How intrapreneurs find executive sponsors
Copyright by Stephan Klaschka 2010-2025
From my series on how to build a successful BRG.1
Have you ever had a great idea and went to your manager for support just to find out they were just not interested in it? Did nothing come out of it in the end and you were disappointed? Finding a sponsor can be frustrating!
Perhaps, you just turned to the wrong sponsor for your project, which is a common mistake of first-time intrapreneurs. Here are some more strategic thoughts on whom to turn to with your ideas to make them happen within an organization.
What Champion to pick
Intrapreneurs are ‘executive champions’ who connect people with specific ideas (‘technical champions’) to ‘business champions’ who can provide the resources to bring an idea to life. Typically, intrapreneurs seek out an executive sponsor to provide funding, political cover, and support. (Find more on intrapreneurship in The Rise of the Intrapreneur and the three champion roles in Part 2 of 3: How to become the strategic innovation leader?)
Let’s look at the ‘business champion’ or executive sponsor. It is crucial to understand the motivation of executive sponsors for a simple reason: only if your idea or proposition fits their agenda they be willing to listen to you and get actively involved. Consider that they take on risks too in supporting you as poor results will also reflect on them. You need to know whom to turn to for what kind of idea to find adequate support.
Managers and Leaders innovate differently
For an intrapreneur, it is critical to understand the nature of the executive position. More specifically if you approach a manager or a leader to find support for an innovative idea.
Managers and leaders look at innovation differently, hence both groups innovate very differently and for different reasons. It translates directly into their understanding of what ‘innovation’ is, its risks and rewards, which consequently determines their willingness to listen to you. Approaching the wrong executive easily gets your idea rejected and you may not even know why.
Let’s take a look at how the views of managers and leaders differ and how this molds their understanding of innovation, the kind of change you promote, and -ultimately- their support of you or the lack thereof.
On a side note organizations need both, managers and leaders. Each role serves a different yet necessary purpose in the organization; see also Leadership vs. Management? What is wrong with middle management?
Managers focus on predictability
Managers are charged with running the daily business smoothly. They manage a well-oiled ‘machine’ of people, tools, and processes to deliver a certain output -a product or service- reliably and at a fixed cost ceiling.
The paramount goal for managers is business continuity – this is the daily bread and butter of the organization and what pays your employee salary today. Running a fast-food restaurant is a good example, as the expectation here is predictability: to deliver food to the customer at a specific quality level with as little variability as possible at a defined cost and within a certain time. A competent manager delivers this predictability reliably over and over again.
With operational targets clearly defined, the appetite for improvements focuses on speeding up the process or cutting costs here and there without compromising quality. Favorable changes to the status quo are small, gradual tweaks. This is the world of optimization, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement.
Little Risk, Little Gain
Managers need to keep the risk small to fail or to jeopardize the production process with its predictable output. The low risk of disruption comes at a price though as it limits also returns.
Here innovations are primarily non-disruptive, they are incremental or evolutionary. This approach is process-driven. It lends itself to automation as it aims to make the process repeatable, reliable, and predictable. No senior executive needs to be closely involved in operations to keep this ‘machine’ running as this comes down to the floor manager executing the day-to-day.
This is also the environment of a conventional development project, the ‘next version’ of something, and the ‘getting it right the first time’ mantra.
With an incremental change in focus, managers tend to look for ideas in their organization, and think ‘suggestion box’. It means following a clearly defined and detailed process with development stage gates or other review mechanisms that filter ideas typically the criteria of cost, time, quality, and, more recently, variations thereof such as customer satisfaction and being increasingly ‘green’ and ecologically sustainable.
Managers are interested in learning about ‘best practices’ from outside the organization but are often enough reluctant to adopt and implement them if they appear to be risky and disruptive.
Leading in Uncertainty
Leaders face a different challenge. They ask: what needs to be done to prepare the organization for success several years down the road with much uncertainty ahead? – They know well that the answer may disrupt the established organization and make uncomfortable waves.
It is this uncertainty that opens up the so-called ‘fuzzy front-end’ (FFE) to develop entirely new products or services: It is too early to know the exact specifications of a solution at this time. The future markets and technologies are yet unknown. Leaders focus on getting a deep understanding of the problems that customers face to develop the technology and capability to address and monetize them.
Disruptive transformation
When we talk about ‘disruptive’ here, what we mean is, for example, a completely new product line, a major (adjacent) product line extension, or a new (transformative) business model entirely. Think how Apple’s iTunes Store started selling digital media and apps has changed the way we use technology and whose devices we use (hint, hint) – this gamble worked out for Apple and was based on a deep understanding of what customers are willing to pay for.
With nebulous solutions in farsight, a tightly governed development process with stage gates makes little sense because this development model is designed for incremental change and tuned for refinement. It stifles the creative and broad view necessary to create something completely new in an unpredictable and yet undefined scenario of the FFE where much imagination, creativity, and flexibility are needed to explore the unknown.
Creative with discipline
However, flexibility and creativity do not thrive only in the absence of discipline or some sense of order. The early-stage research or design process does not need to be chaotic – it’s quite the opposite. A company like IDEO, for example, operates successfully in this space and is famous for its disciplined process and methodology that produces creative and tangible prototypes over and over again. Note that we are not talking about final consumer products here that are ready to go on the shelf of your neighborhood store tomorrow. - Check out this case study on how IDEO works in more detail: What does it take to keep innovating? (part 1 of 3).
It takes a transitional step to narrow down the broad funnel of uncertainty to develop a range of concepts toward increasingly detailed specifications of the final product. The development of the final product itself is better left to the established development organization – back to the managers to cross the t’s and dot the i’s if you will.
Active sponsorship needed
With disruption and revolutionary change comes high risk. The outcome is unpredictable and the reward uncertain, failure is likely. Yet, if the gamble works out the rewards can be enormous and the key players become the ‘rainmakers’.
When exploring which direction to go, the serial intrapreneur’s approach is trying many things. Expect to fail most of the time. See what ‘sticks’ and explore those options more.
Rather than rigid procedural guardrails, intrapreneurs need to secure top executive sponsorship for continued active support, political weight, and funding. Thus, for a unique and exploratory venture what you look for is a leader, not a manager. There is no staged process to follow really, only success determines what is right or wrong.
Maxwell Wessel’s blog for HBR on How to Innovate with an Executive Sponsor has some good practical tips for projects that take the company down the disruptive, transformative route.
What Kind of Sponsor do you Need?
Distinguishing the professional motives of managers and leaders comes down to the question of Innovation Strategy: Do you innovate or renovate?
In general, leaders act more as strategic innovators and game-changers assuming the role of a Sponsor or an Architect while managers take more renovation-associate roles such as a Coach or an Orchestrator. (See Innovation Strategy: Do you innovate or renovate? for a more detailed description of categories and which role to choose when.)
What is my idea again?
Start by taking a hard look at your idea first to find out which innovation categories it falls into. Then decide what kind of sponsor, a manager or a leader, is best suited for your approach and, therefore, is most likely to listen to you and catch your interest.
Even better if you can already identify the role associated with the nature of your project (Coach, Orchestrator, etc.) which helps you frame and pitch the idea or a specific project to the appropriate executive sponsor in your organization.
Stay tuned for my next post: 10x or 10% – Are you still ready for breakthrough innovation?
From my series on how to build a successful BRG (=Business Resource Group) group, i.e. a business-focused ERG (=Employee Resource Group) first published on OrgChanger.com.