Speaker 1: Good afternoon. A little over 28 years ago, when I had put in my resignation in one of the startup companies that I was working for, the HR manager walked up to me and he said, for your exit interview, you will have to meet with Ratan Tata. I was a very junior person at that point in time. And then I said, why? He said, that's because you're a hypo. And the way he said it was as if I'd caught a disease. So I said, no, I'm normal. He said, no, you're a hypo. And then again, I said, I'm normal. You know, there's nothing wrong with me. He said, no, you are a hypo. You'll have to understand that at that point in time, the word hypo or the term hypo was not familiar to HR people and definitely not to me. So when I asked him, when did you discover that I was a hypo? He said, about three years ago. And why did you not tell me? Because if you had told me, I would have thought otherwise. And he said, that's because, you know, policy and whatever else. And then he started explaining what a hypo was or a high potential individual was. Of course, I did resign and then moved on actually to another Tata company. But that word kind of intrigued me, hypo or high potential. Who are these people? How do they develop? How do you identify them? How did the company identify me? And what do you do with them? More specifically, how do you develop them? And even more specifically, how do you retain them? So what I did was, I kind of studied this over the years. I was in business development and in operations. And subsequently, I moved into strategic HR just a little in the early 2000s, 2003. And I got a formal role in 2005. So I got to understand. Now there are various terms that I use for this. A large number of people call them high potentials or high forms. Michael Gladwell actually calls them outliers or outperformers. And some people call them intraproverts. People who really take on a different charge and get to do things completely differently. So my presentation is or my talk is on intrapresure 4 by 4. Passionate. Stephen Covey says, when you hire people, hire people for passion. Because these people, they don't have to be managed. They don't have to be supervised. In fact, they will get far more work done when you leave them alone. Because their fire comes from within. Oprah Winfrey said, passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from doing what moves you. There is a beautiful Chinese proverb which says, find a job that you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life. A passionate person is one who does not look at work as work. Take the case of Thomas Alva Edison. Towards the end of his life, a press reporter asked him, what has been your biggest achievement? He said, in all my life, I have never worked a day. What was he talking about? He was talking about work as his passion. So that's the first one. The second one is ownership mindset. Ownership mindset is the ability of the person to think and act like an owner when they seize the opportunity across the spectrum in such a manner that they maximize the value that they are creating across the boundaries with a personal identification. When they look at a project, they do not look at it as a company's project. They do not look at it as a client's project. They do not look at it as a team's project. They say, this is my day. This is my project. This is my team. This is my organization. This is my client. This is my customer. So they have that sense of personal identification. And this is what led to the word intrapreneur also being called as internal or corporate entrepreneur. So they run that division. They run that business. They run that project as if it is their own company. Ownership. How do you spot that? Well, look at this scenario. You look at their approach versus their effort. Or you look at their behavior versus the situation. Look at their engagement versus their ability. Or look at their engagement versus their aspiration. Or look at their effort versus approach. Let me look at each one of them in greater detail. This is what I call a master slide. On the x-axis, look at their approach to a situation. It could be on one side, reactive approach, and on the other side, proactive approach. And on the y-axis, look at the amount of effort that they put into that situation. On one side, it could be incremental effort. On another side, it could be quantum effort. Now, clearly, four classes of people emerge in this one diagram itself. Look at this class of people who are reactive in their approach and incremental in their effort. I mean, they are an overhead in an organization. Can you imagine people who are doing work only when they are told to do it? And they are putting in only as much effort as their conscience permits them? I use the nice word here, problems on work. But if I were to have a choice, I would call them dead wood. And you know what you do with dead wood. On the other side, you have people who are proactive in their approach, but they are still incremental in their effort. I mean, their process improves. It's okay. Diametrically opposite, you see the people who are reactive in their approach, but quantum in their effort. So when somebody gives a speech, when somebody gives an order, they say, wow, okay, I'm going to get things done. Yes, tomorrow I'm going to go finish all those things. And the day after tomorrow, they