Rebel Intrapreneur is a podcast about a new category of high performing employee. Rebel intrapreneurs further the mission of an organization while simultaneous challenging the system from within. Founders and entrepreneurs are thirsty to find people who believe in their mission as much as they do, and pursue that mission relentlessly. Rebel Intrapreneur is hosted by Bill Cushard, who has reported directly to founder/CEOs four times in his career, which makes him an ideal guide on your intrapreneurial journey.
Johnny Page 2X CEO, “I’m the definition of intrapreneur”
Tuesday, August 27, 2024 • Duration 54:43
Rebel intrapreneurs can make a huge impact in any function or any role. There are no constraints, other than one’s creativity and passion for making a difference.
One rebel intrapreneur path is to CEO.
Johnny Page, CEO of SaaS Academy is a self-described intrapreneur who pursued and became CEO two different times in his career.
“I am the definition of an intrapreneur.”
We talked to Johnny about how he became CEO.
And how he did it twice.
Johnny has been thinking a lot about his journey and designed a set of stages to describe how he did it. I’d like to think that by listening to this conversation, you can learn from what Johnny did to pursue his intrapreneur journey, and design your own path.
A short summary of Johnny Page’s Intrapreneurial Journey:
Stage 1 - Mastering Customer Empathy
* Deep Understanding of the Customer
* Grasping the Problem Landscape
* Client Success Expert
* In the Trenches
Stage 2 - Operationalizing Success through a Team
* Team Building
* Process Design
* Team Leadership
* Scaling Excellence
Stage 3 - Amplifying Your Authority & Influence in the Market
We have covered the topic of how a rebel intrepreneur can become a CEO in several episodes. So if you’d like to listen to a companion episodes to this conversation with Johnny, you can dive deeper here:
096 Erin Andrea Craske Why you shouldn’t be a rebel intrapreneur
Friday, August 2, 2024 • Duration 46:10
The one question we have not explored on this podcast, for obvious reasons, is whether one should be a rebel intrapreneur in the first place? Maybe we shouldn’t. Erin Andrea Craske makes the case that pursuing a rebel intrapreneurial career is a recipe for stress and disillusionment.
In one part of our conversation, Erin talks about three types of people at work. Those who:
* Blend in.
* Do their best, even though they don’t really accept or believe what is going on in the organization. Those people eventually burn out.
* Disagree and quit.
None of these are rebel intrapreneurs.
So, does this mean we should not pursue intrapreneurship? That is what we discuss.
087 Colby Bock Customer: “I want to cancel, but I can’t.”
Tuesday, January 9, 2024 • Duration 56:57
Rebel Intrapreneurs use the Strategyzer Business Model Canvas FigJam template to turn possibilities into plans. Learn about the business model canvas FigJam template here and Try FigJam for free: https://psxid.figma.com/d8auy7
Colby Bock, director of customer success program delivery at ESG, takes customer feedback seriously. He tells a story about how he’d brag to customers that he reads every survey response. All of them. One customer decided to test Colby and wrote in the survey comments, “Hey Colby. If you’re reading this, tell me what the weather is like in Colorado.”
When Colby read this, he got a colleague to go outside with him and take a picture with the mountains in the background and emailed it to the customer.
Colby goes on to say that this customer was so impressed with this action, that he [the customer] told that story at every user conference for the next 3 years.
When I say, Colby takes customer surveys seriously, I mean it.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Figma. Two important tools of the Rebel Intrapreneur are the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. Figma has templates for both, so you can design your innovation projects fast. I used the value proposition canvas template to design the listener profile and value map for this show.
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086 Topsy Kola-Oyeneyin became general manager of Nigeria’s oldest bank at age 28
Tuesday, January 2, 2024 • Duration 53:06
Rebel Intrapreneurs use the Strategyzer Business Model Canvas FigJam template to turn possibilities into plans. Learn about the business model canvas FigJam template here and Try FigJam for free: https://psxid.figma.com/d8auy7
I’ll let you in on a little secret. One way I find guests for Rebel Intrapreneur is by searching on Amazon for books that are scheduled to be published in the next 30-60-90 days. I figure most authors want to promote their book at launch time and are very willing to get on a podcast to do so.
When I found Topsy Kola-Oyeneyin’s book, Unleash: The Blueprint for a Life that attracts Uncommon Opportunities, it wasn’t just the book that caught my eye, but the phrase from the book description, “You are not too young. At the age of twenty-eight, I became a General Manager in Nigeria’s oldest Bank — a role typically occupied by people in their fifties.”
