How To Standout and Accelerate Your Career: What is an INtrepreneur
- Israel
- Jan 27, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 18, 2024
Listen to the Article 🔗 (7 min)
Act like an entrepreneur! Being an entrepreneur this day in age is like saying you prefer your martini's "shaken, not stirred." It's the ultimate status symbol in any career conversation, regardless of your level of success really. You can be in the basement of a project or just about to IPO. An entrepreneur at any level is very respectable.
Truly, (not the beverage, Brad) it takes a very unique and diverse set of skills and experience to really make a living as an entrepreneur. I mean, how are you supposed to know how to develop a product, manage manufacturing or provisioning, build a Go-To-Market plan, generate demand, build sales channels, and then get funding and support all while carrying your current responsibilities at your 40-50 hr/week job?!
THE SECRET: Leverage your current work environment and company by choosing to be an "INtrepreneur."
"Uhh, OK. How?" you may be saying. Well as chance would have it, I'm about to tell you!
Your current company has many problems. You know this very well. Actually, chances are you know it better than your entire leadership team, and you know very specifically the problem areas. "I do?" you say. YES! The "lower" down the chain of command you are, the more intimately you are aware of how the work is actually done, what your customers actually think, and what the real problems are. It's just the facts. (whether you're paying attention or not is on you)
Take for example any relationship: who knows you the best? Who knows what your dream job is? Who knows how you like to wake up in the morning? Who knows what your scared of? Who knows what ticks you off?
THOSE CLOSEST TO YOU
Many people might know who your favorite sports team is or what city you live in. But does that mean they really know you? Of course not! You are who you are inside, not where you live or what you do for a living.
Your in-depth knowledge of the end result of what your company does gives you more insight into how things are actually going at your company and what could be improved!
This is your super power! You know the best "Areas of Opportunity" for your company! And now that you know that you know, you can now begin discovering a solution. And once you've created the solution, you can take a fully vetted and proven solution to your leadership (where other people just complain and offer up half-hearted ideas).
I guarantee your leadership is dying to understand the customer and the real problems to the extent that you do. They toil and stew about how to know what the problem areas are so they can attempt to improve things. That's their job! But by nature of being removed from the end work, they lose perspective, clarity, and understanding. You're the key to their success!
You may even already have the solution in your mind right now! But whether you know the solution now or not, you need to begin the INtreprenuerial journey.
Here's a basic 10 step road map of your next steps:
Identify the purpose a process is attempting to solve
Identify the core problem areas
Develop a solution to solve for the area of opportunity
Vet and validate your solution with people across the company who have an interest or involvement of the current and/or future state
Finalize your solution
Run a small pilot of the new solution
Measure the results to capture proven value
Determine the necessary resources required
Develop a deployment/implementation plan
Pitch the value and ROI of your project/program to your leadership!
It really is that simple. The complexity of your solution is the primary variable that will dictate the length, depth, scope, and difficulty of this method.
If you're just getting started with this type of work, I suggest taking on something smaller. This will help you accomplish your goal quicker and will likely be an easier "yes" from your leadership. You could start by documenting your team's current processes, building a quality review process, gathering some new performance data, or implementing a knowledge base.
Summary
Just about all of us desire to stand out and rise to the top of our career field (and maybe some desire to be full-fledged entrepreneurs someday), but until we start taking action on business needs that really matter, we'll continue to remain stuck where we are with only the hope of getting promoted slower than molasses in January (even if we spend years getting that highly over-valued MBA).
There you have it. Now, there are no more excuses to keep you from growing into who you know you can be. The world needs your impact. Time to get to work!
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