I took those lessons with me when I moved to the US in 2002, my team was a global one and there were deep divisions in terms of trust and there had been a considerable lack of transparency in the past. Gradually over the course of six months, we opened up the same type of trusting communication, established shared goals, discussed openly bonus targets and the team’s financial targets. The result was a record-setting team who in just over four years repeatedly over-achieved against “impossible” stretch goals and did it ahead of schedule.

On your 1 to 5, I wholeheartedly agree with them all but would qualify point 3:

3. There is little or no malintent in people

Unless trust has broken down and transparency is lost in the fog of mis-communication, at that time I have sadly witnessed malintent breaking out and causing immense problems that required an immediate response and strong principled action.

Regards

Hamish.

I have also been an advocate for large organisations taking on board an in-house LinkedIn Q&A for the purposes of building a knowledge-sharing database and depository of street-smart wisdom and fast opinion gathering. It requires an organisation to trust its people and the people to trust their organisation – opinions need to be capable of being voiced without fear and appreciated and acknowledged with pride. Point-scoring and gamesmanship as bedevils the public LinkedIn would need to be outlawed from the start and self-policing of the self-established rules to be encouraged.

To be honest, I would also think it could become a good way of an organisation building a Advisory Panel – comprising a blend of internal and external technical experts, advocates, consultants and thought leaders who together create an on-line Think Tank that could be consulted and again recognised and rewarded for the value of its contributions. Internally this would lead to a systems based platform for the type of knowledge-sharing that used to take place in terms of master craftsman – journeyman – apprentice communication and learning pathways; the main difference being that today the roles could be reversed when it comes to older employees learning from younger ones about new technologies and social media driven insights. I well remember my Unilever training in which I was able to learn from a whole host of older more experienced managers and technical experts – in time I became one of those experts and there was a silent touch on the shoulder that said it is now your turn to teach and share learning.

What is interesting is that I always find teaching to be a two-way learning process in which it is often difficult to distinguish student from professor when the learning process is at its most effective!

Regards

Hamish.

This was true whether it was teaching my Japanese colleagues to do Marketing (something that I thought I was hopelessly under-prepared for), rebuilding confidence in those same colleagues when their business needed turning round years later or indeed building the second largest and by some measures, the most profitable account in our organisation within just over four years.

Being an internal entrepreneur definitely demands similar skills to an external one, in my view these would be:

1) Networking – knowing who to turn to for support, insight and shared knowledge.
2) Passion – a determination to succeed against the odds (and the internal barriers).
3) Street-smarts – the ability to know as you describe in your blogpost, how far you can push the boundaries and then have to pause.
4) Innovation – not just in the thinking, but also and more importantly in the doing!
5) Inspiration – entrepreneurs (internal or external) have to possess the ability to inspire others to achieve greater things than they ever thought possible; they have to inspire curiosity, they have to inspire belief and they have to inspire action.

The major differences lie in the politics, environment and social cultures – external entrepreneurs play by the big picture rules, internal entrepreneurs have to look at how to evolve, stretch, bend but not break the internal rules!

Good thought-provoker and I was prompted to revisit the blog thanks to your 5,000th vistor milestone on LinkedIn. Look forward to catching up next week.

Regards

Hamish.

Sharing a personal observation, the only time I would say “let’s sleep on it” is INappropriate is those rare occasions when my wife and I disagree about something – our golden rule then is never to go to bed not talking to each other!

Regards

Hamish.

nice article… only, one divergent view. the woman who stays in a bad marriage is a coward. the woman who stays in a bad marriage for her children is a bigger coward.

MA