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Are Your People Hot?
Today, organizations need entrepreneurial people. In daily work life the internal entrepreneur (intrapreneur) embodies an attitude of personal commitment, understands the big picture, and has a passion for her work. Increasingly, professionals want much more than to just pay the bills and organizations realize that it takes enthusiastic people with a personal vision to maintain a healthy and thriving culture. To launch intrapreneurialism, leadership teams are now wondering how to "turn-on" the passion of their work force. CEOs want and need people to embody a self-directed attitude to bring in new business, and do it because it matters to them. Not surprisingly, professionals may resist this call to action. People either act on their commitments, or act compliantly where rewarded. While most people are committed to keeping their job, few are intrinsically committed to their organization's goals, values, and mission. Usually, their job serves as a means to their real commitments . . . outside the workplace. Meanwhile, top execs make declarations for a new workplace mentality, the front-line professionals still wane under the stress of everyday work, falling back on habitual roles and expectations.
Our Myth of Work
Self-directed, A New Way of Life
How Pathfinders Can Help
Human Resource Results
Many professionals (as high as 70%) state that they give no more than five percent of their heart and soul to the company, doing only what is necessary to get the job done. They are angry, frustrated, cynical, and, if they wait too long, become deadened and resigned to being average employees. Yet in the workplace, very few people talk straight about their work satisfaction and grudgingly go through the motions, producing average quality, and whining for more compensation for any extra effort.
Underlying this dilemma are societal ideals of security and wealth, poor career choices made by 18 year-old high school grads largely influenced by societal and parental values, the college boom to get educated in "trendy" careers, and most predominantly -- a lack of knowing oneself. All this adds up to the American way of career design: career by convenience or default. People often never consider incorporating values and personal meaning into their daily work life. On the positive side, there appears to be 1 in 10 people who love what they do. Good luck to the team captain who's got one person playing from the heart and nine dreaming of being somewhere else!
Being fully alive at work is not part of our vocabulary. People have very few role models to learn from or have never been mentored by someone genuinely committed to and in love with their career. Walking through office cubicle mazes you can see the lack of joy on most faces, "Look how miserable I am, but I'm doing my duty and putting my hours in. Thank God it's Friday." The American work force lives in a Dilbert comic strip.
The myth that "work is drudgery" is rooted deeply in American culture, so very few people question this way of life. Sadly, entry-level college grads are still designing their careers around the idea that work is a "means" to do what they really love on weekends. I have worked with numerous young professionals who have based their long-term career choice on how good the company benefits and pension plan are. I get blank stares when I ask the question, "Are you doing something that really matters to you?"
Are you still wondering why it seems impossible to bring your company work force back to life? As you know, there are two sides to every story. As an HR department or CEO, you are probably in charge of the management practices, leadership styles, and hiring/training processes that may be reinforcing the above mentioned models of thinking, fears, and behavioral habits.
Travelers who live in foreign countries for extended periods say they pick up the language without any formal training. Just by being immersed in the culture, they learn to speak and behave in new ways. Learning how to be self-directed also requires being immersed in a learning situation that calls upon all your resources. Most organizations get poor marks for following through to create real-life circumstances for people to learn new ways of behaving and relating to one another. This happens largely because organizations often attempt to make changes in the form of statements or declarations without any learning to break the old habits. HR departments and CEOs usually announce changes much like cheerleaders shouting through a megaphone, "Everybody please act differently now," not realizing that many people feel like Charlie Brown, unsure of themselves and yearning for acceptance, or Lucy, who is set in her ways and threatened by anything that shakes her view of reality. Maybe that's why so many people admire Snoopy; he embodies self-confidence and always seems to live fully and authentically. If more people were like Snoopy, organizations would be inherently entrepreneurial and career counselors would be building dog houses.