The weight of that sentence would stop a team of oxen in its tracks.
It stopped me in mine.
General Manager?
Nigeria’s oldest bank?
Age 28?
How did she do that?
This episode is about that question, how did she do that?
Spoiler alert.
The answer to that question is largely in her book.
Topsy Kola-Oyeneyin is a self-described intrapreneur and a partner at McKinsey & Company where she is the inaugural co-lead of the payments practice for Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
085 Howard Head: When the floor needed sweeping, I swept it
Friday, December 22, 2023 • Duration 16:57
Rebel Intrapreneurs use the Strategyzer Business Model Canvas FigJam template to turn possibilities into plans. Learn about the business model canvas FigJam template here and Try FigJam for free: https://psxid.figma.com/d8auy7
In episode 77, I go on a little rant about how being tactical gets a bad rap. Tactical work is often devalued in favor of this so-called, high value strategic thinking. Of course strategy is critical, but it’s only 5% of the work. The other 95% is executing the tactical actions necessary to make the strategy happen.
From the book section, Pursuing the Pleasures of Mundane Work:
[Intrapreneurs] don’t have standards about what sorts of work are beneath them. They do the mundane work that is part of every new project. As entrepreneur Howard Head of Head Ski Company described the start up situation, “When the floor needed sweeping, I swept it. When the sales force needs a rousing speech, I gave it. I did whatever needed to be done.”
To only a slightly lesser degree, that is the lot of the intrapreneur.
Instead of thinking up ways to make their [intrapreneurs] services to the company into profit centers, and then wishing it could happen, intrapreneurs print brochures and solicit new customers.
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084 Katrin Zimmermann on innovation and the future intelligent organization
Tuesday, December 19, 2023 • Duration 52:51
Rebel Intrapreneurs use the Strategyzer Business Model Canvas FigJam template to turn possibilities into plans. Learn about the business model canvas FigJam template here and Try FigJam for free: https://psxid.figma.com/d8auy7
Katrin Zimmerman, Managing Director of TLGG USA, isn’t just an innovation expert that advises clients on digital transformation and innovation. She was an operator who co-founded and led the Lufthansa Innovation Hub, which by the way was named the best digital lab by Capital Magazine in 2017 and 2018.
Who better to talk to us rebel intrapreneurs about how we can lead innovation efforts in our organizations?
We talked about:
* Her experience co-founding and leading the Lufthansa Innovation Hub
* How she leverages her experience helping clients build innovation functions
* Innovation risk tolerances, time horizons, return expectations, and
* The future of the intelligent organization
* How to build an innovation team
* An under-appreciated skills all rebel intrapreneurs should develop
Today’s episode is brought to you by Figma. Two important tools of the Rebel Intrapreneur are the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. Figma has templates for both, so you can design your innovation projects fast. I used the value proposition canvas template to design the listener profile and value map for this show.
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083 The CEO who screens for giving a sh*t
Friday, December 15, 2023 • Duration 14:31
Rebel Intrapreneurs use the Strategyzer Business Model Canvas FigJam template to turn possibilities into plans. Learn about the business model canvas FigJam template here and Try FigJam for free: https://psxid.figma.com/d8auy7
I did an episode (Ep 36) about giving a damn about one’s work, in which I reacted to a Pascal Finette newsletter article called Give a Damn in his The Heretic newsletter, which I like. This article resonated with me because giving a damn is what rebel intrapreneurs do.
You know this. Rebel intrapreneurs want to further the missions of the organizations we serve. Yes, we also want to challenge/push/improve the system from within (the rebel part), but we do that in service of the mission.
Giving a damn.
So, rebel intrapreneurs, it is our responsibility to give a damn.
We chose to give a damn. With actions. And words. Both. Not faking it. Actually giving a damn.
So that’s our job as rebel intrapreneurs.
What about the other side of the coin? Entrepreneurs, founders, executives, hiring managers, etc. What’s their job? Their job is to hire people who give a s**t.
There is a yin yang relationship going on here.
Intrapreneurs who give a damn and entrepreneurs who hire people who give a s**t.
Hiring people who give a s**t is not my phrase. I just learned about it from Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of Scale.ai. He wrote a newsletter article back in November 2020 called “Hire people who give a s**t. A simple formula for success.“
Alexandr makes two main points:
First:
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082 Steve Cross Why aren’t partners part of your GTM strategy?