come back to normal. So they rise up in their energy level, put a lot of effort and they come down. They are what I call soda water evangelists. They work very well with autocratic leaders, but they are a huge overhead in an organization. Entrepreneurs are people who are on that top right hand column, where they are proactive in their approach, but they are quantum in their approach. They go way beyond the call of duty. They see things way before anybody else sees, because their ability, the proactive ability, sees a danger or an opportunity and they put in enough effort to either overcome the danger or capitalize that opportunity. Look at some of the other situations. Then the next parameter, when you look at the situation versus their behavior, and the situation itself can be classified as ordinary and extraordinary, and the behavior also could be classified as ordinary and extraordinary. There is no prizes for the person who is putting in ordinary effort in an ordinary situation. While some kind of brownie points can be given to a person who is putting in or demonstrating extraordinary behavior under that ordinary situation. A little more brownie points can possibly be given to some people who are, you know, behavior is normal, but they're saying, listen, I'm willing to take on a bigger canvas, but still those people are not willing to really make it happen. You need to look for entrepreneurs who are demonstrating extraordinary behavior. Now I'm talking about extraordinary positive behavior under really trying and tested circumstances or very difficult circumstances, very challenging circumstances, but under that they say, wow, I'm made for this. It's like this gentleman who was surrounded by his enemies from all sides, and the soldiers came and said, general, we want you to know that we are surrounded by our enemies on all sides. He says, good, now I don't have to go after them. After some time, he says, okay, the enemy is surrounded on all sides, and they're trying to cut off our ammunition, they cut off our food supplies, so after a few weeks of fighting, the soldiers come and say, you know, general, we've got no ammunition in our guns. He says, okay, take your guns at daybreak and charge towards the enemy. The soldiers say, what's wrong with you? You know, I mean, we have no bullets in our guns. So they say that once again, we have no bullets in our guns. The general says, okay, at daybreak, take your guns and charge towards the enemy. This happens over three or four times, and finally they got either the general is deaf or he did not get it. So they come very close to him, and they say, general, we want you to know that there are no bullets in the guns. He said, yes, I know, but the enemy doesn't. Take your guns and charge towards the enemy. That is the kind of behavior that an intrapreneur will do. The tougher the situation, the better the outcome. And of course, you'll see that in another parameter, you look at their effort versus their KRA, they do more of more. They do not want to take the same KRA. They do not want to take the same effort. They will increase their effort and increase their key result area or the scope of work. It is like fueling an aircraft while it is on the flight. They are people who get charged with more work, and they will put in more effort when more work is given rather than complaining. The fourth parameter that you would use in identifying them is look at their aspiration versus their ability. Now, obviously, you're not going to give any thoughts for the person who's got low aspiration and high ability, or low ability and high aspiration. An intrapreneur is one who is both high on aspiration as well as high on ability. But there is a filter, and the filter is you look for those engaged people. Because there are a lot of people who are high on aspiration and high on ability, but they are looking for your company as a jumping stone or a stepping stone for you to move into another company. So look for people who are engaged. Having done that, how do you develop these intrapreneurs? There are these four quadrants again. We talked about even in the morning. Courage zone versus the comfort zone, career rotation, performance versus support, and the blue ocean grid. One of the things that we need to do when we design the KRA for our intrapreneurs is design it in such a manner that 60% of their day-to-day work, their key result area or KPP, their key performance parameter, is in the comfort zone, that which they are naturally gifted, naturally talented, naturally experienced in. But about 40% of it should be in the courage zone. As all of us know, leaders are not born in the comfort zone. They are born in the courage zone. This is the stretch target. This is the stretch assignment. So as you do the stretch assignment, and as these intrapreneurs go and do things which they have never done before, first-time experiences, a large number of those courage zone activities will become comfort zone. For you to keep them on the edge, you need to revisit this entire ratio once in every 18 to 36 months. So you are basically giving them the opportunity to reinvent themselves every once in three to five years. And the other parameter that you also need to look at is make sure that they are rotatable on at least two of the three parameters. What are the three parameters? It is the location, it is