It is efficiency everywhere

I have been traveling this month a lot for conferences, training and most importantly demoing Chip Lead’s office tool. It has been a wonderful experience so far. I am writing this blog from the Phoenix airport .

One of the most important aspect of collaborating with somebody is the efficiency you can bring to their table. The problems you can solve for them, the benefits you can provide them, the relief you can bring them, and the contacts you can bring to their table. It is always about them! I have found this attitude to help me a great deal in getting the ideas across and open new avenues and problems to solve. The month I have met some wonderful people, in and outside Qualcomm. These people have brainstormed with me, have criticized my ideas, constructed my mindset, opened my mind towards problems that I was taking for granted and helped me become professionally grow.

There are challenges everywhere if we look carefully. Everyday is an opportunity to solve something new, make the world around us a better place.

As an intrapreneur, it is more important to be aware of the problems your company is trying solve. Talking to people on different sites or teams or mindsets helps a great deal. What you think is the least significant can actually be the most significant problem. Another thing, an intrapreneur has to remember is the motivation to solve something. If your motivation is personal glory, you won’t get far. You will get into emotional battles on insignificant issues. The real reason I want to solve a problem in my company is to relish the challenge, and be a signficant part of the next step ahead. This will win friends and supporters who love the copany as much as you do and who love solving problems as much as you do.  Remember that a selfish person can never be an intrapreneur.

Anyway, my apologies for a long delay in posting. I should be more regular here onwards!!

Conversation with Intrapreneurs: 1. Joseph Wortmann

I got an opportunity to talk to a great guy Joseph Wortmann (check his LinkedIN profile here). Joseph started as a software engineer at Macess and went on to found a company Comframe that started by developing a clinical image viewing system. Comframe has now over 100 employees and partners with organizations like Microsoft and IBM in developing quality imaging software. He also founded Emageon, serves on the board of Iron door company, and runs a management consultant firm. His diverse and successful career is an inspiration to several wannabe intrapreneurs. Joseph is an example of innovating inside a corporation and continuing the successful trend to start entrepreneurial ventures.

The Biggest Thing you learned?
People are the most important. One should truly understand and work with them. Understand their motivations and desires. Intra (or entre)preneurship is a sales job more than technical appeal to their interests.

Which is harder – Intrapreneurship or Entrepreneurship?
Intrapreneurship is sometimes harder than entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur, if people turn you down, it is OK. You can pitch your idea to ten others. You have a greater degree of failure freedom. You are your own master and your ideas fail only because of you. Inside a corporation, people can kill your idea if you are not politically savvy. Inside a corporation, you have to learn persuasion and knack of selling yourself.

Importance of prototyping?
Critical! Prototyping, getting traction and support are very important. Executives don’t make immediate decisions when you present your idea. They will call the people they trust. You’ve to gain the trust of these trustees.

Biggest Advise
Don’t give up. There will be initial resistance, a tribal resistance. First No’s are very common. Find a way to re-approach. Be persistent.

Thanks Joseph for the time and valuable advise. Going back to my previous posts on achieving excellence (manifesto) and prototyping, Joe’s words reemphasize this. An idea without a prototype is not effective. Learn the art of woo (read the book by the same name by Shell and Moussa). This will help you get across a lot of hurdles.

Sirius Black as an Intrapreneur

I was watching “Harry Potter 3″ the other day and it struck me that Sirius Black possessed several qualities similar to what an intrapreneur needs. In the risk of stretching my imagination, I am going to draw analogies.

If Azkaban is the big corporate world, Sirius Black is a cubicle guy confined to his prison. There are several coroporate monsters ranging from bureaucracy, politics, bad boss, lack of recognition, etc that suck up a motivation to innovate. The strength is sapped up slowly and a cubicle guy “adjusts” to the life style and the cubicle based corporate lifestyle becomes a routine. The only thing that saved Black was a belief that he was innocent, which in this case, is a belief that he was not meant to be working in a cubicle all his life. He kept his mind healthy with positive thoughts and hopes of escaping and meeting his godson.

This is very similar to the mindset an intrapreneur needs. When I joined the corporate world, I was a naive fresh-out-of-school person. While doing my PhD, I used to get a lot of work done very fast. The mantra was focus and hard work. But, when I came here it was a different story. I saw better ways to do things and went about screaming my lungs out of how to improve things. Then, a good friend and well-wisher told me to “get used to this lifestyle” or quit.

I could never get used to this lifestyle. I did not want to. I liked to create solutions and I saw that as my biggest opportunity and started working on a software that has now gone on to create new promise of how we can do things better!

As an intrapreneur, it is important to be persistent and believe in yourself. If you know your goal and have the discipline to work towards it, you will get there.

Intrapreneurship manifesto

I finished the first manifesto on Intrapreneurship. This can be found in the resources section. The manifesto contains the rules/suggestions, which will be helpful for an aspiring intrapreneur to zoom to the next level. As Guy Kawasaki calls the process “Reboot of your brain”, this manifesto targets not only rebooting the brain, but also formating it the right way . Check the manifesto out and let me know what you think.

PS: Finally got the slides on slideshare. I had some issues on formating. So, I deleted the presentation completely from slideshare and uploaded a pdf with common fonts. You can see it here.

Please spread the word…

Tag lines: What do they mean?

Stay:

1. Stay under the radar
2. Stay out of politics
3. Stay out of ordinary (or common)
4. Stay out of submission
5. Stay away from bragging your plans
6. Stay on the shoulders of giants
7. Stay away from gossips
8. Stay away from playing the superiority cards. Don’t belittle anyone.

Design (Or Implement):

1. Design a prototype/alpha-beta version
2. Design your prototype to be visually stunning
3. Design for easy usability

Woo:

1. Wooing is making everyone above you believe it is their idea
2. Wooing is taking extra efforts in your demo and design to give an out of the world experience
3. Wooing is not done by mouth, but by actions. So shut your mouth and get to work
4. Wooing happens when you show great loyalty to them and their visions
5. Wooing happens when you step up to implement an idea that seems crazy or even impossible
6. Wooing is delivering on your promise and maintaining credibility
7. Wooing is when you answer “nobody’s fault” for the question – W(h)oo(se) fault?
8. Wooing by making your boss always looks good to his/her bosses

Deploy:

1. Deploy your ideas in the form of prototypes
2. Deploy your prototypes/product in the form of traction
3. Deploy your leadership skills in the form of support
4. Deploy your ideas using credibility

Please spread the word…

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