ideas to sup­port our clients is fun­da­men­tal to our suc­cess,” she con­cludes. “There is as much, or more, to be gained from peo­ple coach­ing, sup­port­ing and men­tor­ing each oth­er than from any method­ol­o­gy.”

Modern businesses are disrupted by rapid changes in customer needs, fashions, social trends, economics, governments, mergers, supply chain and technology. Success in such a fast-changing world comes only to agile organisations.

CASE STUDY

Grow the employee, grow the company