Circles of Change: Conversations with Dr. Zara Larsen
on Change Leadership and Career Fulfillment
September 14, 2008
“It’s Time for Mavericks”
Guest: Susan Foley, Corporate Entrepreneurs LLC and Babson College
Anchoring Points:
1. Corporate entrepreneurs or mavericks love to live in balance with the existing and the new business of a company – creating a new world from a blank sheet of paper.
2. Marvericks are independent thinkers in their heart with strong beliefs. They are willing to make the tough decisions and take action. They are not intent on being threatening, yet can make people very nervous because they are so different.
- Changing the status quo takes others outside of their comfort zone
- Ease of risk taking, which some people view as reckless and are not sure of trusting the marverick’s judgment
- Decisive, making decisions with less information than the normal leader
3. There is not a common understanding of mavericks, although we identified 17 typical competencies, for example – can navigate uncertainty, engaged and energized by being totally challenged, very effective with limited resources, very passionate, can see ahead to what is not yet formulated/already over the hill. Reference www.corporate-entrepreneur.com for leadership profile assessment tool, partnered after CEO survey attributes.
4. Viewed as exceptional employees, but often loyal first to the project over the organization, and as such may appear to be “out for themselves”. They are doing the job as they best know how to do it, outside of the norm, and may not be as self-aware or attuned to self-management issues. We did not find differences between men and women, across industries nor size of enterprise.
5. Once you do a leading edge project, pioneer, take the assignment that no one else wanted, you want to continue doing more of the same to continue to grow and learn, no necessarily to climb the corporate ladder. It is who they become – who they are – and thus requires different development and nuturing within the organization. (Reference: Dr. Larsen’s work on how leading change changes leaders, and how they like it that way.)
6. Only 4% of executives are seen as entrepreneurial, so this is a very lean cadre to know how to support and develop mavericks and shape a new environment.
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