How you can unlock the entrepreneurial spirit within your business

Some of the key questions to consider:

• Is this something you want to occur broadly or within predefined boundaries?
• Do you want all people to be entrepreneurial or is it a dedicated few that have the greatest ability to execute well?
• Are specific roles structured to allow for idea creation and risk taking?
• Do you adequately assess capabilities to determine who are your natural entrepreneurs coming through the leadership pipeline?
• How do you reward for value created through innovation and risk taking?

3. Identify talent

If intrapreneurship truly is something you think would add value to your organisation, you need to define the capabilities required in your business. This will ensure you are focusing your efforts to build this capability with the people who are most likely to deliver success.

Maximus looks for eight core capabilities that show the propensity to be an intrapreneur:

• Strategic or big picture thinking
• Strong risk-taking attitude
• Strong drive, energy and initiative
• The ability to synthesise information and elicit the key themes
• Self-belief and confidence
• Sound judgment and aptitude
• Results orientation
• A participative leadership style

4. Fast-track ability

Development is key to making the most of your talent. The development approach needs to align to the style of person you are working with. People that truly fit the profile of an intrapreneur are typically bright, ambitious and impatient. They are constantly seeking stimulation, and looking for new ways of being better, faster and stronger.

These capabilities need to be harnessed and, at the same time, you need to be building core business capabilities, organisational awareness and the fundamental financial skills necessary to speak the business language.

Think about things like:

• Fast-paced development approaches;
• Highly challenging development experiences that have them working through very difficult scenarios or having to work through vast amounts of information across gruelling schedules;
• Including secondments in their development pathway to provide breadth and business awareness; and
• Ensuring there is a degree of robust business learning to create confidence around the critical business and financial skills they need.

This does not have to be an MBA or academic program, it just needs to ensure they understand strategy, marketing, financial and core business operation. In my view, the best approach uses a mix of coaching, mentoring, event based learning, on-the-job experiential work, secondments and commitment to promotion

5. Streamline process

Robust processes are key to underpinning and crystallising the value of entrepreneurial ideas. There must be the appropriate systems, processes and support mechanisms in place to recognise, execute and implement new initiatives as “business-as-usual”.

Consider the processes being put in place to develop this type of thinking and ensure there are methods to embed the skills and approaches the organisation has developed. This will keep the new behaviours alive in the business.

Vanessa Gavan is the founder and managing director of Maximus, a niche performance consultancy and leadership development group.