MPowerment Matters

Mpowerment Matters

June 2006

Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. Some are technicians and
engineers and some are visionary thinkers. The key qualities of
entrepreneurs are the vision and creativity to recognize opportunities
where others may not, the understanding and appreciation of the risk
involved in the opportunities, the independence to act on their own and
the strong and resilient character needed to overcome obstacles and
keep pushing to achieve the objective.. These people do not all have
the same characteristics to the same degree. But they all have, to
some extent, decided to take control of their future and become selfemployed,
usually, but not necessarily by creating their own unique
business, product or service. In most ways they do not fit a
stereotype, but they all have a fire in their belly and a passion for what
they are doing. They are always competing with themselves, always
wanting to improve their own performance. They rarely believe that
they have achieved their full potential.
Words that have been commonly used to describe entrepreneurs
include creative, imaginative, inspired, inventive, independent,
enthusiastic, passionate, visionary, driven, competitive, innovative,
risk-taking and obsessive. People tend to point to individuals such as
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs when they think of entrepreneurs. And, of
course, they are wildly successful examples. But, for every example
like them, there are thousands who toil in relative obscurity.
One can be entrepreneurial without being a full-blown entrepreneur. Many of us have the traits necessary to achieve
some degree of entrepreneurial success. Thomas Harris, in his book Instinct: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial DNA To
Achieve Your Business Goals, identifies five broad aspects of personality that are inheritable. They have the acronym
OCEAN, which refers to:

Openness to experience

Conscientiousness

Extroversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism (how well you react to adversity and the stresses of life)
Harris believes that the degree to which an individual can access these traits and accentuate them can be the key to
how entrepreneurial that individual will be.
I tend to see each entrepreneurial trait being a continuum, with each individual somewhere along the path. Looking at
the multiple traits set forth above in this way, it is easy to see how a variety of entrepreneurial types can arise.
Through coaching and professional development, these particular areas can be assessed and honed, and individuals
and groups can heighten their entrepreneurial instincts, thus building a different level of innovation within an
organization.
In 1985 Gifford Pinchot introduced the word “intrapraneurs” in reference to individuals working within an organization
but exhibiting many of the traits of entrepreneurs. He has described them as the visionaries who act and as the drivers
of specific innovations within an organization. After twenty years, it seems clearer than ever before that companies
need to have intrapreneurial managers to keep up with the pace of change in the external environment. Pinchot’s
identification of this group allows companies to begin to feel comfortable with their employees being entrepreneurial.
Instead of fearing that they will use their instincts for their personal benefit, leaving the company to take their ideas
into a business of their own making, leaders can look for individuals with intrapreneurial traits to help keep the company moving forward.
Pinchot identifies intrapraneneurs as having a bit more grounding than inventors, who may be thinking five to ten
years into the future about a new technology and how it can be used to produce certain desired benefits. He finds
them achieving that vision but also willingly returning to the present to take on the more earthly tasks of turning the
idea into a prototype that can become a marketplace success. They know they have to line up their corporate allies
within the organization, find the funding, schedule technical and production time, talk to sales and marketing, finance
and engineering. They have to juggle implementation plans. In fact, Pinchot believes that intrapreneurs may have
more obstacles to overcome than entrepreneurs. They have to be able to effectively navigate through the corporate
culture, the leadership and organizational processes and the basic bureaucratic red tape at the same time that they are
pursuing opportunities. Of course once doing that, they may have corporate resources behind them, thus avoiding the
hunt for financing which plagues many entrepreneurs.
In his new book, Lead Like an Entrepreneur, Neal Thornberry explores in depth how entrepreneurial leaders (his
version of intrapreneurs) within organizations are the perfect antidotes to the organizational stagnation which occurs in
the absence of innovation. He feels that they embody the risk taking, bureaucracy busting, opportunity focus and
passion for making money that most organizations wish they could find in all of their managers.
Much has been made about transformational leadership over the years, but Thornberry prefers entrepreneurial
leadership. While both must be passionate, visionary and single-minded, entrepreneurial leaders focus on
opportunities rather than on the organization. Instead of trying to change attitudes they are trying to find like-minded
people. And instead of a focus on change, they are focusing on building and creating.
The bottom line of this discussion is that entrepreneurship and innovation are critical success factors in most
businesses. Those individuals that started companies with an entrepreneurial spirit, need to, at the very least,
maintain it and inculcate it throughout their organization. If the company has grown and stagnated, innovation needs
to be injected and spread through its veins. Leaders who were not the founders need to take a hard look at their
corporations and determine the level of innovation that exists. They need to become entrepreneurial leaders who can
push the desire to build and create into the far corners of the organization. For these leaders it means identifying new
business opportunities that may have significant potential. They need to oversee the shaping of these opportunities
into commercial realities. And they need to support those within the company who are shepherding these projects
through the bureaucracy.
Pushing an innovation agenda in an organization in which the culture has not supported it for a long time, or ever, will
take time and effort. But with the world changing so quickly around us, a failure to innovate will lead to unpleasant
results. Innovation and entrepreneurship are important in virtually every setting. The delivery of services from
insurance agencies, real estate agents, law firms and even doctors will undergo significant change in the years to
come. Don’t ask me how just yet, but trust that there are hundreds of innovators pondering better ways to do things.
And beyond that, there are most certainly innovators working on new possibilities for employee motivation and
retention. The younger generations have different needs and interests than prior generations and until employers
begin addressing them, we may see a constantly transient workforce, even among professionals such as doctors,
lawyers and accountants.
Organizations need to take a hard look at where they are, and compare that to where they would like to be. That gap
between the two, is where the innovators should be at work. And perhaps more importantly, businesses and nonprofits
should look hard at where their constituents, clients and customers would like to be compared to where they
are. That gap is probably even larger.
No organization should have the luxury of feeling that they are exempt from the need to innovate. Innovation,
entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship-whatever you want to call it-you have to have it.