Tuesday, December 12, 2023 • Duration 52:17
Rebel Intrapreneurs use the Strategyzer Business Model Canvas FigJam template to turn possibilities into plans. Learn about the business model canvas FigJam template here and Try FigJam for free: https://psxid.figma.com/d8auy7
Atlassian is an exceptionally successful enterprise software company, currently valued at $50 billion. When you look into why Atlassian has been so successful, one thing you will find is scores of articles that talk about how Atlassian had no sales team even well after its IPO.
While this is technically true, Atlassian did have a gigantic sales force all over the world in the form of resellers, services, and technology partners. Also known as, channel partners. Steve Cross was one of the first partner managers at Atlassian, who managed a large territory of partners for Atlassian. He documents his experience at Atlassian and his entire career in channel sales in his new book called “Managing SaaS Partnerships.”
We talk to Steve about his career in channel management and why it’s so important to company growth.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Figma. Two important tools of the Rebel Intrapreneur are the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. Figma has templates for both, so you can design your innovation projects fast. I used the value proposition canvas template to design the listener profile and value map for this show.
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081 Sorry BambooHR - Rebel intrapreneurs do not accept The Great Gloom
Friday, December 8, 2023 • Duration 46:28
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Jason Lemkin posted about BambooHR's survey, saying employee happiness is at a three-year low. BambooHR even called it, “The Great Gloom.” The Great Gloom?Thanks for the pep talk, sunshine. Is it really that bad, or just a tiny dip in a bigger upward trend? And seriously, what even is employee happiness, and does it really matter for a company's performance? I mean, people don't quit their jobs the minute they're unhappy, right? On the other hand, layoffs, stress, and pressure from higher-ups can certainly lead to anxiety and all that.
So, I dug a bit deeper. Checked out a few reports—BambooHR, Gallup, and the Conference Board. Turns out, they all tell slightly different stories about 2023. A mixed bag.
Now, here's the real question for rebel intrapreneurs: What can we do with this info?
I ask that question because I don’t accept The Great Gloom. I know that Rebel Intrapreneurs have enough agency in our spheres of influence that we can make a difference.
Cracking the Employee Engagement Code with Agency
First off, Quantum Workplace developed a cool model with six key drivers of employee engagement.
These are:
* The leaders of their organization are committed to making it a great place to work.
* Trust in the leaders of the organization to set the right course.
* The belief that the organization will be successful in the future.
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080 Nic Bryson Effective leadership depends on better conversations
Tuesday, December 5, 2023 • Duration 50:15
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I have always prioritized 1:1s with my direct reports; sometimes declining and canceling meetings with my bosses in favor of meetings with my team. In some work cultures, that was not always a good move on my part. But I told myself, early on in my people management career, that I would not be the kind of manager who, at the last minute, over and over, canceled or rescheduled meetings with people on my team.
I was not going to be THAT manager.
And I wasn’t.
I say that to say this.
Nic Bryson gets it. Being a people manager is a vital role and the 1:1 meeting is a vital tool of the people manager.
I know Nic knows this because he founded a company to help managers have better 1:1 meetings.
I approve.As Nic says, “Effective leadership depends on better communications.”
Nic Bryson was employee #13 at Wrike.com, building and leading every customer-facing team across sales & CX over 9 years which lead to the $800 million acquisition by Vista Equity. Nic also led various CX functions at Workfront and was acting CCO during the $1.5 billion acquisition by Adobe. Nic has most recently launched Orgnized.com, in beta, as a new tool to help leaders better manage their 1-on-1 meetings with their team members.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Figma. Two important tools of the Rebel Intrapreneur are the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. Figma has templates for both, so you can design your innovation projects fast. I used the value proposition canvas template to design the listener profile and value map for this show. Try Figma for free.
This tendency to prefer hands-on work gets the job done and helps intrapreneurs stay quite literally in touch with all aspects of their intraprise.
When an entrepreneur starts their venture they do everything because they have to. As their venture grows, they must hire and delegate, but their tendency is still to “sweep the floor.”
Most traditional managers and individual contributors stick to their job description with the attitude, “That’s not my job.”
But Intrapreneurs are floor sweepers, though to a “lesser degree” than entrepreneurs. Intrapreneurs roll up their sleeves and do the work.
Traditional managers and individual contributors consider sweeping the floor low value work and won’t do it.
Low value work?
If no one sweeps the floor or takes out the trash, after a few days, employees don’t want to come to work and customers no longer want to come into the store. Even if I am exaggerating, the point is still true.
