The Greenhouse Approach: Cultivating Intrapreneurship in Companies and Organizations
192
The Greenhouse Approach: Cultivating Intrapreneurship in Companies and Organizations
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459742857 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dundurn Press |
| Publication date: | 02/05/2019 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Growth Mindsets
HOW CAN YOU and your company develop and foster intrapreneurship?
The first thing that needs to change is what we call the "core mindset." It's necessary to abandon old ways of thinking — the fixed and inflexible mindset — and to encourage instead a growth mindset. The ideas of intrapreneurship and growth mindset complement each other. So, what is a growth mindset?
The concepts of a fixed versus a growth mindset originated in the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and were synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success — an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impacts on nearly every aspect of our lives.
A fixed mindset assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static and that we can't alter them in any meaningful way. A growth mindset, on the other hand, thrives on challenge as opportunities for growth. For instance, it embraces failure as a welcome learning opportunity — a springboard for stretching and enhancing our abilities. If as children we had never risked falling off our bikes, we never would have mastered the skills required, right? Why should business be any different?
Research tells us that employees who have a growth mindset and an overall openness about what they do report feeling far more empowered and committed. Of course, such a mindset cannot flourish in an environment that does not support and reward it. A growth mindset must be part of a company's DNA. Companies, in order to flourish, must provide the necessary organizational support for collaboration and innovation.
And that is where intrapreneurship comes in. As noted above, intrapreneurship and a growth mindset are complementary; in order to build and develop a culture of intrapreneurship, a growth mindset is essential.
Sara Briggs, managing editor of InformED, lists the ways to develop a growth mindset on her website (opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/ develop-a-growth-mindset).
TWENTY-FIVE WAYS TO DEVELOP A GROWTH MINDSET
1. Acknowledge and embrace imperfections. Hiding from your weaknesses means you'll never overcome them.
2. View challenges as opportunities. Having a growth mindset means relishing opportunities for self-improvement. Learn more about how to fail well.
3. Try different learning tactics. There's no one-size-fits-all model for learning. What works for one person may not work for you. Learn about learning strategies.
4. Follow the research on brain plasticity. The brain isn't fixed; the mind shouldn't be either.
5. Replace the word "failing" with the word "learning." When you make a mistake or fall short of a goal, you haven't failed; you've learned.
6. Stop seeking approval. When you prioritize approval over learning, you sacrifice your own potential for growth.
7. Value the process over the end result. Intelligent people enjoy the learning process, and don't mind when it continues beyond an expected time frame.
8. Cultivate a sense of purpose. Dweck's research also showed that students with a growth mindset had a greater sense of purpose. Keep the big picture in mind.
9. Celebrate growth with others. If you truly appreciate growth, you'll want to share your progress with others.
10. Emphasize growth over speed. Learning fast isn't the same as learning well, and learning well sometimes requires allowing time for mistakes.
11. Reward actions, not traits. Tell students when they're doing something smart, not just being smart.
12. Redefine "genius." The myth's been busted; genius requires hard work, not talent alone.
13. Portray criticism as positive. You don't have to use that hackneyed term, "constructive criticism," but you do have to believe in the concept.
14. Disassociate improvement from failure. Stop assuming that "room for improvement" translates into failure.
15. Provide regular opportunities for reflection. Let students reflect on their learning at least once a day.
16. Place effort before talent. Hard work should always be rewarded before inherent skill.
17. Highlight the relationship between learning and "brain training." The brain is like a muscle that needs to be worked out, just like the body.
18. Cultivate grit. Students with that extra bit of determination will be more likely to seek approval from themselves rather than others.
19. Abandon the image. "Naturally smart" sounds just about as believable as "spontaneous generation." You won't achieve the image if you're not ready for the work.
20. Use the word "yet." Dweck says "not yet" has become one of her favourite phrases. Whenever you see students struggling with a task, tell them they haven't mastered it yet.
21. Learn from other people's mistakes. It's not always wise to compare yourself to others, but it is important to realize that humans share the same weaknesses.
22. Make a new goal for every goal accomplished. You'll never be done learning. Just because your midterm exam is over doesn't mean you should stop being interested in a subject. Growth-minded people know how to constantly create new goals to keep themselves stimulated.
23. Take risks in the company of others. Stop trying to save face all the time and just let yourself goof up now and then. It will make it easier to take risks in the future.
24. Think realistically about time and effort. It takes time to learn. Don't expect to master every topic under the sun in one sitting.
