How A Small Fish Can Make Big Waves
Being a changemaker in a corporate business is hard but essential. Here are 10 tips to give your initiative a fighting chance of success.

How A Small Fish Can Make Big Waves

Dear friend,

I see you. The idealist found their way into a corporate firm, where their vision of how the world should be different from the reality of how things are in their organisation.?

You love your job and the learning it offers, but you also believe some things could and should change regarding how the organisation works. You feel perturbed by what you see and want to do something about it.?

I want to tell you this: It is not only okay but also a good thing. It is critical for every changemaker in an organisation, no matter what tenure or level, to try to shape their actions and practices to align with their vision of a kinder, better world.

In this article, I am sharing two times I tried to bring change in a large organisation I was part of - one that failed and one that worked well - and what you can do practically to give your actions a fighting chance of having an impact.

Tale #1 - When ‘Choices’ faded away

At the orientation of my first day as a Junior Associate at McKinsey & Company in 2015, we found plastic bottles on every table. A fellow new joiner, Chayan, and I needed clarification on this problem. “If we want to drink water, there is no way to do it but by using plastic bottles.”?

To change this, we created a WhatsApp group called “Choices” to encourage eco-friendly choices in the organisation. Many joined in, and exuberant, we collected more ideas.?

And then… nothing. Life and its pressures caused my first stint at attempting to be a changemaker to end.

(To the firm’s credit, they piloted glass bottles in one office location and rolled it out in all the offices a year later.)

Tale #2 - When we sprinted to impact and beyond

Fast forward one year. My colleague, Naveen, sent our cohort a survey asking if we believed the organisation was doing enough to support local social enterprises, initiatives or NGOs. I cared about this too, so the survey led us to talk, and together, we hashed out a new fledgling initiative, ‘Social Sprints.’

With the burnt fingers of Choices behind me, I was doubly mindful as we designed Sprints. The idea was simple: Social Sprints was a platform to bring the talent and skills of the associates at McKinsey to social businesses and initiatives pro bono, 3x3x3 - three associates working three to four hours a week for three months on a strategic problem of a social enterprise.??

Over the next two years, Social Sprints enabled 75 employees to volunteer their expertise to over 20 NGOs across India. In time, we also got involved with the office's flood relief efforts and eventually became the go-to duo for routing anything social impact in nature to action via Sprints.?

Today, Naveen and? I don’t work at McKinsey, but we both carry the legacy of Social Sprints.

Because of Sprints, I represented 麦肯锡 globally at the One Young World Summit in 2019. Sprints also brought me in touch with Peepul, a visionary education non-profit I was taken by.?

I joined Peepul as the COO and Director-Scale Programmes. At Peepul , I was privileged to support the multifold growth of the organisation’s breadth and depth of impact by partnering with governments to deliver improvement to public schools in India. Our work impacted 300,000 teachers and 10 million students and got recognition through the @Commonwealth Education Awards for Innovation in 2022.

What this means for you:

I’ve now been a serial intrapreneur in that sense - with Choices that fizzled out and Social Sprints that took off. In the years that followed, as part of the leadership team at Peepul, I saw many early-tenure associates with a passion for strengthening the organisation.?

And so, with the power of hindsight and pattern recognition, for those idealists, dreamers and active changemakers who are thinking about creating or strengthening your initiatives within a large and layered organisation,? here are the top 10 things I have learnt that might help you along the way:

When you begin:

  1. Get your day-to-day in order: Perform well in your primary role; it will largely determine how you are perceived and whether you can manage anything beyond it. All successful intrapreneurs do well in their role and thus get the licence to do more.
  2. Pick a theme you are genuinely passionate about: Your initiative often adds to your regular work. Some of us may resonate more strongly with one issue than another (so picking one that personally resonates increases the chances of you putting in that effort consistently.
  3. Find your tribe: Striking up conversations can be intimidating, but finding people who care about the same thing is essential for building a groundswell of support. In the office parties and your WhatsApp groups, identify if others resonate with what you care about, and see how they can join the cause. (In my experience, running an initiative as a duo is often easier than solo - when one gets busy, the other can help manage continuity).
  4. Brand your effort: I have found building a brand around the helpful initiative. Any initiative I have done - be it Social Sprints nine years ago or Raahi:Impact this year - had its logo and branding, which I religiously use in the email signatures and communication material. Good branding increases recall and elevates the initiative's status.
  5. Take on only what you can: Good intentions often fail to translate to sustained action because the team has bitten off more than they can chew. Small but sustained actions are often infinitely more impactful than a big one-time flash in the pan.
  6. Do pilots: While it might be tempting to suss out ideas in our minds and then do a big-bang launch, I have always found it very helpful to do a small, low-risk pilot to see what works and what needs to be tweaked/improved. As they say, run water through the pipes to see if the plumbing works end-to-end.Then, as you grow:
  7. Document: Once you have a track record, it’s helpful to pause, reflect on how much has happened, and build some communication collateral around it.
  8. Find your champions and sponsors: With seniority in an organisation, there often comes wide-angle visibility of what is going on and the ability to envision possibility. Especially in larger organisations, it is essential to find tenured folks in the system who (a) can help you navigate the system and (b) can provide legitimacy, support and sponsorship to the effort. Find time on their calendar, ask them for guidance, and check who else they would suggest you talk to.
  9. Find the correct set of constructs to operate with: As you learn through doing, pause to see what construct to steady. “Use what is in abundance; ignore what is scarce.” Do middle managers often not have the time? Accept that reality. Do support staff often seem to be more regular in their contributions than others? See what can be done with that reality. And so on.
  10. Remember, sometimes ideas take their own time: In a more extensive bureaucracy, perseverance pays, and it’s essential to keep the initiative alive until a watershed moment finally comes, sometimes way beyond your time at the organisation. As someone said, “Starting up is all about surviving long enough till you hit the lottery.”?

To some extent, I credit the learning, reflections and connections I made through Choices and Social Sprints for the path I have then walked down of a full-time career in the development sector. I know you will have your own incredible and unique journey of impact - and as with any journey, it all begins with that first step.

So, go forth, my friend, and give it your best shot. You may be a small fish, but you can make big waves. I wish you the best!

Girish Ananthanarayana is currently the founder and curator of “Raahi: Impact Journeys”, watch his latest talk ‘Career Choices, Social Impact and Remembering Dumbledore’ on his YouTube channel on social impact perspectives.

Kate Robertson

Co-Founder and CEO at One Young World

10 个月

Such a great list of points/landmarks to make sure you actually get somewhere with your initiative/project. Fascinating always to see a 'fail' learn through to real 'success'. Love it.

Anshuman Gupta

Industrial Designer I Biodesigner I New Product Development

1 年

Some serious good pointers on succeeding in your ventures ????

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