How to encourage and keep innovative people
The trouble with having innovative or entrepreneurial people in your organisation is that they're often the hardest to keep. They get frustrated with all those organisational rules, controls, and restrictions that dampen their creativity. And such frustration often leads to their departure to set up their own businesses. Can you afford to lose such talent? What can you do to foster and keep these internal entrepreneurs - or intrapreneurs as Gifford Pinchot termed them in 'Intrapreneuring' (Harper & Row, NY, 1985)? Try adopting the following strategies...
1. Let them select themselves.
Management cannot appoint an employee to become an intrapreneur, tell him or her to become passionately committed to an idea, and then expect success. Instead, look at every level for intrapreneurs with ideas - not just for ideas alone, because an idea without someone passionate about it becomes sterile. Find these people, then empower them to follow their dream. And if you have a bright idea, but not the time to carry it through, expose potential intrapreneurs to it and see who begins building on it and making it his or her own. In other words, it will pay to go the extra distance if you can locate self-appointed intrapreneurs.
2. Keep them on the job from go to whoa.
Unfortunately, in many large organisations, new ideas are handed from group to group during the course of development. We often forget that intrapreneurs become dedicated to an idea and that this commitment is the primary force behind successful innovation. By all means involve other people, but remember, with each hand over, it is likely that a less dedicated person will become involved and the intrapreneur will drop a notch in enthusiasm. You must find ways of keeping your intrapreneur fired up, and on the job from start to finish.
3. Let them get on with the job.
An intrapreneur's job is to create a vision of a new business reality and to make it happen. The major problem with many large organisations is not that they block the vision but, rather, they block the action. So, are the innovators in your organisation permitted to do the job in their own way, or are they constantly having to stop to explain their actions and ask for permission? Are you willing to allow them to make decisions and take action themselves? As Pinchot writes: ‘To make intrapreneuring work, intrapreneurs need the power to make decisions and take action.’
