3 Simple Strategies To Get Your Way in a Company When You Are Not The Owner

Keys to becoming a successful intrapreneur

Many people and institutions fostering the creation of new companies see big corporations as monsters that suck your creativity and energy.

However, my experience is that those who work in a large company often have the same interest in innovating and creating new projects and products as an entrepreneur.

They have a passion for doing things better and know that it depends on themselves to some extent.

They are the people who have realized that in reality, as Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman says, they are their own company, and they have to treat their career like their own business.

Their mentality and abilities are those of an entrepreneur, but their scope of action is the companies of others, not their startup.

In other words, they are intrapreneurs.

The intrapreneur acts within a company with the mentality and skills of an entrepreneur.

These people understand those big companies are not the villains of the financial world.

In a world that changes at high speed, they do their best in the circumstances and with the tools, they have at hand.

That is the world in which you have to work and the intrapreneur works.

And to be successful in that unstable and changing labor market, you don´t offer hours of your life; you offer solutions.

Precisely like an entrepreneur.

So an innovation project or initiative for the company has to be offered as a solution.

A solution to the problems perceived within the company.

There are three key elements to make a proposal of this type:

1. Earn the opportunity

It is impossible to offer a solution to overcome any challenging problem if the company’s expectations about our work have not been met before.

First things first.

Opportunities to present ideas or projects are to be won, and you do that by the performance you have in your current tasks.

Focusing on “the new stuff” without doing well “the old stuff” is a recipe for losing credibility and influence.

2. Relate the proposal to a specific objective

It is difficult for your boss or the business owner to be interested and motivated by innovation in itself.

If they are, so much the better, although it will be necessary to see if that interest is genuine or simply a business fad to dress the company’s image a bit.

The most common situation is that people with managerial responsibilities are interested or concerned about goals that seem more prosaic but are the real challenges.

These are things like competitive threats, sales stagnation, low profitability, or low human resources productivity.

It is necessary to relate your proposal to a specific objective that is on the corporate radar at that time — the more urgent, the better.

That guarantees that they pay attention to you and that you are indeed directing efforts towards something that creates value for the company.

3. Earn trust with small successes

It is a repeated theme, but no less valid.

Things are done little by little, especially the trust gained from those who authorize the use of material and human resources.

Ideally, we want to generate a snowball effect, asking for authorization for small projects, which success will give us more credibility and confidence to start others.

You can talk about the “big picture” to some extent. A more or less general vision can be raised to justify the value of innovation. But the first steps must be concrete, low risk, and with clearly defined objectives to needs.

Don’t sell a great project at the beginning.

Everything begins with low-risk limited projects, with specific objectives related to priority needs.

Finally, an essential element to achieve consensus and authorization to develop these first steps (and the steps that follow) is to communicate persuasively.

What is the best way to do it?

In my opinion, it´s employing the tools and strategies that entrepreneurs use to persuade investors, such as pitch decks.

Getting the favor of the company’s board of directors is equivalent to persuading an investor to bet on our project.

So it´s natural that entrepreneurial tools should be adopted in the corporate world.

In short

Working in a company as an employee doesn´t mean that you don´t have your own ideas about improving products, management, or profits.

However, to have the chance to do what you want to do when it´s not your company, you need to act strategically.

Any strategy to get approval for a change or innovation should start by earning the opportunity, relating it to the company’s specific objective, and, finally, achieving a few smaller successes first.

If you manage to do these things, your odds to “get your way” rise high.