3 Reasons to Use Intrapreneurship to Build Skills In Your Nonprofit's Early Career Staff with Emily Glasgow and Alanna Hughes
Do you remember your first real job?
I was probably a strange combination of timid and overconfident. I probably hesitated to speak up at first. Thankfully, I gained experience, skills, and competence over time.
What if we could help our early career staff gain some of those invaluable skills earlier in their career? Imagine the impacts that could have on your nonprofit. That's what we're exploring on this week's episode of Learning for Good with Emily Glasgow and Alanna Hughes.
Emily and Alanna are the co-creators and co-founders of Withinnovate, where they use workshops, on-demand resources, and customized support to help leaders understand themselves and their organizations and then use innovative methods to create change.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
03:33 Emily and Alanna’s career journeys
07:25 What is intrapreneurship?
10:16 3 Ways nonprofits benefit from intrapreneurship
14:45 How nonprofit Learning and Development teams can know if their early career staff need intrapreneurship
18:41 The skills staff develop as they learn intrapreneurship
22:40 The results that Emily and Alanna have seen from their work
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3 Reasons to Use Intrapreneurship to Build Skills In Your Nonprofit's Early Career Staff
Do you remember your first real job?
I was probably a strange combination of timid and overconfident. I knew I had big things I wanted to accomplish. But I wasn't familiar with any of the ins and outs of the corporate world. So I probably hesitated to speak up or step up at first. Thankfully, I gained experience, skills, and competence over time.
What if we could help our early career staff gain some of those invaluable skills earlier in their career? Imagine the impacts that could have on your nonprofit.
That's what we’re covering in today’s blog post.
I'm so excited to have Emily Glasgow and Alanna Hughes join me today to talk about intrapreneurship - the thing they say is going to build incredible skills in your early career staff.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
Emily and Alanna are the co-creators and co-founders of Withinnovate, where they use workshops, on-demand resources, and customized support to help leaders understand themselves and their organizations and then use innovative methods to create change.
1) Emily and Alanna’s Career Journeys
According to Emily, both of their careers have been guided by how they can make the greatest impact on those in need.
“You'll see kind of, in each of our own ways, we both realized early on that in order to be most effective, we needed to be really deliberate in gaining critical skills and experiences.” - Emily Glasgow
Emily began her career in strategy consulting at Deloitte. It was during Emily’s time at Deloitte that she learned about structured thinking for solving problems, particularly in the nonprofit and higher education space.
“I loved working at the firm and wanted to focus more specifically on nonprofit projects. And so I transitioned to a venture philanthropy firm focusing primarily on education.” - Emily Glasgow
Emily now works at a mission-driven tech startup where she focuses on Strategy and Operations, Organizational Development, Internal Communications, and Learning and Development.
“My favorite part of my current role is really being able to help people in an organization that helps people and that's a really unique part of my role that I really, really enjoy.” - Emily Glasgow
Alanna says her career journey is similarly woven between sectors working at the intersection of business and social impact to help others improve their livelihoods.
“This work has entailed a lot of strategic thinking and coaching and piloting new solutions to identify challenges.” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna got her start in International Development, spending five years across the Caribbean as a Peace Corps volunteer and then a Program Assistant for a global social entrepreneurship nonprofit, and ultimately, a founding Country Director at a grassroots social enterprise.
“Throughout those years, I felt I benefited from incredible learning by doing, but I often didn't receive formal professional development. And this eventually drove me to invest time and money in an MBA.” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna says she is also very motivated by her own journey and the professional development gaps she has witnessed in emerging staff. This has led her to help early career social impact professionals access training so that they build leadership, collaboration, and creativity skills to help them create a strong foundation for their emerging social sector careers.
“Alanna and I joined forces back in 2021, to fill this gap that you can see both of us had seen and experienced in our own careers, which is that nonprofit organizations often lack the resources for early career professional development. And this not only makes it difficult to attract and retain future leaders but also we feel just leaves a huge missed opportunity since many early career professionals enter the organization with energy and drive and really untapped potential.” - Emily Glasgow
According to Emily, Withinnovate tries to work on reversing this cycle by offering engaging workshops and resources centered around the idea of intrapreneurship.
I love that Emily and Alanna met each other through a common employer and have reconnected and created something so special, something that they’re both very passionate about, based on their own experiences. And now they're able to, together, offer that to other staff, in a sector that they both care so deeply about.