And you think sweeping the floor is low value work?
Sweeping the floor is a metaphor for work that needs doing.
I personally hate it (a pet peeve of mine) when people express the attitude that something isn’t their job.
My attitude is, “I’ll do it.”
Rebel intrapreneurs don’t judge levels of work. We do whatever work is necessary to further the mission.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Figma. Two important tools of the Rebel Intrapreneur are the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. Figma has templates for both, so you can design your innovation projects fast. I used the value proposition canvas template to design the listener profile and value map for this show. Try Figma for free.
“Over time interviewing, I’ve found that I mainly screen for one key thing: giving a s**t. To be more specific, there’s actually two things to screen for:
* they give a s**t about Scale, and
* they give a s**t about their work in general.
The first is critical, and will only become more important as time goes on. There is no future if we hire people who do not identify with our mission, our product, and our problem. We will become an undifferentiated crowd of uninspired people who will not have a shot at creating a generational company. While it is not guaranteed that someone who gives s**t will do great work, it is guaranteed that they will not do good work if they do not give a s**t.”
Second:
The second (giving a s**t about work in general) is equally important. It’s possible to fake fervor in the course of an interview and say the right things to convince us of enthusiasm for Scale, but the proof is in the pudding. If someone is applying to Scale and has never been deeply obsessed about something before, then it’s a bad bet to think Scale will be the first. I have a particular line of questioning around this…
He has a list of interview questions for figuring out whether people give a s**t about their work in general, which I won’t list here. If you want those questions, please go subscribe to Alexandr’s newsletter.
The point I want to make is that there is a way that entrepreneurs can find and hire rebel intrapreneurs by screening for people who give a s**t.
Links in the show:
My episode 36 about Pascale Finette newsletter (The Heretic) about giving a damn
Today’s episode is brought to you by Figma. Two important tools of the Rebel Intrapreneur are the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. Figma has templates for both, so you can design your innovation projects fast. I used the value proposition canvas template to design the listener profile and value map for this show. Try Figma for free.
* Understanding of how I fit into the organization’s future plans.
* The leaders of the organization value people as their most important resource.
* The organization makes investments to make employees more successful.
And they can be boiled down into two categories: "I trust leadership" and "Leadership cares about me." Nice and simple.
Let’s look at each and how Rebel Intrapreneurs can use them to maximize employee engagement.
My belief in leadership
Three of the drivers of employee engagement are about whether, and to what degree, employees believe in leadership’s ability to “steer the ship” successfully. In the context of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people want to know they have a place to live and pay their bills and have a base level of safety and security. If leaders understand and respect these needs, then leaders also know that part of addressing those needs is to persuade people to believe that the organization will be successful.
Knowing this, let’s look at three of the key drivers of employee engagement together:
* The leaders of their organization are committed to making it a great place to work.
* Trust in the leaders of the organization to set the right course.
* Belief that the organization will be successful in the future.
Notice how these drivers are about employee expectations for how the leadership team should act. People want to believe in the mission and the ability of leadership to make progress towards that mission. Pay attention rebel Intrapreneurs, this is on us. We must go beyond the superficial employee engagement tropes, and be conscious of how we instill confidence in our people that we know what we are doing, even when we don’t have all the answers.
OK, so how?
Quantum Workplace did some research on best practices for improving employee engagement that leadership teams should put into practice. These are:
* Inspire committed and aligned leaders
* Prioritize regular communications with employees
Let’s talk about each
First: Inspire committed and aligned leaders
It all starts with leadership. Of course that means the leadership / Exec team. But we rebel intrapreneurs can lead by example too. When you want to implement or communicate anything throughout your organization, we have to involve other leaders. We cannot skip layers of people. Going through managers is how we scale anything in our organizations. You must prioritize communications with managers by communicating with them first.
If you want to inspire committed and aligned leaders, you must show your managers respect and say to them, “You are important to this organization and we value your participation, which is why we are telling you first.” You want to give managers the opportunity to seek clarity about “why” this message or decision or program or initiative is happening. Managers must understand “why” so they can communicate most effectively with their teams. Give managers the opportunity to ask why, and to ask follow up questions, until they are “committed and aligned.”
The next thing to do with managers is to seek their input and hear them out about challenges and possible changes to the message, decision, or program. You might make changes with their input. If you don’t make changes, you can reiterate the “why,” which helps managers understand the reasoning so that if they don’t agree with the decision, they know why the decision was made and they have the tools to communicate with their teams.
