Many intrapreneurial projects — the little initiatives started by someone and carefully cultivated through a first test and promising success — get crushed by the “immune response” of a big organization. Relatively few big organizations do more than tolerate innovation arising outside of the groups that are “supposed” to do innovation.
Today I want to clarify another way that intrapreneurial projects fail. Well-intentioned leaders get excited about an early success and think that the best way to help is to load them up with steering teams, elaborate project management, dedicated KPI tracking, frequent project reviews, and so on. These sincere attempts to help can instead smother a project and keep it from being successful. It takes some wisdom to know how best to help, and when.
An analogy: When you’re starting a fire in damp conditions and have the first flames going with the smallest and driest tinder, don’t heap on a large pile of damp wood right away. You’ll only smother the initial flame. Instead, gradually feed a small fire with a few other pieces of wood until you have a strong flame and the first few coals. Then you can heap on damp wood with less risk of smothering the fire.