2) What is Intrapreneurship?
Alanna says that intrapreneurship is all about problem-solving.
“Intrapreneurship is the ability to take an entrepreneurial approach that is applying new ideas, testing potential solutions, and launching new initiatives, but within the infrastructure, capabilities, and resources of an organization that already exists. And so the goal then is to deliver value that moves the organization's mission forward and helps them to achieve greater impact overall.” - Alanna Hughes
Emily and Alanna conducted extensive research before the launch of WIthinovate, and through that, they identified a set of eight criteria that makes for a successful intrapreneur.
According to Emily and Alanna, a successful intrapreneur:
Is idealistic. They're able to see the world as it could be rather than the way it currently exists.
Is informed. They're able to gather and synthesize qualitative and quantitative information to make data-driven decisions.
Takes initiative. They have the courage and the sense of ownership to raise their hand and take on new challenges.
Is innovative. They use creativity and big-picture thinking to identify and introduce new ideas and new models.
Has strong intuition. This is the ability to pick up on and act on smaller otherwise overlooked clues to make decisions and understand situations. They don't ignore gut feelings either.
Has integrity. They're honest and have strong moral principles.
Is open to iteration. They’re open to repeating processes and tests multiple times for learning improvement and being able to adapt and change as they go.
Is an inspiration. They're a positive force that encourages others to act and do good in their organizations.
Alanna refers to these as the eight ‘I’s of intrapreneurship.
“What we do at Withinnovate is we weave these principles throughout our sessions, so participants have an opportunity to see how they're already intrapreneurs and that they can build concentrated skills to make them more impactful in the area of intrapreneurship.” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna points out that Withinnovate focuses on social intrapreneurship specifically, which is a little different from corporate intrapreneurship in that it seeks to create social and/or environmental impact, instead of or in addition to strictly business or financial impact.
I love that Alanna and Emily are tapping into those ‘who they are’ and also ‘who they can be’ criteria. Individuals can see the things they're bringing to the table, but also things that they can continue to develop, enhance, and grow, and then apply to the benefit of the organization. But at the end of the day, there are social and environmental benefits as well.
3) Three Ways a Nonprofit Benefits From Intrapreneurship
According to Emily and Alanna, there are three main ways that a nonprofit benefits from entrepreneurship.
1) Intrapreneurs exhibit a host of skills that benefit their organization
“Intrapreneurs really exhibit a host of skills to benefit their organization and its staff to grow and thrive. [...] Some folks have this inherently in them, and it helps to bring it out. And these are also areas that individuals can focus on for learning and development.” - Emily Glasgow
When talking about these skills, Emily lists three main areas:
1. Innovation
“Hypothesis-driven thinking, which means, you have an idea, let's test it out and iterate on it. Rather than starting with this big giant project, you could start small.” - Emily Glasgow
2. Self-awareness
“So emotional intelligence, and also emotional regulation. This is understanding what your strengths are, what your development areas are, and how you use that to really bring your best self to work.” - Emily Glasgow
3. Organizational Dynamics
“Whether you are in a small nonprofit or a large nonprofit, every organization has some set of dynamics that you need to navigate around. So understanding stakeholders and communicating effectively, those are really important skills.” - Emily Glasgow
These skills are what Emily and Alanna focus on with Withinnovate in their trainings and workshops.
2) Individual and collective engagement
According to Emily, this engagement can empower teammates to have a greater impact and is inherently collaborative.
“Someone may not realize that, okay, I like to do my research before starting a project, they are informed, they are already one step to becoming an intrapreneur. And that kind of understanding and realization can be really powerful. And so this can lead to higher employee satisfaction, and also retention.” - Emily Glasgow
Emily points out that if someone is stuck in their role, being able to explore what makes them unique can be powerful.
3) Intrapreneurship can expand an organization's capacity for new opportunities
“Withinnovate and intrapreneurship are inherently about new ideas and iteration and innovation. This process and learning how to be an intrapreneur can really bring new ideas and perspectives to light and spark innovation and help to solve big and small problems, and most importantly, do so in a way that feels sustainable.” - Emily Glasgow
A lot of times an early career staff person might not be able to bring big sweeping changes to the organization right away. But there are probably smaller things that they can innovate, a process or something that they're working on, that falls within their span of control.