25. Take ownership over your attitude. Once you develop a growth mindset, own it. Acknowledge yourself as someone who possesses a growth mentality and be proud to let it guide you throughout your educational career.
A growth mindset requires an openness to rethink and re-examine. As a business leader you know how frustrating it is when a static mindset prevails within a company. Instead of coming to their jobs excited and energized by the opportunities to have meaningful interactions, too many employees walk around with dead eyes and listless attitudes — more like robots than human beings. Yes, we all need to purge the cobwebs; we need to re-examine and re-think. Perhaps the most important requirement, however, is the willingness to change. A culture will not evolve on its own; it has to be made to evolve. How does that happen? If you want a sunny day don't walk around with an open umbrella!
In my extensive study of corporations over many years, I have discovered a common set of ideas and practices that need to be re-thought and changed. Below are the main ones.
RULES, PROCESSES, AND PROCEDURES
What role do rules, processes, and procedures play when trying to drive creative thinking and experimentation? How do they hinder the creative process even before it starts?
DECISION-MAKING
Within every company decisions need to be made every day. Decision-making is perhaps the most misunderstood area of management, and considering how critical it is to sound business operation it is amazing how much we overestimate our own good decision-making skills. Whether it's business or life, we all need a compass; we need a North Star as a reliable means for orienting our behaviour and decision-making. We saw examples of how pushing for a consensus, for instance, can actually distract us from the straight and the true. The goal is not consensus; the goal is your North Star.
CURIOSITY
"The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind," observed the great philosopher and politician Edmund Burke, "is curiosity."
Curiosity is a feature of human intuition we are all born with, but somewhere down the line it is lost. By the time we reach adulthood, it is all but gone, and so very little is carried with us into the workforce. While many companies insist they want and value curiousity, the question really is ... do they? A curious person will challenge the status quo. A curious person will upset the apple cart with potentially risky or embarrassing questions about how and why things are done the way they are. Are you sure you are prepared for that kind — that level — of confrontation? It has been my experience that most company managers and executives aren't. It isn't a mindset they are used to or comfortable with. Ask yourself, is your boardroom more often a bored room?
Remember, innovation rarely arrives ahead of schedule wrapped up with a bow.
FIRST PRINCIPLES
What role do first principles play when we make decisions that will ultimately impact the directions we take?
We addressed briefly in the introduction the problem with assumptions. We need them, but we don't need all of them. Basically, first principles are the fundamentals without which a company cannot survive as the company. Think of it as you might when meeting a friend who seems a bit off. What do we say? "You don't seem yourself today." Business is the same. First principles define who you are as a company and what your vision is. It's the core beliefs from which all other behavior and decision-making evolves. First principles are your North Star. First principles do not change. Assumptions, on the other hand, might be the outdated and outmoded and conventional ways of thinking that prevent your company from thriving. Assumptions can be jettisoned; first principles need to be routinely reinforced.
Once we can open our minds to these new foundational ways of thinking, we are well on our way to unleashing the power of innovation from within. Now, let's begin with rules.
CHAPTER 2Planting the Seeds of Rebellion
There's a rebel lying deep in my soul.
— Clint Eastwood
IN ORDER TO HAVEtrue innovation — to really break through and to disrupt and see things in a radically different light — rules must be broken.
My guess is right now you might be inclined to toss this book defiantly across the room in disbelief. "We need to break rules? What kind of crazy advice is that? It will be chaos!"
Remember what we said about rules. It's basically the same with first principles versus assumptions: we need both, but we need much more of one and much less of the other. What I want to do in this chapter is urge you to rethink the way you and your company do things; I want you to challenge your own assumptions. I want you to be your own rebel; I want you to be your own disruptor.
Of course, if you are like most people your first response will be resistance. A simple fact of human life is that we tend to be okay with the status quo. And we will accommodate the status quo as long as we can. When we were children at school there was always at least one kid who refused to behave. "You're making it difficult for all the other children!" warned the teacher. Here's the thing: for whatever reason that kid saw the world differently. They also saw their own role in the world differently. They didn't care about obeying the rules or complying with an agenda. Isn't that why we call them "rebels"?
Here's a question that underscores everything that we will be discussing, not only in this chapter but throughout The Greeenhouse Approach: When it comes to breaking rules, who wins and who loses? Another perspective on this question might be thinking about the difference between a rebellion and a mutiny. Here's a hint: one can be led and directed, the other can't.
* * *
Salt.
It's a simple commodity known (and readily available) to us all. We sprinkle it on foods to bring out their flavours. Some of us use salt to preserve foods, and many of us try not to eat too much of it.
