Unplanned – Cris Beswick and Perry Timms provoke thoughts, create discussions and get ideas flowing @CIPD11 – ACE Interactive

Unplanned – Cris Beswick and Perry Timms provoke thoughts, create discussions and get ideas flowing @CIPD11 – ACE Interactive

Anyone following Gill Ryder and Sir Terry Leahy has their work cut out for them however we took our place and set our stall out at Timms & Beswick:Unplanned – the first session of 3 in the “fringe” at this year’s ACE Interactive.

We couldn’t have been set up better though as the insight and shout-outs from the keynote session talked about trust, leadership, creativity, the power of people and the “soft stuff”.

Intrapreneurship was our topic – a word that’s kind of made up but increasingly people get it and understand it.  How can we in the world of people and business encourage it, capitalise on it and adopt it ourselves?

Cris started with our model for both where we think intrapreneurship sits – and for those who were sketching it out on their notepads and iPads, here it is...a picture painting a thousand words and all that.

The key conclusion to be drawn here is where we find intrapreneurs we find innovation, we find engagement, high performance and most interestingly of all choice. The choice to be engaged, the choice to perform well and use discretionary effort and the choice to be brave, innovative and stand-out.

We also highlighted 2 key things about this intrapreneurial zone – your Ambassadors are those really engaged, switched on and happening people.  Your Mavericks are still switched on and make things happen but maybe more for personal gain and satisfaction than true corporate and organisational spirit / ethos.  There is more risk with Mavericks, yet with the right leadership and culture, they could become Ambassadors where we  enhance their positives and risk-manage any toxicity. 

Those Passives and Dissenters are trickier – because they are paycheck-cashing; potentially angry people who have made the choice NOT to give anything extra (positively) above their contracted hours etc.  We though, wanted to focus on those intrapreneurs and what we in HR can do with them and what we can do to be intrapreneurs ourselves.  Overall though, it’s the choice we’re interested in firstly.  To understand more about these internal, innovative, ingenious people.

So our second model shows what goes on in our intrapreneurs’ worlds.  So where there’s choice, it leads to engagement which leads to more intrapreneurial potential. Capitalising on that potential means letting the intrapreneur make more and bigger choices; increasing their engagement further – creating a cycle of innovation and energy.

We talked about the choices made and how high performance, engagement and trust is at play where people love what they do; desire is created in customers and partners; and envy is displayed by competitors who cannot figure out how you do what you do so well..!

We had some moments to reflect and then some questions came from the floor like...

“How do you manage the mix of corporate initiatives and intrapreneurial start-ups whilst keeping the whole workforce engaged”?

“How do you turn the desires and aspirations into plans and activities?”

“How do you maintain energy and momentum with the intrapreneurs and the wider workforce – especially at times of change?”

“How do you unfreeze any blockage from the middle manager level who hold a disproportionate impact on engagement considering their size/scope?”

“How do we create the right language to engage people in corporate strategy and intrapreneurial activities so they know how they fit in – especially with middle managers being the translators / conduit to that process?”

“What if the middle managers are not the blockage and it’s more rhetoric from C-level regarding empowerment and enabling?”

“What if middle managers are too hands-on stifling intrapreneurial spirit?”

Overall, we felt that intrapreneurs are helpful in creating a fantastic place to work.  They embody engagement, innovation and deliver an amazing customer experience that makes an organisation thrive and grow.  Our role in HR is to create an environment that promotes people to be “choosing” to be intrapreneurial and step up to the challenges faced.

Cris and Perry will be on again at ACE Interactive on Wednesday 9^th November at 12.00 for a high-noon show down on how businesses can help HR help their business.

Cris and Perry – unplanned and always will be...