How to hustle, stay entrepreneurial and get things done in a large enterprise?

I am not qualified to write on this subject. The reason I am writing this is to weave a coherent narrative around inspirations that I have picked along the way from different sources that have resonated with me and given me strength in moments of doubts and disillusionment.

For the most part of my career, I have worked in large enterprises barring a couple of small ones. While it is easy to stay nimble, fast and entrepreneurial in smaller organizations, large organizations are plagued by processes, protocols, and needless bureaucracy. That is the curse of scale. However, I have gathered some insights from experts along the way that I consciously try to imbibe and not fall prey into the cogweb of large enterprises.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos understood the curse of a large organization, having run one for himself and addressed the issue in his 2016 memo to the shareholders (a brilliant ensemble of management lessons). Here is an excerpt from the memo:

As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2.

A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it’s the second.

This advice from Jeff has remained with me and I often try to inure myself from processes and protocols, when they outlive their purpose.

Jeffrey J. Fox

One of my personal favorites is Jeffrey Fox's book, How to Become CEO, which I often go back to reading many times to seek inspiration. I have shared before in a separate blog post about how much this book has influenced me in my career. Jeff provides a lot of compelling and practical advice on how to rise to the top of the organization. One of the themes is on the bias for action and fighting needless bureaucracy.

Navigating a large organization is a tough walk on a tightrope. The higher you are in the totem pole, the higher are the risks of committing organizational mistakes. Your misteps are construed as a lack of organizational savvy and can severely hamper your growth prospects. And therefore, you are more worried about taking a mistep than about taking action, getting things done and pushing things through. This puts needless obstacles and emotional hindrances to the naturally entrepreneurial ones and the high-energy employees. They always end up second guessing themselves and are caught in self-doubt of their own actions. I too have found myself in many such situations in the past.

Joining the "Should Have Club"

And then as I was flipping through Jeffrey's book, I came across this page where these words seem to jump on me:

Ever since I read these lines, I have never again blamed myself for doing something that put me into trouble. Whenever my inner critic raises voice, I shun it by remembering that I am better off being part of the "shouldn't have club".

Fighting Idea Killers

The other chapter in the book talked about handling idea killers. That again made a lasting impression upon me. Here is what it said:

Fighting bureaucracy

Another lesson that is worth learning is that large organizations might slip into needless bureaucracy, but that doesn't mean they want to. They still want to reward the entrepreneurials, who can get things done and not be slave to policies and procedures. Eventually every organization wants to achieve growth and results.

That's all the inspiration I had that I thought of putting together in a post. If I encounter more along the way, I will continue to add to this post. Please do let me know of your thoughts on this post