Tag Archive for: Intrapreneurial

Do You Have an Intrapreneurial Mindset?

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intrapreneurThere is no lack of entrepreneurial spirit among women. Women began 49% of new businesses in the U.S. in 2021 (up from 28% in 2019). Women entrepreneurs grew by 48% year-over-year, outpacing men in the entrepreneurial space by 22%. But how are women tracking in intrapreneurship?

According to Wikipedia, intrapreneurship “is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization. Intrapreneurship is known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.”

Psychology Today says that “teaching employees to become mindful intrapreneurs is the way to future-proof an organization.”

Intrapreneurial Assignments

According to Investopedia, intrapreneurship happens when an employee is “tasked” with the initiative of developing an innovative idea or project inside an organization – and given the freedom and autonomy to explore it. Although unlike entrepreneurs, an intrapreneur has access to the resources of an established company and doesn’t face the same level of outsized risks or outsized rewards. And yet, the intrapreneur does put skin in the game.

In one way or another, the intrapreneur is leading the charge on developing something that hasn’t been done in the organization before – whether a new section, a new department, a new product – or perhaps even a new approach or new team. Intrapreneurship has an internal start-up feel. Also, the Post-It Note, Gmail and Facebook like button are all arguably products of intrapreneurial thinking.

Just as formal sponsorship would change visibility and increase equitability in opportunity for women in the leadership pipeline, Forbes has argued that intrapreneurship is one way to fast track women to high-profile and high-potential initiatives, build leadership profiles and ultimately boost female executive numbers.

But also, in the same way that entrepreneurial spirit implies an intrinsic fire, an intrapreneurial spirit does not wait around to be assigned a task. Nor should you wait for permission, if you resonate with an intrapreneurial mindset.

An Intrapreneurial Mindset

Senior leaders have told us about the value of holding an intrapreneurial attitude – which we’ve counted among top tips for elevating your leadership mindset.

Linda Descano, Executive Vice President at Red Havas, told us: “So as I think of being an ‘intrapreneurial executive,’ I bring that same sense of acting like an owner to the organization I work for. I’m going to be constantly thinking about ways of improving the business. I act like I own it, as if it’s my investment. It’s working with that same sense of responsibility and drive to make it grow.”

Indhira Arrington, Global CDEIO at Ares Management, asked: “Outside of your day job responsibilities, what are you doing to contribute to the greater good of the organization and to make yourself an impact player? Anybody can get work done. People want to promote impact players.”

With creative passion and risk-tolerance akin to entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs focus on evolving the business from within. They see opportunities that are not obvious to others. They are willing to take risks, expansive in their thinking and often dynamic in their network. They keep an eye towards opportunities. They understand the internal cultural context and external business context.

Intrapreneurs are also ideas-driven and intrinsically motivated to break down barriers and collaborate with others to make new things happen at scalable levels. That often involves going outside of departmental silos and means impacting your surroundings in a way that goes above and beyond your job description. It requires stakeholder management and ability to manage upwards, as well as project management.

It also means being organizationally savvy and knowing how to sell and pre-sell your ideas. It requires a high level of accountability, resilience and willingness to see failure as a valuable part of the journey.

As written by Tendayi Wiki in Forbes, intrapreneurs need to have a particular mindset because they are operating within larger organizations. They need to focus on creating tangible value for the organization or clients, not just on the ‘theater of innovation.’ They focus on building relationships to garner support and enthusiasm and focus on getting others behind the clear value proposition of their ideas. They also have an ‘ecosystem mindset’ that focuses on identifying repeatable processes that will apply for future projects and build environments for ideas to emerge.

The Organizational Context of Intrapreneurship

According to Samantha Paxson, CMO of CO-OP Financial Services, “What makes intrapreneurs so successful is their empathy toward colleagues’ challenges and their ability to apply critical creativity to generate new ideas.”

Paxson argues that intrapreneurship draws upon innately feminine leadership qualities of being receptive to how to better serve colleagues, clients or customers from a leadership stance. She points out that research has indicated that women score higher than men in 3/4 of the important leadership competencies that support intrapreneurshi – including taking initiative, motivating and developing others, championing change, collaboration and teamwork, problem-solving and driving results.

