A couple of months back during my visit to Mumbai, I observed that one of the most charming things visitors to the Imperial Towers will see is a sign at the entrance which, rather than the customary 'Residents' and 'Non-residents', reads 'Belongers' and 'Non belongers'.
I've come to find the term 'Belonger' amazingly powerful. When a nation embraces its own as 'belonging here', as opposed to just living there, it breeds a wholly different form of loyalty. It reminds us that this is where we belong, and so, our efforts are not just on our behalf, but also to benefit to the community.
This set my mind to wondering how such little, seemingly semantic details apply to the business world: what if companies had belongers rather than employees? Does what we call each other make a difference in other contexts?
Over the years I've been called a lot of things, many of which are not fit to repeat here! The handle I get most often these days is 'entrepreneur'. I remember having to look the word up in the dictionary when I read an article about a 'budding entrepreneur'. At the time it sounded pretty cool- 'a person who initiates and organizes new commercial enterprise, usually involving considerably risk', according to my dictionary.
These days all kind of people claim the title 'entrepreneur'. On the other hand, a title that hasn't received nearly the amount of attention it deserves is entrepreneur's little brother, 'intrapreneur': an employee who is given freedom and financial support to create new products, services and systems, who does not have to follow the company's usual routines or protocols'.
While it's true that every company needs an entrepreneur to get it under way, healthy, innovative growth requires a smattering of intrapreneurs who drive new projects and explore new and unexpected directions for business development.
One example that springs to my mind was at Sanghvi Ispat Industries, about 3 years ago. One of our iron cutting machine broke out, the estimated time to replace was about 10 days, but our new young manager, volunteered to fix it. We set him loose, and the within a span of 3 days he fixed it with an 'outside the box' creativity. How to unleash the power of intrapreneurs like him? The key is to enable them to pursue their vision.
But people don't always think of leaders within a company - the managers, the executive and the CEO as people who enable others. As I learned back, 'The CEO of a major corporation might only make a couple of decisions a year, but those decisions can affect the lives of million'. What a terrible way to run a company!
So since this seems to be true throughout the business world, clearly it's time for a major shake-up in the nomenclature of business. What if CEO stood for 'chief enabling officer'? What if CEO's primary role were to nurture a breed of intrapreneurs who would grow into tomorrow's entrepreneurs?
Perhaps the greatest thing about this form of enabled intrapreneurship is that often everyone becomes so immersed in what they're doing that they feel like they own their companies. They don't feel like employees working for someone else, they feel much more like... well, I think the only word to describe it is 'belongers'.
I've come to find the term 'Belonger' amazingly powerful. When a nation embraces its own as 'belonging here', as opposed to just living there, it breeds a wholly different form of loyalty. It reminds us that this is where we belong, and so, our efforts are not just on our behalf, but also to benefit to the community.
This set my mind to wondering how such little, seemingly semantic details apply to the business world: what if companies had belongers rather than employees? Does what we call each other make a difference in other contexts?
Over the years I've been called a lot of things, many of which are not fit to repeat here! The handle I get most often these days is 'entrepreneur'. I remember having to look the word up in the dictionary when I read an article about a 'budding entrepreneur'. At the time it sounded pretty cool- 'a person who initiates and organizes new commercial enterprise, usually involving considerably risk', according to my dictionary.
These days all kind of people claim the title 'entrepreneur'. On the other hand, a title that hasn't received nearly the amount of attention it deserves is entrepreneur's little brother, 'intrapreneur': an employee who is given freedom and financial support to create new products, services and systems, who does not have to follow the company's usual routines or protocols'.
While it's true that every company needs an entrepreneur to get it under way, healthy, innovative growth requires a smattering of intrapreneurs who drive new projects and explore new and unexpected directions for business development.
One example that springs to my mind was at Sanghvi Ispat Industries, about 3 years ago. One of our iron cutting machine broke out, the estimated time to replace was about 10 days, but our new young manager, volunteered to fix it. We set him loose, and the within a span of 3 days he fixed it with an 'outside the box' creativity. How to unleash the power of intrapreneurs like him? The key is to enable them to pursue their vision.
But people don't always think of leaders within a company - the managers, the executive and the CEO as people who enable others. As I learned back, 'The CEO of a major corporation might only make a couple of decisions a year, but those decisions can affect the lives of million'. What a terrible way to run a company!
So since this seems to be true throughout the business world, clearly it's time for a major shake-up in the nomenclature of business. What if CEO stood for 'chief enabling officer'? What if CEO's primary role were to nurture a breed of intrapreneurs who would grow into tomorrow's entrepreneurs?
Perhaps the greatest thing about this form of enabled intrapreneurship is that often everyone becomes so immersed in what they're doing that they feel like they own their companies. They don't feel like employees working for someone else, they feel much more like... well, I think the only word to describe it is 'belongers'.
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