The Enclaria podcast series features interviews with change agents. Hear how others break through obstacles while they pass along lessons learned from their organizational change endeavors.
Nine months ago, Jim Ryan, Manager of Strategic Planning at Embarq Corporation, changed roles within the Fortune 500 telecommunications company. Although he kept his job title, his role morphed from implementing strategy – developing strategy, creating measures and scorecards, and rolling out the plan to the organization – to implementing one of the strategic initiatives – creating an entirely new business from scratch within the same organization. From his new vantage point as an intrapreneur, he describes the differences between implementing change within an existing large company and building a new internal venture.
Mary Francone
January 9, 2009 at 12:32 am EDTI really enjoyed listening to Jim and his views on change based on experiences in 2 different roles. I will admit that as a learning leader, what I was hearing were developmental outcomes of each role (e.g., what capabilities an individual develops in a ‘large co’ strategic planning role vs. an intrapreneurship role in that same company) – what may organizations need to consider to prepare leaders to take on change agent roles? Do our leaders have the capabilities — are they positioned — to be successful? The intrapreneur role certainly helps to build capability the literature says we need in leaders today. In Jim’s description, I heard the small company role makes leaders take risk, take ownership of their decisions, be flexible and adaptable — in short, leaders are held accountable for their success and/or failure. There was no missing the engagement coming through when Jim talked about the new venture role, and wondering how an organization could take the spirit of the new venture assignment and infuse more broadly into the corporate roles? How can we each be an intrapreneur in our jobs today?
This was a great podcast; looking forward to more!