Then over time, as they are developing that skill set and they're seeing results, this allows them to grow into potentially even larger innovations and changes that they're going to be able to make within the organization.
They are building that capacity for new opportunities.
Those skills are scaffolded over time. They're developing skills that they are going to take with them for life.
4) How to Know If Your Nonprofit L&D Team Could Benefit From Intrapreneurship
Alanna pointed out three areas that they tend to look at to be able to assess whether a nonprofit L&D team could benefit from intrapreneurship.
The areas Ananna mentioned are:
1. Whether you see a desire to strategically empower your employees
Alanna mentions that this essentially applies to many, many nonprofits.
“You might be observing that your early career staff feel a lack of empowerment that might prevent them from feeling ultimate meaningfulness and productivity at work. And so for example, you might see that an early career professional doesn't feel as much agency in what they do.” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna points out that even though there are limits scope- and seniority-wise based on where a staff member sits in the organization to what they can do, you still want them to feel engaged in their position and encouraged to voice new ideas.
Alanna highlights that that might be what improves a process or what introduces a new initiative.
“You might also sense that your staff member has a lot of creative energy that could be channeled productively. That's why you hired them initially, but you're unsure how to focus their approach to be more data-driven and more realistic and testing small scale, among other opportunities.” - Alanna Hughes
2. Whether there is an opportunity to cultivate employee's skills for advancement
“You might be looking to develop your staff in a high-impact and focused way that helps them to grow not only up but also laterally in the breadth of what they can do in their position.” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna points out that this applies particularly to organizations that are seeking to develop and retain talent, but are unable to formally promote them in the short term.
“Training intrapreneurship can be a perk that enables individuals to think differently and to approach work through a different lens and potentially take on projects that as a result, help that individual to be exposed to new challenges and opportunities.” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna continues to say that you might also observe that there are skill and experiential gaps among early career staff that could be solved by training and intrapreneurship.
“That's beyond lack of agency, maybe it's a lack of confidence in their ability to think creatively and propose new ideas, and unfamiliarity with how to develop a minimum viable product or MVP, to be able to start small and testing something out, and iterating an idea.” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna says you might also notice that there's an opportunity to have greater self-awareness of those individuals and organizational awareness in general.
3. If there is a need for new perspectives to tackle tough work challenges that a team or the broader organization is facing
Lastly, Alanna points out that your organization might ultimately need new ideas and solutions to problems.
“Oftentimes, early career staff are some of those who are most proximate to the problems they're solving and the implementers of the work. And so your team or organization could benefit from new perspectives on how to solve problems or pain points, or tackle ambitious goals and strategic planning, of course, under the guidance of their managers, and mentors” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna highlights that intrapreneurship can help surface those perspectives in a structured and well-thought-out way through awareness, and also through the application of those eight ‘I’s of intrapreneurship that were mentioned previously.
I would imagine that trust is a big factor in bringing in something like this. There has to be mutual trust between senior leadership and early career staff for them to bring in new ideas, feel like their voice is heard, and to make it meaningful for them.
5) The Skills Staff Develop as They Learn Intrapreneurship
Emily points out that there are two sets of skills that can be developed with intrapreneurship. There are the ‘within’ skills and the ‘innovate’ skills.
“That's where we try to combine a set of skills and experiences that aren't usually combined. You can have a training or a workshop around innovation design thinking, or you could have training around how to understand yourself and the people around you. And I think what we've really enjoyed is how you fuse those together, and work through those together in a way that feels really meaningful.” - Emily Glasgow
The ‘within’ skills that Emily highlights are self-awareness, emotional intelligence, understanding organizational dynamics, and best practices for managing other stakeholders.
The ‘innovate’ skills are a mix of hard and soft skills. Emily points out that these range from developing a hypothesis to creating a minimum viable product. It’s about starting small - testing a solution, collecting feedback, and adapting accordingly.
When preparing content, Emily says that although there is a lot of research involved in making sure that they have the latest and greatest frameworks and tools to share with participants, a lot of it comes from their own experience, too. They look back at their career journeys and see where they could have benefitted from some mentorship.
The other way Emily and Alanna think about skills is through the eight ‘I’s of intrapreneurship.
At the beginning of each workshop that they run, they have individuals take a short assessment to understand where they stand with the eight ‘I’s. They then work on developing and cultivating those skills. If you are interested in creating personalized learning experiences in your own company, check out episode 41 of the Learning for Good Podcast: Not Sure Where to Start with Personalized Learning? Three Tips for Nonprofits.