Pathfinders offers an Intrapreneur Program (see Related Topic:Search for Meaning at Work) to give people the tools and "know-how" to move from being compliant (wait until you are told attitude) to being self-directed (living and acting from a personal vision). The Intrapreneur Program is an individual journey that guides people in learning how to make authentic choices and commitments.
The Intrapreneur Program is an adaptation of the Pathfinders Career Path Program with an emphasis on guiding individuals to align their personal career vision with your organization's strategic direction. Individuals graduating from the program are genuinely committed to a personal career vision, desire to see the "big picture" and understand how their role fits within the whole, and are eager to intelligently apply their multi-disciplinary talents toward satisfying customers and anticipating market growth potential.
The key benefits of the Intrapreneur Program that may support your HR department's mission are as follows:
1. Retention. The Intrapreneur Program offers HR departments the ability to retain people who get job offers from competitors at considerably higher salaries. The program offers career vision building, personalized coaching and mentoring, encouragement, and recognition of multi-talents. The cornerstone of the program is self-knowledge, which shifts the attitude of many professionals from seeking higher paying opportunities elsewhere to creating a new role that is personally rewarding within your organization. Prior to going through the program, many participants felt that their best career development strategy was to have their company pay for a graduate degree, leave for a better paying job, and possibly come back at a higher salary.
2. Attraction. The Intrapreneur Program embodies a "continuous learning" principle that is extremely important to HR when attracting new employees. HR departments will naturally attract and retain talented people, and reduce recruiting costs by offering employees an opportunity to adapt and re-direct their career path within the company. Graduates find that developing a personal vision gives them the courage to open up new relationships and career opportunities in other parts of their organization. Having the opportunity to redirect a career path is extremely important to young professionals just starting out. Surveys show that at least 30% of recent college grads feel they made terrible career choices, many of whom feel trapped in their career and are fearful of exposing their dissatisfaction to the HR department.
3. Develop Multi-disciplinary Talent. The Intrapreneur Program guides individuals to trust themselves and apply their multi-disciplinary talents on the job. Employees learn through innovative talent testing that they often have strengths that are not being fully utilized. Most people do not recognize their inborn abilities and diverse talents and often try to excel in job assignments that don't fit them well. The specialized testing and career coaching technology is applied to guide individuals in developing self-confidence to stretch themselves in new directions that tap their natural talents.
The natural ability testing is a unique diagnostic tool developed by the Rockport Institute that measures the participant's inborn abilities in the areas of generalist/specialist, analytical and diagnostic reasoning, rate of idea flow, spatial/non-spatial orientation, the ability to visualize possibilities, visual dexterity, memory ability, manual dexterity, and Myers-Briggs personality profile.
4. Big Picture Thinkers. The Intrapreneur Program develops an individual's ability to see organizational interconnections and the big picture. Employees learn how their choices and actions effect others and the company through subtle and difficult to "see" interrelationships. Many organizational learning gurus call this ability "Systems Thinking." Some people are born with the desire and ability to see the big picture, while most don't really care unless they have a good reason to. People with a career vision that is personally meaningful are naturally more interested in understanding organizational strategies to better align their passions with the company vision.
5. Developing the Self-directed Attitude. One of the biggest benefits of the Intrapreneur Program is a shift in attitude of the participants. Employees learn how to improve their self-confidence toward achieving long-term dreams. Magic happens when a few employees become more entrepreneurial and get rewarded for it in the form of a self-created job assignment. Like kids chasing after the ice cream man, others begin to see the benefits of being self-directed, trust that the organization is serious, and come forward to join the fun.
6. Developing New Business - A New Way.
A natural outcome of the Intrapreneur Program is new business opportunities. Once employees have a personal vision they often eagerly pursue new business ventures that align their new career goals with your organization's vision and strategic direction. When people begin to align their values and dreams with their work, a commitment to excellence is born. It's contagious to watch people who pursue their dreams with enthusiasm-- passion attracts passion. There's nothing like winning new customers through a personal vision to serve a real need.
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