When you do this, managers will have what they need to carry out cascading messages to their teams.
Prioritizing and involving managers is how you scale messages, decisions, and programs throughout your organization.
Even though I use the term manager, rebel intrapreneurs can apply this to any leader on the team. High performing individual contributors and other influential people. Include them first. Get them onboard. Make them feel included and heard. Give them a chance to question things. So they can process the information and get on board.
If you go from decision to announcing, you skip this vital step and risk your announcement falling flat, being ignored, or even downright sabotaged.
So, inspire committed and aligned leaders.
The next one is:
Prioritize regular communications with employees
Once you have inspired committed and aligned leaders by prioritizing your managers, you must still ensure there is a culture of consistent and ongoing communications with employees. Quantum Workplace suggests many ideas for how to do this, but the overall point is to use all communications channels at your disposal and do so frequently.
Although you should communicate with managers first and empower them to cascade communications to their teams, your communications job has just begun. Employees should see the c-suite communicate frequently across the entire organization, not to replace or override what the managers are communicating, but to support what the managers are communicating.
Your leadership team should continuously share information that shows progress, results, and status of decisions and programs that are priorities in the company. If your employees want to feel confident that you are steering the ship in the right direction, you must share progress.
Share.
Share.
Share.
Employees are watching, and they are looking for your ability to lead a successful company. If you want engaged employees, you must help people believe the company is making progress towards the company mission.
My belief they care about me
Let’s look at the second category: the leadership team cares about me. Engaged employees not only need to believe the company is going in the right direction, but that the company (leadership in particular) actually cares about them.
Look at these three drivers:
* Understanding of how I fit into the organization’s future plans.
* The leaders of the organization value people as their most important resource.
* The organization makes investments to make employees more successful.
Let’s talk about some ideas for how to ensure our people that we actually care about them.
Encourage and support people on making progress and link it back to organization's future plans
People want to feel a sense of belonging and to know that the work they do is valued and makes a contribution. Exceptional leaders (that’s you rebel intrapreneurs) help people believe how their work matters. So, it’s not enough to set a clear vision for the company (or your team) and ask people to “get on board.” Leadership teams need to acknowledge when people are “getting on board.” The more visible these acknowledgements are, the better. We should catch people doing something positive and acknowledge it.
Every rebel intrapreneur should have a daily practice of writing ten meaningful comments on people’s posts in Slack or Workplace or Teams or in comments in Jira, Notion, Clickup, etc. A meaningful comment means, one must read the post, and possibly some of the other comments, and write a comment that acknowledges the behavior and reinforces the contribution it makes.
People will notice this. “OMG The CTO commented on my post. Wow. I’m going to do something else worth posting about.” People will be inspired that the CTO took the time to acknowledge their work.
Try it.
Ten meaningful comments a day.
Talk about the investments you are making
Your company has a tuition reimbursement, a leadership development program, a profit sharing plan, generous benefits, flexible work scheduling, and other meaningful perks. You are investing in your employees. Heavily. Do you know whether employees use these benefits and to what extent? Do you know whether employees value these benefits? Or want something else? Are you communicating with your teams about the benefits people are not using?
You should.
This goes for time and tools and other resources. “We bought this new software” or “we did that integration so that ……” OR “He hired someone” OR “we removed that unnecessary business work……..”
All of these things are to invest in people so they can make a difference. Rebel Intrapreneurs need to talk more about that.
These investments go beyond “talk” about caring for employees. It is one way an organization can “show” they care.
Actions speak louder than words.
Let’s wrap this up and summarize what employees want. Rebel intrapreneurs should understand what people want so we can contribute and do something to maximize employee engagement.
What employees want
There are two main takeaways from the Quantum Workplace research:
* Engaged employees believe in the direction of the organization and that the leadership team is capable of leading the organization into that future.
* Engagement employees believe the leadership team cares about them as individuals.
If you think about employee engagement in these two categories, it simplifies what action you need to take to improve employee engagement.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Figma. Two important tools of the Rebel Intrapreneur are the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. Figma has templates for both, so you can design your innovation projects fast. I used the value proposition canvas template to design the listener profile and value map for this show. Try Figma for free.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Figma. Two important tools of the Rebel Intrapreneur are the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. Figma has templates for both, so you can design your innovation projects fast. I used the value proposition canvas template to design the listener profile and value map for this show. Try Figma for free.
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