“We think about embracing and channeling their inner idealism and doing so productively. Taking a data-driven and observation-driven informed approach to decision-making. Being proactive and taking initiative. Knowing how to innovate, so not only thinking creatively but being familiar with the innovation process, and applying intuition.” - Emily Glasgow
Emily highlights the importance of approaching your work with integrity and an unwillingness to compromise on this integrity.
“How do you handle failure? How do you bounce back from that? How do you handle change adaptation? And then how to be inspiring to others. So how do you lead by example? How do you have strong communication that really adapts to your audience? How do you understand those around you in order to be most effective, and ultimately be able to create the most social impact within your organization.” - Emily Glasgow
One of the services that I provide to nonprofits is creating custom competency models. A lot of the things that Emily mentions are things that come up as we're doing that internal and external research, things that help with adaptability and change.
If you want some more information about creating custom competency models for your organization, check out the episodes below:
Episode 39: Ask These Two Questions to Identify Your Nonprofit's Core Competencies
Episode 20: How to Determine Which Competencies Are Right for You
Episode 19: One Nonprofit's Honest Opinion after 6 Months with a Competency Model
Episode 18: Four Reasons Your Competencies Don’t Work
There's always going to be change. And being able to think about things iteratively, and maintaining your integrity, are things that help you navigate change.
6) The Results of This Work in Intrapreneurship
Alanna highlights that their results come in the form of both outputs and outcomes.
In terms of output, Emily and Alanna have trained dozens of social sector employees from leading nonprofits and social enterprises, who have participated in their workshops.
These employees hail from institutions of various sizes, geographies, and sectors.
“That reconfirms for us our hypothesis that social entrepreneurship skill building adds value to a wide breadth of organizations.” - Alanna Hughes
In terms of outcomes, Emily and Alanna see that their training gives participants new perspectives, new abilities, and new relationships within the organization.
“One participant told us that a big aha moment for them was that you can be an intrapreneur in any situation. So they've applied it to their job at work. But they've also thought about it, going back to school and volunteering and wherever they're presenting themselves. They said that this is their opportunity to learn what their strengths are, and fine-tune their weaknesses to make the social environment around them better.” - Alanna Hughes
Other people have told Emily and Alanna that they hadn't realized how much they could do before taking the training.
“For many, it was the first time that they got to think about how they can affect change from where they sit, and what skills they can use to propose these changes, run experiments and cultivate relationships to get that momentum.” - Alanna Hughes
Alanna and Emily have also received very positive feedback from managers that they’ve partnered with, who bring them on to coach their early career staff.
“They told us that they wish they had Withinnovate when they were younger, which is essentially why we started this. So to quote one team leader, they said that working with Withinnovate had enabled their team to truly understand how to think about themselves as intrapreneurs. And this was when they were in the midst of a continuous improvement effort and they were seeking ideas for employees who are more elbow-deep in the daily delivery and in closer communication with their organization's beneficiaries.” - Alanna Hughes
Emily and Alanna would like to see more organizations applying this.
“We really see it as a systems change approach as well. Helping organizations grow beyond top-down talent development to also apply more of a bottom-up skill and experience development that adds more problem solvers to the short term and then also helps cultivate those stronger leaders for any organization longer term and ultimately creating fulfilled employees throughout their social impact careers.” - Alanna Hughes
It was so valuable to have this conversation with Emily and Alanna today. I loved hearing what they're doing at Withinnovate and how intrapreneurship is benefiting nonprofits all around the country.
We have so much to learn from each other. That’s one of the reasons why I created the Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective on LinkedIn. It's a place for us to share and learn from one another.
To hear the full conversation I had with Emily Glasgow and Alanna Hughes on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 42.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
Do you wish you could connect with other nonprofit learning and development leaders?
I know what it feels like to want someone to bounce ideas off of and to learn from, someone who really understands you and your work. Imagine if you could have a simple way to meet people in the field, ask questions, and share information.
That's why I created the Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective – so nonprofit L&D, talent management, and DEI leaders can connect with each other quickly and easily in a virtual space.
When you join this community, you will walk away with a new, diverse, and powerful network – and a sounding board for your staff development needs.
So if you're ready to exchange ideas and collaborate with your peers, come join the Nonprofit L&D Collective.