Though according to Women Unlimited, Inc, intrapreneurship requires two sides – both the intrapreneurial mindset and an environment that is ready to support it (and from that individual).

Organizational characteristics conducive to supporting intrapreneurism include:

  • Regularly soliciting new ideas and input from employees at all levels
  • Ideas incentive funds
  • Fostering inter-departmental collaboration
  • Monitoring customer opinions relevant to products and services
  • Creating an environment where employees are free to speak up
  • Setting aside an in-house venture capital fund
  • Rewarding innovative ideas monetarily
  • Holding training and immersions to encourage and spark employee creativity
  • Encourage fun, creativity and innovation in the environment

How many women of color have left the corporate workplace for entrepreneurialism because they did not find an environment which was prepared to fully include their intrapreneurial mindset? An important part of encouraging an intrapreneurial mindset is that individuals are validated and rewarded for what they bring forward.

And sometimes, as Claudia Vazquez, Founder of elevink told us, it requires refusing to let go of the vision, and waiting for new opportunities and new angles, or even new contexts, to drive ahead.

Cultivating Creativity For an Intrapreneurial Mindset

While there are many components to an intrapreneurial mindset, and not everyone wants to take up that role, it’s possible to build up the qualities that support it.

Some playful advice for improving the muscle of your creative intelligence to support your ability to cultivate an intrapreneurial mindset includes:

  • Physical agility: Move your body and make changes in your physical environment when you feel creatively stuck.
  • Emotional agility: Become self-aware of your emotions, as the ability to name and regulate your emotions is tied to creative performance.
  • Mental agility: Embrace the symbiotic relationship in creativity between generating ideas and being able to apply creative thinking to those ideas.
  • Curiosity: A passionate level of curiosity is often required to catalyze the desire to create, so follow the thread of curiosity and nurture it.
  • Self-belief: Valuing your unique perspective and contribution is important to allowing self-belief to build momentum behind your ideas.
  • Intuition: Trusting and validating your intuition and gut instinct – when you know without knowing how you know – is critical in seeing new possibilities.
  • Daydreaming: The productive activity of letting your mind wander is correlated with higher intellect and creative ability.

If you hold an intrapreneurial mindset, embrace it as a leadership asset and find a culture in which you can thrive for your ability to cast your vision above and beyond the day job.

By Aimee Hansen

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Linda Descano, CFA®: Executive Vice President, Red Havas

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Linda Descano“‘We will be known forever by the tracks we leave,’” quotes Linda Descano, from the Native American proverb she lives by. “To me, that means we need to tread lightly because words and actions have profound consequences.”

“But it also means that through our tracks, we can leave a footprint behind to follow,” she remarks, “so other people not only avoid our pitfalls, but also accelerate because they build on our lessons and experiences.”

In this interview, Descano shares some footprints to follow. 

Allow Intrigue To Guide You

“My career path has been anything but linear,” says Linda Descano, based again in Philadelphia after thirty years away. Instead she has let intrigue and excitement guide her. 

“For me, it’s been about finding opportunities to learn…and finding interesting problems to solve with smart people who want to somehow improve the world or make a difference,” she reflects.

Following that spark of intrigue began in university, when she took a geology class to fulfill her science elective for her English Communications degree, then switched her major.

After pursuing graduate studies in earthquake prediction, she pivoted to work on ways to make K-12 STEM education more hands-on, and then joined a team that was developing a ‘brain’ to drive autonomous underwater vehicles.

Descano then joined an environmental consulting practice which led her to eventually become a member of the environmental affairs team at Citi predecessor Salomon Inc. in 1994. She leveraged her understanding of environmental and social issues to join a socially responsible investment program at Citi, which was one of the first—if not the first—on Wall Street.

Descano then leapt to help launch Women & Co. in 2003 within Citi, an award-winning online financial lifestyle resource for women, eventually serving as President and Chief Executive Officer.

In 2012, she became Managing Director and Global Head of Content and Social at Citi. In 2015, Descano pivoted yet again and went from the brand side to the agency side, joining Red Havas as Executive Vice President in 2015.

 “My entire career has been questioning, listening and hearing about challenges—friction in the system, opportunities to grow, trends reshaping customer preferences and needs—and being willing to raise my hand and get involved,” says Descano. “I’m always looking to find a way to learn and grow myself.”

