The one thing leaders must do to make sure their business is still viable in 10 years (Hint: develop intrapreneurial culture)

According to PWC’s annual Global CEO survey, 45% of CEOs believe their organization won’t be viable in ten years if they stay on their current path. The pressure to keep up, perform, outperform, and reinvent what you do and how you do it is never-ending. In this race to succeed, you want your team to be ready to play their part, and nurturing an intrapreneurial culture helps.

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Intrapreneurs within your organization play an important role in cultivating innovative ideas, products, and projects. Unlike entrepreneurs who start their businesses, your intrapreneurial employees operate within your organization, accessing resources, capability, and time to support endeavors that ultimately benefit the organization. While they often operate with autonomy, it is helpful to discuss and ensure aligned expectations about the operating parameters. For example, the amount of time, resources, and energy they can devote to exploration and experimentation.

You may also discuss and agree on the areas of focus. In setting up this conversation, recognize that innovation comes in all shapes and sizes and is not limited to products and services. It relates to ideas, methods, and processes. Innovation can also be simple or complex. Simple innovation is about making things better, while more radical innovation, or what Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, called disruptive innovation, is about making things people haven’t yet realized they want. This type of innovation disrupts industries and changes how they work. Consequently, progress can come in different ways. Your intrapreneurs might reinvent, tweak around the edges, improve the process, or develop entirely new ideas.

Build your team’s mindset

Like all capabilities, growing and deploying this skill depends on the team member’s mindset.

Do they see themselves as creative and innovative or not? If their mindset is fixed and they tell themselves, “I’m not innovative,” then they’ll miss the opportunity to see what could be different. They won’t take the time to ponder what could be as they’ll be satisfied with what is. You want to encourage your team members to be part of an intrapreneurial culture. As the leader, stimulate thought processes and idea generation by asking your team members to consider the following:

• What frustrates them at work? 

• What are they curious about? 

• Where are the pain points in their everyday work processes? 

• What activities or processes can be done better or differently? 

• What are our competitors doing that we’re not? 

As you support and nurture this capability in your team, you may find that the best ideas come from unlikely sources.

Set the standard

All your efforts will fail if you don’t model supportive behaviours. You want to demonstrate the behaviours you want to see in your team. Your team will watch what you say and do, and what you don’t say and don’t do. Be open to new ideas and willing to challenge assumptions. Be ready to work through setbacks and to find learnings in the disappointment when things don’t go according to plan. You want to encourage a team environment where ideas flow and your team is open to challenging the status quo.

Crucial to all this is building the psychological safety your team needs to feel safe experimenting and trying new things. As part of this process, establish common goals and provide clarity on challenges and expectations for dealing with failure and uncertainty. Praise people for their efforts and remove the stigma that is often attached to failure by focusing on learning and growth. Research by Professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School highlights the essential role that psychological safety plays in innovation and creativity. So, challenge yourself and ensure you are setting the appropriate standard.

Build the platform

Building your intrapreneurial culture will take time, and you therefore want to be deliberate about the time you set aside for this. For example, establish supporting mechanisms and processes for surfacing and evaluating concepts and ideas. This can include dedicated time in team meetings for brainstorming sessions, setting aside resources for innovation hubs and labs, and building an online platform or portal where your team members can share what they are working on and collaborate with each other. You want to have mechanisms for people to share what they are working on to avoid duplication and wasted resources.

In today’s constantly changing working world, finding ways to improve, innovate and progress can’t be left to chance and that means you want your team to focus on the present with an eye to the future.