Stoking Your Intrapreneurial Spirit

How can you make a sideways step within your job yet still move your career ahead? The opportunity, even demand, is intrapreneurship.

Intrapreneurship is entrepreneurship, but within the context of a larger organization. An intrapreneur is “an employee of an established organization with an entrepreneurial mindset,” who thinks more like a start-up owner.

Alyson Krueger writes in Fast Company, “Obviously there have always been go-getters in companies who try to move the needle forward and push the status quo. But never before has there been such a push for employees to take ownership of their own corner of a company.”

Asserted in Entrepreneur, “intrapreneurship is the new entrepreneurship.”

Satisfaction and Engagement Meets Innovation and Leadership

A survey from University of Phoenix School of Business found people who are satisfied in their job are nearly twice as likely to report having the opportunity for intrapreneurship (61%) compared to those who are not satisfied (33%). It’s logical that organizations are being advised to foster entrepreneurial cultures as a way of attracting talent as well as increasing employee engagement.

Murray Newlands writes in Inc., “Intrapreneurs will become the building blocks of a company’s executive teams and leaders. They are the driving force that moves a company forward and they will inevitably rise to the top of the company as they understand the company from all levels. Starting from the bottom, they will see the company as a set of processes in which every process must evolve.”

Intrapreneurs shake up the ladder, which is one way to change the gender status quo. They do not obey traditional career paths, but creates new ones, while changing how things work from the inside-out. There are many articles that advise on the skills to be effective as an intrapreneur. But the first word that comes to mind when we hear entrepreneurial is spirit.

Here are five qualities that seem across the board inherent to stoking your intrapreneurial spirit.

Quality 1: Relentless Curiosity.

Intrapreneurs see the opportunity for something that is not yet there, which takes curiosity, perceptiveness, intuition, and being attuned to seeing trends before others. They also have to be able to question and “challenge current business practices,” not simply fall in line or put their heads-down and get on with it. Intrapreneurs don’t stay in the box. They question the box. Coming up with ideas is a mindset, and it’s value does not hinge on the success or failure of one idea.

According to Claudia Chan, founder of S.H.E. Globl Media, in Fast Company, intrepreneurial employees are asking questions such as,“What do I want to create that is going to fill a white space? What doesn’t exist that needs to exist? There is a hole and they want to fill it. There is a problem, and they want to solve it.”

Quality 2: Risk-Taking Creativity.

Chan writes, “If you’re not uncomfortable or scared, you’re not driving innovation.”

Intrapreneurs bring creativity where it did not exist before, in the form of ideas, processes, and solutions, and they embrace a spirit of uncertainty. As a visionary, you cannot know exactly what you’re doing, because what you’re doing has not been done before. It’s very important to be knowledgeable and leverage your strengths, but also find the right point to make the leap.

Susan Folley of Corporate Entrepreneurs, LLC writes, “This is the great divide between traditional leaders and intrapreneurs – the known and unknown. It is the difference between playing it safe or taking a risk, relying on past experience or experimentation, needing detailed information to decide or leveraging what you know, minimizing risks or maximizing value, asking for what you need or leveraging what you’ve got. They see what is possible. It’s a mindset, a way of operating that is foreign to many of us.”

Quality 3: Daring and Vocal Courage.

Intrapreneurship takes a willingness to step up with your ideas and be vocal, even finding a way to visualize them so they become more accessible to others.

As shared in her book Daring Greatly, researcher Brené Brown asked Kevin Surace what the biggest obstacle to creativity and innovation was, and he replied that it is the fear of even putting your ideas out there due to worries about ridicule or being belittled, yet “innovative ideas often sound crazy and failure and learning are a part of revolution.”

So it’s necessary to stoke your courage, but according to Brown the culture matters. Ask if the culture you’re in is also rewarding the value of creative courage. If you’re a woman of intrapreneurial spirit full of ideas, be in an environment in which you and your ideas will flourish.

Quality 4: Passionate & Adaptable Resilience.

Once you’ve put yourself out there, it’s important not to let your ideas die upon rejection of one articulation, but foster resilience and passion towards getting to the best work, just as a writer may have to find the real story one hundred pages into her first draft.

Rich Maloof writes in Forbes, “find a granular element of the concept that is undeniably of value.” You can always find the new simplified starting point and with iterative progress, your Plan D may be ten times better than Plan A started out.

Quality 5: Contagious Collaboration.

A large part of intrapreneurship is being able to “assemble” the right team around an idea and foster an enthusiastic start-up mentality – all hands-in, less silos and more shared accountability. If intraprenership requires a learn-by-doing approach, you’re going to need a passionate team willing to learn and relearn with you. You must be able to make a personal vision a team vision.

Intrapreneurial women will not be the first up the ladder. Instead, they’ll invent a new platform to stand on, from which the view looks different for everyone.

By Aimee Hansen