Define Your Own Parameters

Early in her journey, Descano experienced professors and colleagues who judged her potential as less than she knew herself capable of—whether due to her Italian heritage, her Catholic upbringing, her weight, her gender, not having a finance degree or not having an MBA.

Time and again, she resisted having others box her in, cultivating inner resilience while growing in self-awareness and managing her own triggers and sensitivities. 

“It taught me that people will always see you with perceptions and judgments,” she notes. “And it’s up to each of us to decide—will we let others define the sandbox in which we operate, or will we blow it apart and carve our own path?”

She recalls saying to one such colleague, “I might not have an MBA from Harvard, but I do have an MBA from the ‘School of Hard Knocks.’ So between my brute experience and your Ivy League education, we should together be able to create a stellar program.”

“You have to decide who is going to own and set the parameters for your career and make your choices—don’t put them on autopilot,” she advises. “You have to be the navigator of your career. I set out to become a Managing Director, and that’s exactly what I did.”

Be Intrapreneurial In Your Leadership

“Execution is a passion of mine,” says Descano. “I’m always very focused on ‘I understand the strategy, but how do you execute flawlessly and what’s the right organizational structure?’”

No matter what organization she is a part of, Descano assumes the mindset of the “intrapreneurial executive.”

“When you think of an entrepreneur, you think of people with a lot of flexibility and they’re adaptive. They act as owners. They take initiative. They lean in,” says Descano. 

“So as I think of being an ‘intrapreneurial executive,’ I bring that same sense of acting like an owner to the organization I work for. I’m going to be constantly thinking about ways of improving the business,” says Descano. “I act like I own it, as if it’s my investment. It’s working with that same sense of responsibility and drive to make it grow.”

Descano has valued the leaders—both at Citi and Red Havas—that gave her the green lights to create and test and do things differently in order to bring more value to the consumer and community.  

“If you just put your head down, you will lift your head up one day and the world around you will have changed and you have not, so how could you be adding value?” says Descano. “It’s so important to deliver, but I believe you have to keep looking around, looking up, looking down, looking sideways— because the world is changing. You have to evolve and grow and adapt.”

Value the Value of Your Network

With incredible female role models in her family, Descano also internalized the importance of helping others and paying it forward.

Outside of her ‘day job,’ Linda has served on the board of numerous organizations dedicated to advancing women and girls, including Step Up, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., and New York Women in Communications (NYWICI). A past president of NYWICI, she remains an active board member and currently serves as the Treasurer.

“I’ve made it a point throughout my career to spend part of my personal time and money investing in paying it forward with women and girls, mentoring both informally and formally.” says Descano. “Sharing your fortune and facilitating opportunities, that’s how you help people move forward.”

Descano considers running Women & Co.— a business focused on supporting women to be their personal best— for over a decade to be the highlight of her career. 

In today’s knowledge economy, Descano also advises that the network you build by supporting others is your greatest asset. 

“When I’m faced with a challenge and issue, I have a tremendous network of people I can call on to get the benefit of their experience, insights and knowledge,” says Descano. “Part of the power and value that I bring to an organization’s table is my network and relationships.” 

Whether it’s getting a 101 on a new industry for a new business opportunity, connecting a client to several women she trusts in a new field they are entering, or recruiting a speaker, her network has been absolutely invaluable to her.

When you are there for your network, you also create a net for yourself. 

“When you show kindness, when you’re willing to help others, even if just to listen to them,” notes Descano, “then the days you fall, the days you aren’t the best you could be, the days you get displaced by circumstance, you have all these people that are softening your fall and supporting you, almost like a spring back up.”

Remember We Are All Human

Much of Descano’s work today is designing transformational communications for organizations during times of change—which has never been more salient than now. 

One of the big focuses at Red Havas that animates her is person to person (P2P) communications, or bringing the humanity and empathy back to the forefront of communications.

Remembering that we are all human—no matter if you’re talking to employees, customers or a business—is one topic featured in the monthly podcast she has launched as part of a team, Red Sky Fuel for Thought, providing insight into the communications landscape.

When she’s not being an intrapreneur or supporting other women, Descano can be found reading, or listening to True Crime podcasts in her kitchen while making a couple dozen stromboli for her family.

By Aimee Hansen

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