the function, and it is the domain. The location could be one thing. So you can rotate them from one location to another. You can rotate them from one function to another. You can rotate them from one business or domain to another. In fact, in my earlier company, we formulated the rule that anybody aspiring to be a CXO must fulfill the 2x2x2 matrix. And what is the 2x2x2 matrix? He or she must have handled at least two product or service lines. So two businesses. He or she must have handled at least two of the five functions. Finance, marketing, HR, production, operations, quality. He or she must have had exposure to at least two of the geographies. And that's where you develop these intrapreneurs. The other parameter is the environment that you give to them. That is also on the x-axis and the y-axis. So on the x-axis, you look at low challenge and on the y-axis, you look at high challenge. On the y-axis, you look at low support and on the other end, you look at high support. Clearly, you are not going to get your intrapreneurs to develop in that low challenge environment or low support because that's an architected environment. Even on the other side, if the challenge is high and if you don't give them support, that's a stressful environment. Diametrically opposite is the pampered environment where there is no challenge at all, which is what I call a corporate office posting where everything is fun and jolly, no budget constraints, a lot of support, but you are not going to develop. Intrapreneurs are put to the most challenging situations. The challenge is very high, but the support also has to be high. Support in terms of systems, processes, budgets, resources. And that's where you develop them. Finally, you need to also ensure that these people have a clear parameter where they eliminate their KRAs in certain areas. On the x-axis, you've got your value from low to high and on the y-axis, you've got your cost or effort. This is taken from the book, Blow Machine Strategy. So you need to allow them to eliminate in their head those things that are high in cost or effort for them and then bringing them down to delegating it or letting others do it. You don't have to get them to do it. They need to develop others. So help them to learn to eliminate that which is high in cost or effort but low in value for them. It will be valuable for others. And also reduce that which is high in cost or effort and low in value, but it will be valuable for somebody else. Once they do these two things, they will create headroom for more impact. Allow them to then go into the other part where they will focus on or where they should focus on that which is high in value for the customers, for all the stakeholders, but also high in the impact, high in the effort and they can comfortably do that without burnout, without stress because they've already created headroom in eliminating the overhead. And if you let them work in the area of their strengths, let them work in the area of their core competence, they will be able to, with less effort, create a big impact because you're letting people to play according to their strengths. Having done this, what are the four tips that we need to have or we need to be recognising or cognisant of if we were to retain these people in our organisation? The first and foremost is give them freedom. Give them autonomy. Give them the ability to do what they feel is right. Steve Jobs once said, there is no point in you hiring smart people and telling them what to do. You have to hire smart people so that they can tell you what to do or they can figure out what needs to be done. Autonomy is what needs to be given to them. The second one is you need to give them a coach, a mentor, but somebody who's competent, who comes along as a friend, more as a friend or a buddy than as a boss, but helps them guide along the journey. Who's been there, who's done that. And this is where you get people who are experienced in similar or familiar situations. The third one is you need to give them what I call a sponsor or a dead mother. Somebody who's going to be the sponsor of the project, providing financial resources, providing human resources, providing other help for this particular to go on. In one sense, this particular sponsor or dead mother is an Indian investor or a venture capitalist in the entrepreneurial setup. But this doesn't function from within. And finally, the last one, the environment that you provide for them should be one that celebrates failures. If they fail, just go there and rather than demeaning them, discuss with them what they learned. I used to run a program in my earlier company called Top Gun and the way people applied for that particular program is with their failure resume, not with their success resume. You know how they fail and learn from that. One of the things we need to encourage is help people to learn from failure. J.K. Rowling said it is impossible to live a life without failure until you live so carefully that you do not fail, in which case you have failed by default. Henry Ford was once asked a question, how do you increase the success rate? He said just double the failure rate. So entrepreneurs are people who learn from their failures. And finally, in closing, if you come across an entrepreneur and if you say I can do it, this is what he will say. KKPA's. Ghar ke dikao sala. Thank you.