Dr Andrew White

Associate Dean For Executive Education

Saïd Business SchoolUniversity of Oxford

GCF 2012“The Entrepreneurship Imperative”

21-24 January 2012

Intrapreneurship: The Leadership

Challenge

Agenda

1.Intrapreneurship: The Leadership Challenge

2.Discontinuous Change: A Strategic Threat and Opportunity

3.Level 5 Leadership

4.Case study 1: Ajax

5.Case study 2: Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)

6.Summary

1. Leaders in the 21st Century are being challenged on an almost daily basis.

2. They are faced with: • ensuring sustainable performance for companies, countries and

regions through innovative business models, products and services

• addressing political and social change in countries as diverse as the USA and China

• and handing over our resources to the next generation in a better state than we have found them.

3. As much as leaders would desire it, there is less and less certainty in the structures they have relied upon for their historical success.

4. Globalization, economic discontinuities, competitors who come from unexpected places all require a new type of leader that we are only just beginning to be able to recognize.

5. Ambiguity, systemic complexity and a deep impatience with the status quo are at the heart of these challenges.‘Intrapreneurship [can be] defined by referring to emergent behavioral intentions and

behaviors that are related to departures from the customary ways of doing business in existing organizations.’ Antoncic and Hisrich (2003)

Intrapreneurship: The Leadership Challenge

S&P 500 Companies 1957 - 1997

500

74

0

426

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

1957 1997

New Entrants Post 1957

1957 Entrants

Performance of 1957 Entrant Survivors

16%

84%

Outperformed S&P 500

Underperformed S&P500

Discontinuous Change: A Strategic Threat and Opportunity

Level 5 Leadership: Fierce Resolve and Humility

• Out of 1,435 Fortune 500 companies studied, only 11 achieved sustained greatness: gaining stock returns at least three times the market for 15 years after a major transition period.

• Q: What did they have in common?

• A: Each had a Level 5 leader at the helm.

• Level 5 leaders bring together the paradoxical combination of deep personal humility with intense professional will.

Collins , J (2001)

Level 5 Leadership and Corporate Performance

Collins , J (2001)

Level 5 Leaders

‘ Level 5 leaders subjugate their own needs to the

greater ambition of something larger and more lasting than themselves.

For those people, work will always be more than what

they get — the fame, fortune, power, adulation,

and so on. Work will be about what they build, create, and contribute’.

Personal Humilityand

Professional Will

Collins , J (2001)

The Story of Ajax

Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and the Quraish

Level 5 Leadership: Fierce Resolve and Humility

• A leaders ‘shadow’ is the repressed and unacknowledged part of their ego which causes dysfunctional behavior if not acknowledged.

• A leaders ‘shadow’ can make it too difficult to:

• Say ‘I don’t know’

• Move beyond conflict

• See beyond personal and organizational boundaries

• Speak truth that will risk them being unpopular

• See beyond their ‘solutions’ to customers ‘needs’

• Ultimately failing to articulate a vision and strategy that describes what their organization's contribution is to society – why they exist.

• A contribution which must include, and go beyond, a financial return.

• Leaders who have the courage and political skill to challenge and change unsustainable strategies and practices that people are deeply attached to and believe in.

• In summary, those we will willingly and reluctantly follow into the future

• And who have ‘subjugated their ego to something greater than themselves’ through high levels of self awareness.

and finally….

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to

choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Viktor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning) 1946

“You cannot step twice into the same stream. For as you are stepping in, other

waters are ever flowing on to you.”

Heraclitus 535 BC – 475 BC