Why spread an entrepreneurial spirit within your teams? Interview with Olivier Leclerc

On February 15, 2018 we organized a breakfast around the skills of the Leader-Entrepreneur. The objective was to answer the 3 major questions asked by large groups, faced with a rapidly changing market:

• How can we meet the increasing demands of customers?
• How to develop flexibility and agility to face increased competition from startups?
• How do you attract, develop and retain talent?

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After presenting the programs of Talentis to boost the entrepreneurial spirit of teams, we are pleased to hear the testimony ofOlivier Leclerc, Innovation catalyst & Intrapreneurship activist at Safran SA and Co-founder of “The Hacktivators” on the following theme: “Intrapreneurship & Corporate Hacking: Stimulators & Levers for Transformation.”. At the end of this very inspiring speech, we asked Olivier Leclerc: “Why is it essential today for companies of spread an entrepreneurial spirit within their teams?”

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What is the interest for large groups to identify and develop entrepreneur profiles?

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“I think that today's context requires large groups to reinvent their strategy, probably a bit more frequently than it should have been done in years past. To implement a bit of agility, adaptation to a context, flexibility. And among the ways to increase this flexibility, this adaptability, I think that the idea of focusing on talent intrapreneurial (or entrepreneurs within organizations) could promote this. The position of the entrepreneur is to be Opportunity Obsessed as the Anglo-Saxons would say. This makes it possible to have small “fast vehicles” to test a certain number of proposals. Then possibly adapt a part of the company's core business, which could become a little bigger tomorrow if the market is actually there.”

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What do you think is the essential skill of an entrepreneur leader?

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“I believe that the essence of an entrepreneur, and therefore by extension an intrapreneur, is to know Recover from your failures, so somewhere to learn from your failures. I like to draw a parallel, even if it is very caricatural, with the way successful entrepreneurs in Europe and successful entrepreneurs across the Atlantic are seen. In Europe, a successful entrepreneur, male or female, is someone who has succeeded, and in general, someone who has not suffered too many failures. Across the Atlantic, you become an entrepreneur once you have “planted” one, two, three or more companies. What's very interesting is not so much the success itself, it's the ability to recover from something that didn't work out the way you imagined. What would be called a failure, the Anglo-Saxons called that Fail. But for me, I like the first-time in learning parallel, which is an opportunity to learn. Moreover, on the American side, there are these famous failures, the conferences around entrepreneurial failures where we come to listen to a certain number of testimonies from people who failed. Above all, what is important is to hear what they have learned and how they have recovered. For me in fact, this ability to recover from a failure or to recover from a hypothesis that did not prove to be true is for me quite something. gist. It's very much linked to the pivot. One of the other major threats for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs is Fall in love with your idea, so not knowing how to make it evolve to adapt it to the context. For me, this is one of the key skills of an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur. Although I also believe that entrepreneurship in general is not something linked to a single person, it is really a collective dynamic. It is therefore very important to ask yourself the question: how do we collectively learn from our failures and how do we bounce back from our failures?”

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What does coaching contribute to the dissemination of an entrepreneurial mindset within teams?

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“So I think the Coaching is something very important for individuals, teams to become aware of their own potential. I see the coach, and the coach's posture in particular, as a mirror, a reflection that effectively allows a certain number of his actions to be re-read. That's what actually does Make progress. Now, I believe that you don't call yourself an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, it's through action that you actually manage to reveal yourself to yourself and to understand what that means and to know if you want to continue in this path or not. Combining a Business Coach and an entrepreneur could give the “couple” next: I am taking action and there is a caring coach who will help me to proofread. I think that's a pretty good duo winning.”