Entrepreneurs in the business world share a similar legacy. They are a breed apart, push the edge of the envelope, force change, and add innovation. This is the challenge that human healthcare accepted, as it entered the 1980s, and veterinary healthcare has started to address, as we entered the new millennium. Intrapreneurs do it from within the practice organization, often asking for that needed forgiveness instead of permission.

In the human healthcare industry, the innovation success rate is about twenty percent before tweaking, and reaches almost sixty percent success, with continual nurturing, tweaking, and restarts, so there has been a lot of forgiveness. But it is an essential element of team building, and the leaders in healthcare have gotten used to the risk of first mistakes.

A safe rule of business has been: "When things start going bad, you've got a license to change". In healthcare today there is a mandate to change and that requires intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial leadership.

McManis Associates have been consulting for over three decades. They have assisted organizations through dynamic and challenging times, and they report that three entrepreneurial leadership traits have appeared repeatedly:

 Entrepreneurial leaders have vision, operational philosophies, core values, and goals that permeate all levels of the organization.

 Entrepreneurial leaders encourage new ideas from intrapreneurial staff, which makes every workday exciting, dynamic, and usually rewarding for all.

 Entrepreneurial leaders focus on the staff strengths, what they believe they are good at or what they want to do, and that increases feedback. Highly structured job descriptions dissolve in most cases.

An effective veterinarian will not necessarily be an entrepreneur. The bottom line in running a practice is to stay client-centered, to be an advocate of the patient, and to enhance the practice's ability to render high-quality care in a cost-effective manner. Those medical tasks require discipline, sometimes with a touch of bureaucratic icing on the cake. The practice owner(s) must discover and develop talented staff members to balance the healthcare team with the available personal traits. A successful veterinary practice of this new millennium must strive to retain staff, nurture their development, and adequately compensate them for their team effort. In seeking key individuals for your team, look for the right qualities:

 They are client-centered "people persons" and happy communicators.

 They don't "wing it". They do their homework and meet a market need.

 Their core values match the inviolate core values of the practice.

 They have intellectual honesty, courage, and confidence to take risks.

 Patient advocacy is foremost in their statement of "needs" to clients.

 They know how to move ideas quickly into reality. Brick walls only cause detours, not stops.

 They have tenacity, vision, and personal goals that tend to support the practice's organizational goals, while maintaining team harmony.

 They share in successes, and fully embrace failure, seeing it as an excellent learning opportunity for one and all. They do not play the blame game!

What the practice owner does to these individuals will define both community market share and growth potential of the practice in today's crowded veterinary arena. We must support those who try and fail and still have the courage to try again. We must respect their willingness, even their right, to fail. As we know from anesthesia and surgery experiences, all risks involve failure. But without the willingness and freedom to take risk and face the consequences, there will be no success worth achieving. What the above qualities describe are the heroes of the successful veterinary practice: the intrapreneurs!

Are You an Internal Entrepreneur?

In these days of entrepreneurism, there are veterinary practices that do develop the little-known hero called an internal entrepreneur or intrapreneur. This person is happy to work within a larger organization, if they are allowed the job freedom to innovate and for creativity to blossom. The intrapreneur loves the challenge and the chase. The routine belongs to those steady workers who just punch the clock. The intrapreneurs feel that they own their own workplace position. They know that no one could do it as well.

Ask yourself if you are the dreamer of "what can be". Do you like the independence or practice restructuring that makes you in charge of the new programs? Do you wish at times that the veterinarian would open a new satellite just so you can relocate and build the facility in your own image? Do you often look for new horizons to conquer, at home or at the practice? The following quiz will help evaluate your potential as an intrapreneur.

The Quiz

Mark each statement True or False. If a statement is sometimes true and sometimes false, follow your gut feeling about your stronger tendency.

1.  I enjoy the prestige I gain through my association with a practice that people recognize and respect.

2.  Rejection hurts me a lot and really slows me down.

3.  My family always comes first with me. I'd never miss a Valentine's Day, my wedding anniversary, my child's birthday, a Father's Day or Mother's Day, with my parents or my own family, or any other significant family date. Any crisis at the practice would just have to wait.

4.  When the situation warrants it, I exercise maximum control. But when need be, I stand back and let others handle matters.

5.  I'm not especially comfortable taking risks. When I must, I treat them seriously.

6.  I would be willing to regularly work more than sixty or even seventy hours a week.

7.  I'm interested in learning to perform tasks outside my own specialty that have never been areas of strength for me.

8.  I tend to over-commit myself and to take on more than I can really accomplish.

9.  My spouse is highly independent. He/she doesn't depend a lot on my company and actually prefers plenty of independent time.

10.  I see myself as a dreamer, with a vision of doing things better in a way I think matters.

Your Score

Add up your points as indicated below. The closer you are to ten, the greater your odds of success, if given the practice latitude to take risks.

1.  True: 1, False: 0. A True would bode against the happy entrepreneur, but fits the intrapreneur perfectly. An intrapreneur will work through the frustrations of being with an unrecognized practice and spend the extra effort to make the practice special.

2.  True: 0, False: 1. A False, indicates a thick skin and is the best answer in healthcare. Over eighty percent of the great ideas never make it in the healthcare arena unscathed. When starting out, you have to try things without being too sensitive to the opinions of others. In sales, they tell you to count your "no" responses and treat yourself to your favorite thing every time you accumulate twenty-five "no" replies. It is amazing how many "yes" answers you have to wade through to get to twenty-five "no" answers.

3.  True: 0, False: 1. Marking this statement True may indicate you are a well-adjusted person, but it dims the chances for intrapreneurial success. For good or bad, the reality is that intrapreneurs, as well as regular entrepreneurs, place business before their personal lives.

4.  True: 1, False: 0. A True answer is important for an intrapreneur with an eye toward growth. For your projects to expand, you must be able to relinquish control. This is where the intrapreneur has it made over the regular entrepreneur, since the starting out entrepreneur has no one to release control to, while the practice intrapreneur has a team to carry on the new programs.

5.  True: 0, False: 1. Risk taking is the heart of the game. In a practice you may be risking your career and ego, but it is worth it. For most intrapreneurs, risk taking is more positive than negative. If taking risks causes you anxiety, refuse the promotion to middle management/coordinator (see Chapter Five).

6.  True: 1, False: 0. Intrapreneurs must commit to long hours, since their efforts are usually made outside the job description routine.

7.  True: 1, False: 0. Intrapreneurs must do new things, or, as jet pilots say, "They must push the edge of the envelope." In some cases, these things are unappealing. For example, you might have to recommend letting someone go, or do a break-even analysis, or face the nastiest client in the practice. If you want to do only what you know and do best, with minimal operational conflict, then intrapreneurship may not be for you.

8.  True: 0, False: 1. This trait often marks the once-successful intrapreneurs, whose great programs have begun to flounder. Biting off too much disrupts operations and alienates people. If you are disciplined about keeping your commitments controllable, your chances for lasting success within a practice rise.

9.  True: 1, False: 0. If it's True, you're more likely to remain both an intrapreneur and married. If your mate is not so self-sufficient, beware. Spouses often grow jealous of the total dedication shown to the practice, rather than to them.

10.  True: 1, False: 0. Answering True puts you in the company of many regular entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, who feel driven to become successful and who eventually make the grade. This quality helps you focus and shut out other concerns.