London, UK: It’s learning at work week, 16-22 May 2022, an annual event to build learning cultures at work. It aims to put a spotlight on the importance and benefits of continual learning and development. Garry Mansell, author of new business book, Simplify to Succeed, offers his thoughts and advice on the subject.
So, it’s Learning at Work Week and as the week progresses not only do your staff have a responsibility to help themselves, but by your actions as an employer you can both encourage them to learn new skills and you can start to change your culture.
In my role as a non-executive director, I have heard many companies tell me how they want their people to become more creative, to show more initiative and to look for new opportunities in every aspect of the business. It is a laudable aim but one that very often falls short. One thing I do know that works though is for a company to become more entrepreneurial in its culture and behaviour.
Businesses can go stale; they fall into a growth phase which slows because their processes and procedures stifle creativity. It becomes easier to stop new initiatives then start them. The phrase “we have always done it that way” is the most common red light I hear. Simply asking, why? Can trigger some spectacular results. The curse of the familiar is holding many businesses back, and worse still it is holding back the people inside them.
There are many ways to change this, but one of the best I have found is to bring a disruptive influence into your board. If you sit on a board that is full of people like yourself, change it. Your recruitment and career path management processes may well be producing a board which is constructed of people who are alike. This is where the introduction of a non-executive director who is very different to all of you can transform your business. If you are willing to listen and learn.
My advice to you, if you are a board member or business owner of a long-established profitable business is simple. If it is not broken, fix it anyway. Seek out one of the many entrepreneurs who have built and exited their own businesses successfully. Someone who has discovered the methods by which decisions are taken faster, goals are agreed quicker and achieved in the same manner. Allow them to come into your board and tell their story, let them challenge what you do and learn from them. If they have been in corporate life beforehand then all the better, they will empathise with you and understand the pain this kind of transformation will mean to you. But they can also explain the rewards and create a vision with you for how things can be.
Embrace these ideas and start to expose your executive team to them. Encourage your executive team members and the people who report into them to take up many of the entrepreneurial courses that are available on a part time or online study basis. Some of the best business schools in the world now offer these, research them and incorporate them into your culture, and keep listening to the entrepreneur that you have inserted into your board.
In doing all of this you will start to enter the ranks of the companies who produce “intrapreneurs”. Those people who have a great deal of experience and skill but who have been unable due to their own personal circumstances to step outside of your business and take the personal risks needed to start their own business. Take the major risk for them, absorb it and benefit from it.
I am not saying shield these intrapreneurs from the consequences of their actions. They need to share risk with your organisation. But as often happens when a new business starts the business plan is wrong. The new business or initiative doesn’t grow at the speed it was planned to. If these intrapreneurs were outside your business at this stage they would be spending large amounts of time seeking additional funding, simply to keep their business alive. When they are operating inside your business ensure that you take this burden away from them. In doing this I am not suggesting that you simply write a blank cheque, what you should do is be a benevolent investor, who has the experience to know that plans are simply that, plans.
Allow the intrapreneur to concentrate on what they have learned. Help them to pivot and change their approach or business model based on what they have learned in the first stages of their business. But let them lead and do it, do not be tempted to give them “corporate” help, don’t create another business like yours inside yours.
In ensuring the intrapreneurs have some risk to their future they will feel some of the pain that entrepreneurs feel. Exchange the risks they are taking by offering them enhanced rewards. Let them and the team they will build inside your business, share directly in the success of new initiatives with monetary rewards bigger than they would have achieved had they stayed in their comfortable corporate jobs inside your organisation. But make it clear that in the case of failure there is no guarantee that their old jobs will be waiting for them.
The best of them will not only thrive in this new environment, but they will also change the culture of your business. It may be simple things like changing the way corporate reporting is carried out inside your business. It could be that new pay schemes and bonus schemes are translated to other areas of your business. It could be that you do indeed find a business which grows into a major success and adds to its parent.
Treat these intrapreneurs and the initiatives and businesses they create very much like a research project. Ring fence them and nurture them, give them freedom to act. Discover what works together and let the intrapreneurs inside your business gain and learn from the entrepreneurial non-executive directors you have added to your board at the start of this journey, using them as mentors to the intrapreneurs inside your business.
Recognise that these intrapreneurs may come from all levels inside your business. Good ideas are not the sole possessions of senior managers. If a young intrapreneur inside your business doesn’t truly understand finance, or marketing provide them with help from those that do inside your main business. Identify courses that can help them and support them in learning. By doing this you will show everybody inside your business that truly “Anyone can do it”.
Finally, my advice is just do it. I was an intrapreneur who became an entrepreneur after seven years of learning how to be one. Just as I learned, my “benevolent investor” learned many things about stimulating the people inside their own business and promoting entrepreneurial behaviour.
It’s time for the bigger businesses to learn from entrepreneurs!
Simplify To Succeed: Tips, tricks & insights to help you build, scale & sell your business by Garry Mansell, Brown Dog Books, March 2022, available to order now: https://www.garrymansell.com.
About the author
Garry Mansell is the author of ‘Simplify To Succeed’, a new book focused on highlighting tips, tricks and insights to help build, scale and sell a business. After a successful 40+ year business career, Garry now specialises in helping entrepreneurs and business owners – from first-year start-ups to scalable, profitable, rapid growth seven-figure companies – achieve their objectives and meet their full potential. He has built, led and divested businesses and has formally advised many others, some of which failed. Now, as a sought after non-executive director, and a board advisor and investor he continues to help other entrepreneurs succeed.
