Two Unlikely Intrapreneurs: The Pope and the Dalai Lama
I was trying to find intrapreneurs in the most unlikely places and then it hit me. These are 6 reasons that make Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama great entrepreneurs and why we can learn something from both.
1. Set out to innovate their old (OK very ancient) business models. The Dalai Lama set out to bring the old Tibetan teachings to the world and in doing so began an ongoing and relentless travel schedule. In our traditional corporate jargon, we would refer to this as opening new markets or tailoring our offering to a new customer base. The result is unquestionable. The awareness of awareness and consciousness is everywhere and is even finding its way to the business world. For his part, the best business parallel I have found to summarize how Pope Francis has gone about redefining the Catholic Church is repositioning through changing the corporate culture. That's right, this Pope has taken what had become a very closed and seemingly intolerant institution and turned it into a more open, merciful and tolerant movement. This despite a culture of resistance to change unparalleled to anything anyone of us in the business world would ever come close to facing.
2. Decided to create this within their existing organization and not launch a new spiritual startup. Ultimately, we all can decide to launch a new initiative either (1) within our existing organizations or (2) by leaving and launching our own independent startup. This is a major decision because both have their advantages and disadvantages. In both cases, the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis could have decide that they weren't up to facing the large established and institutionalized processes of their respective organizations and simply launched their own brand of spirituality as new spiritual startups. But they didn't. Instead they saw value in doing so from within their institutions. They obviously felt that more could be accomplished that way, largely because they had given thought to #3 below.
3. They needed to leverage their existing organization. In the book, Winning at Intrapreneurship, I refer to Corporate Force Multipliers as one of the major advantages intrapreneurs hold over entrepreneurs. It appears that Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama mastered this concept very well. They knew that they could achieve much more by leveraging existing strengths within their organizations. In business terms, they could leverage an established core product, a strong brand, good reach, and an established client base from which to launch their innovations.
4. Experts at change management. In both cases, these spiritual leaders created a sense of urgency for change and communicated this clearly both inside and outside of their organizations. All change management models will refer to the need to create a sense of urgency to mobilize your troops and galvanize people towards action. If there are change management consultants out there, I suggest you send your troops to study the level of change management that had to occur in the Catholic Church and Tibetan Buddhism to allow these two innovators to succeed. Bottom line is that they could not achieve what they set out by going solo. They had to mobilize enough change agents to create the momentum for real change.
5. Working within existing organizational governance and guiding principles which must be respected. All intrapreneurs will tell you that the main reason why intrapreneurship is so much more difficult than entrepreneurship is the reality that intrapreneurs must operate while respecting established corporate governance and rules of business conduct. Even the most open and highest performing companies that excel at intrapreneurship provide their entrepreneurs with some outlines of the sandbox they are meant to play in. Imagine what that sandbox must look like for Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama.
6. Great sponsors. I refer to the sponsor, the gatekeeper, and the allies needed to survive in chapter 3 of Winning at Intrapreneurship. Our two entrepreneurs got it right by making themselves the key sponsors of their respective innovations. They surely also assigned strong, influential senior leaders who acted as gatekeepers to keep the "unwanted help" out. And, I am certain, that before embarking on their innovative changes, they secured key influential allies that would help them rally the troops.
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