For most people today, that's where the salt connection ends.
But salt is symbolic to Indians. It is a symbol of freedom and independence.
Salt was once a highly valued substance. Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt rather than gold. (He wasn't worth his salt.) Th e word "salary" comes from the Latin word for "salt."
During the nineteenth century, India was under the British Raj (British Rule), and Indian nationals were severely oppressed. The primary objective of the Raj? To export cheap raw materials from India to England. To do this, the Raj imposed unfair laws on the native Indian population, many of whom were treated cruelly, imprisoned, and died of starvation.
To prevent salt smuggling and to collect customs on tobacco, sugar, and other commodities, the Raj constructed a four-thousand-kilometre wall basically down the centre of the county. Known as the "Inland Customs Line," the wall was three metres high and four metres thick. It was constructed from materials like thorny bushes, stakes, and prickly plum branches and was designed to be impenetrable.
For the enslaved Indians, this wall was a visible and humiliating symbol of the oppression of the British Raj. It stood for ten years, until 1879, when it was decided it posed too great a barrier to travel and trade; maintenance costs, too, proved exorbitantly high.
The removal of the wall, however, failed to address the core problem of the oppression of India's enormous population. Indians were prevented from collecting or selling salt, for instance, a staple in the Indian diet. The Salt Act of 1882 required Indians to buy salt only from the British (and, of course, the commodity was heavily taxed preventing most citizens from being able to afford it).
Okay. What does any of this have to do with business and innovation?
GHANDI: THE REBEL OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE
Mahatma Ghandi was a great man. He was the leader of the independence movement that liberated India from British rule. Most astonishingly, he achieved this through non-violent means, encouraging acts of mass civil disobedience.
One of the most famous examples of these was the Salt March.
In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi made a bold statement that would lead to the liberation of India. His Salt March saw him (and tens of thousands of followers) march 240 kilometres to the ocean. The goal was to simply pick up a handful of salt in defiance of the Salt Act.
Gandhi and sixty thousand others were arrested in this peaceful protest, but Gandhi was a force to be reckoned with. The mass civil disobedience led by Gandhi continued after his imprisonment and it continued until he and the viceroy of India were able to come to an agreement that would see Gandhi travel to London to be given a voice at a conference on the future of India. Gandhi was acknowledged by the British as a force it could neither ignore nor overwhelm. Gandhi's strategy of peaceful resistance changed history and he would become an inspiration for other human rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela.
Their struggles are an incredibly powerful lesson in how commitment to first principles, and thinking differently about the power of the status quo can be liberating. An adversary is never so powerful as to be invincible — especially when the adversary is no further away than our own assumptions or habits. The key is being a creative disruptor. Like Coco Chanel.
CHANEL
Following the death of her mother, twelve-year-old Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was placed in an orphanage. The nuns who raised her taught her to sew, a skill that would benefit the girl later in life.
You may know Gabrielle Chanel better by her nickname, Coco — a woman who dared to be different.
A rebel in the world of fashion, Chanel was the first designer to insist that women's fashions could be comfortable and stylish at the same time. She loosened waistlines, shortened skirts, and encouraged women to do away with corsets. She borrowed inspiration from menswear and introduced the world to the Chanel suit, with its classic well-fitted skirt and collarless jacket. She took the colour black, a colour that had always been reserved for mourning, and brought us the iconic little black dress, the ultimate symbol of chic, and still a staple in every woman's closet.
Coco Chanel was anything but conventional, and she built a formidable career that would allow her to fearlessly break the rules. She expressed her rebellion through her passion for design.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Greenhouse Approach"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Chitra Anand.
Excerpted by permission of Dundurn Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction Re-imagining Corporations Through Intrapreneurship 11
Part 1 Changing the Status Quo
1 Growth Mindsets 25
2 Planting the Seeds of Rebellion 31
3 Minority Rules 44
4 Curiosity … Did It Really Kill the Cat? 54
5 First Principles Thinking 61
Part 2 The Model
6 The Seven Guiding Principles 71
7 Relevance 78
8 Creativity 85
9 Speed 89
10 Clarity 93
11 Accountability 98
12 Experimentation 102
13 Execution 109
Part 3 Applying the Model
14 The Model - Making the Greenhouse Come Alive 119
15 Applied Learning 139
16 From Silos to Tribes 156
17 Nurturing Your Teams 163
18 Final Thoughts 167
Acknowledgements 171
References 172
Index 177