Performance – intrapreneur

Third Conditioning

Approvals. Yes. Expecting and taking approvals is the third conditioning.

When you are new, it’s natural. Not interested in being the bad apple in the mix, you look up to your seniors and bosses for approvals of your action. Just to be sure. Approvals are required to ensure governance and compliance too. But why do you need an approval, a permission to do your best work?

When approvals and permissions become a way-of-life, the workplace turns mechanical. Life becomes routine. Automation finds its way. People soon find the exit routes more frequented. A great opportunity to challenge. Innovation is knocking the doors.

Innovators find it toxic to be contained in a system governed by rules, regulations and approvals. Operational freedom, permission to try, fail and explore is critical.

It starts with your mind. Ability to think and break barriers for good. Find the constraints of the system early on. Devise your method for small experiments. Show and tell. Results change the system. When not challenged, people believe that system is working well. More approvals will be required in due course.

Don’t get caught in the web of approvals. Permission to try is always there. Just embrace it like an uniform you may wear to work.

Practice leads to excellence

We prize comfort over everything else. Comfort never leads to excellence. It took us so long to get here. Why not rest and enjoy? This mindset will not let the champion to retain his position in the next match. There’s that next player waiting to upset him. Still we see champions like Roger Federer retain their position for so long. How do they do it? Practice better than the last.

Practice in a way it hurts, stretches and grows you. First win is where your practice begins to play. Set the bar to next level, every time you practice. This practice leads to excellence.

Be a #dreamerdoer

Freedom of expression at work

Freedom of expression is a human right. At work, concern about how well an idea can be described and if it will be accepted will inhibit the sharing of ideas. The expression allows the communication of ideas, the development of concepts through constructive interaction and questioning that is free of embarrassment. Ideas often can be challenging to conceive. The expression of those ideas may threaten those individuals who cannot separate idea from the person – leading to rejection of both.

If you are leading a team or business, it is your responsibility to ensure that freedom of expression is maintained well. If you are in a place where you believe the freedom of expression is questionable, you have an opportunity to catalyze a fundamental change. It’s your right. An essential element of success – of your company and yourself.

be a #dreamerdoer

Regulating your flow is critical to achieve more

Going for too much, too fast, in too many dimensions at work can lead to overcommitment. Trying to be at your best since you want to be a high-performer, can put a lot more stress on your system. You might start ignoring several other dimensions of life – health, wealth, family and so on. Regulating your flow of work is critical to stay fit, focus better and achieve more, consistently.

Unregulated flow leads to priority-conflicts, impatience, dissatisfaction with own and others’ work/contribution, negligence, and not-so-healthy-relationships. This triggers a negative spiral that only leads to the bottom too hard to get-up.

When you regulate your flow, you will have the ability to slow-down and gain-pace as required, be more strategic, and happy-helping-hands around. Heroes are recognized and rewarded at war-time. Hero-behaviour is discouraged and ignored during peace-time. In order to regulate, you may have to say NO more often and reflect on the item on the YES list, routinely.

Budding Intrapreneurs have the urge and tendency to do too much, too fast and be busy always. While you pursue this journey, be watchful of what you are becoming through your passion. Regulate your flow and stay a high-performer, building the remarkable craft.

be a #dreamerdoer.

Finding and nurturing the potential

What do you know about a subject before taking it in your course? What do you know about the feel of driving your dream car without getting in one and really driving it? What do you know about the terrain and the taste of firmness on the ground while climbing a mountain, without stepping on one? What do you know about the potential of a person in your team without assigning that task, job or a challenge and letting them perform at their best?

Potential of a person can be seen through their willingness to perform, ability to learn, adaptability to changes, ability to work with ambiguity, ability to provide clarity in the context of complexity, ability to work with the resources available and ability to challenge the status-quo subtly by results than talk.

You will be able to identify high-potential people in the team easily. If you have to put a lot of effort to find it, maybe you are looking at a wrong person or using a wrong lens. Change the frame-of-reference from what they are doing today or what they did yesterday, to how they will be doing the next level task. You will see the best in people. But to nurture that, you need to get this potential show-up in regular work. Treat them the way they will be functioning at the next level. You may be pleasantly surprised with how they perform.

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
~ Johanna Wolfgang von Goethe

People who are willing to perform will always find a way to deliver best results irrespective of their capability and context. You should make yourself assume/accept challenges of doing what you have not done so far, routinely and deliver the best. As an intrapreneur, you will need your potential converted to kinetic act and have the ability to find and make-use-of potential of others too. This makes you resourceful and effective. Your craft becomes remarkable.

be a #dreamerdoer