Page 20 - CSA Speaker Bulletin June 2019 | CSA Celebrity Speakers

CSA SPEAKER BULLETIN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
I’ve lost count of the number of
times I have heard the myth
– that you can’t change an
entrenched corporate culture, or
that big companies can never be
entrepreneurial. Usually, when this
belief comes up, the concept of
the ‘intrapreneur’ comes up with
it. In the 1970s, Gifford Pinchot
coined the word to describe
specific people charged with
behaving like entrepreneurs within
a big organisation. Many leaders I
speak with still believe that being
entrepreneurial is the job of some
especially talented individual or team
within the BB.
It was a valid idea in its time, but
I want to move away from it. It
implies that entrepreneurship is a
specific, arcane speciality. It implies individual behaviours. The Lean
that it’s not possible to shift the
whole culture of an organisation,
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HOW TO
BECOME
The Biggest
Small Company
In The World
that a big company as a whole the behaviour and, over time, you
can never be entrepreneurial, and develop new institutional muscle
that you can never hope to expect memory, also known as a new culture.
entrepreneurialism from every First you start with your small team
employee. I think that’s wrong. and then, slowly, the new ways of
thinking and behaving spread to the
The magic of bringing start-up culture whole organisation.
to a large organisation should be such
that it infiltrates every department, Companies who genuinely value
every role – in short, every nook fostering an entrepreneurial
and cranny of a business. Of course, culture talk about ‘vigilance’ and
the road will not be as smooth as ‘counteracting their own complacency
newly laid asphalt. There are always and default modes’. They fully
barriers, and set ways of doing things recognise that they are not a kitchen
will have become entrenched and table start-up, and they need
must be overcome. But knocking down systems and controls and that these,
these obstacles is possible, especially in a way, can oppose the spirit of
as there is so much latent talent ready entrepreneurialism. But because they
to be tapped in BBs. understand this, they are proactive
It takes a belief that culture is not about balancing the need for
static, that it is the sum total of organisation against the need for
innovation. They think consciously
Start-up author Eric Ries calls culture about how to keep the necessary
‘institutional muscle memory’. Change level of control without becoming