Should You Become an Intrapreneur?

Could you make your job better by becoming an intrapreneur? Intrapreneurship means to think and work like entrepreneur, even though you are still a part of a large organization.

For example, you might have an idea of how to improve a product, and suggest those changes to your boss. Or, you might look for ways to make a specific service more profitable for your company. Maybe you discover a new opportunity to market a product or a service. You might find ways to communicate better within your team, and with that, speed up the workflow. Or you might go the extra mile to increase customer satisfaction. In other words: whatever your role within the organization, you actively drive innovation and keep looking for opportunities to improve your company.

Good employers realize how valuable intrapreneurs are to their organization, and a lot of research is being done in the attempt to understand how different leadership styles and company cultures can encourage intrapreneurship among employees.

Now, we all know that not every employer encourages innovation. Maybe the company you work for does not foster intrapreneurs at all. Nonetheless, the good news is that being an intrapreneur also benefits you, as an employee. Namely, it seems to start a positive cycle of growth for yourself that gives you more personal resources, which in turn gets you more engaged and even more motivated to make a difference at your workplace.

So how can you do it?

Five tips on how you can become an intrapreneur and thereby increase your work satisfaction:

1. Think like a boss or owner. Which improvements would add to the value of the organization as a whole, rather than just make your own life better?
2. Find ways to make improvements yourself. Even if you think big, it’s often best to start with small changes that you can take on yourself. Eventually, when you need help from others to accomplish bigger things, they can see that you’ve already put in your work, and they’ll trust you to match their effort with yours.
3. Find allies. Search through the organization for people who are passionate about accomplishing something and team up with them. Look for ways to make their job easier and better.
4. Take risks. Don’t be afraid to experiment, and recognize that it is often necessary to explore many different paths in order to produce innovative breakthroughs. Some of those paths will fail, but recognize this as part of the process.
5. Stop making excuses. Your boss might not support of all your new ideas, or you might be limited in your efforts by your workload or your environment. Nonetheless, within your realistic limits, keep searching actively for opportunities to make a difference wherever you can.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR