Intrapreneurial Personality Disorder

I recently stumbled upon this rather startling flyer at my business school. Leave aside the ambiguity as to whether 'intrapreneur' refers to a person or (as stated on the flyer) 'the act of behaving like an entrepreneur'. I was more taken aback by the commandments. You are telling me to come to work each day willing to be fired?? Does this mean that casualised labour is intrapreneurial? I'd rather not if it's all the same to you.

But as I went down the list, I started to wonder if these people might be mentally ill. Commandments two and three sound deeply conspiratorial, while six smacks of paranoia. No wonder the Fourth Commandment is 'Find people to help you'. More innocently, seven, eight and nine sound like slogans that might have fallen out of a fortune cookie, while sanity has been resumed by number ten.

Just out of interest, lets compare this list of commandments to the diagnostic criteria of 'Antisocial personality disorder' (APD), a recently discovered psychiatric explanation for antisocial behaviour. Individuals who display three or more of the following can be technically classed as suffering from APD:

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
4. Irritatibility and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

There appear to be several overlaps between intrapreneurship and APD - a sense of one's own supremacy over others, deceitfulness, disregard for agreed responsibilities and duties, disregard for job security, and so on. Which poses various questions. Would Accenture and BT perhaps consider taking on some APD sufferers, so as to benefit from their lawlessness? Conversely, should the government commission a report (like this one) on Interventions for Children at Risk of Developing Intrapreneurship? Lets just hope that the new spirit of capitalism doesn't turn out to be sociopathic. 

Comments

[Phil]

"Work underground"? Good luck getting that onto your balanced scorecard.

[Alex]

Friends of mine who worked at a senior level in BT (this includes a director of BT Design and a head of voice technology) would tend to confirm that "publicity triggers the corporate immune mechanism" is exactly right, and "working underground as long as possible" is a valid response. Whether they were willing or not, however, as soon as the immune system kicked in, they still got fired or quit.

[Rob]

A lot of this stuff seems unremarkable to someone from a tech background. "Skunkworks" projects are legendary and there's a proven history of innovation coming out of groups within the organisation deciding to "scratch their own itch" and solve problems rather than waiting for the corporate hierarchy to do it. Google's Gmail service started that way, though I'm not sure Google would call their employees "intrapreneurs" or provide them with commandments.

I think what they're aiming to do is to empower individuals to use their tacit knowledge to decide what's best, rather than follow orders from out-of-touch bosses (hence forgiveness over permission, circumvent orders, use your intuition and work underground). The problem with this is that some people are suited to working that way and others aren't, and elevating this idea to the status of a guiding principle for everyone is a recipe for disaster (just as elevating rigid hierarchy and disempowerment would be). It's classic management bollocks, in that it takes something that worked for cutting-edge companies a decade ago and assuming that it should work for boring companies now. The typical employee profile is likely to be completely different (and I'm struck by the fact that some of the items you cite as signs of APD are also classic symptoms of geekhood; as a geek I find little wrong with some of them, but I don't expect everyone else to agree).

[Will Davies]

Thanks, Rob. That's interesting.

Re your point about APD, I guess that was also my point as well: traits that we find problematic (nay clinically deviant) in one part of society become celebrated in another. At the risk of over-egging the point, it's interesting to go through that list of diagnostic criteria and see how many of these charges were levelled at Tony Blair! All seven by some estimations, with a particular stress on the seventh.

[Phil]

Rob - that was pretty much my point, although my rendering was more snarky. In the corporate environment, precepts like these work on three levels at once - they're ethical injunctions, they're advice on how to have a successful career and they're a warning of the standards on which you'll be judged (with the possibility of being penalised for failure). As Will said, considered as ethical injunctions these are pretty weird and suggest a fairly dysfunctional organisational setting ("make your own plans, work in secret, trust no one"). As career advice they might work, at least for some - although the idea that everyone should be an 'intrapreneur' reminds me of Tom Peters telling us that everyone was going to become an independent freelancer marketing their skills to clients. But as a standard on which you'll be judged - well, how could that possibly work? And (in the corporate setting) if you're not going to be judged on it (and potentially penalised for non-compliance), why would anyone bother?

[Sociopath]

This is a joke. Nothing more. Nothing less.

[Bill Seitz]

Perhaps Accenture is just encouraging those people so that they can come in and (a) identify those troublemakers, (b) get them fired, and (c) take credit for their ideas.