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Now you might wonder whether you are alone in sensing a smudge of [[cognitive dissonance]] about this. You are not. | Now you might wonder whether you are alone in sensing a smudge of [[cognitive dissonance]] about this. You are not. | ||
However imaginative they feel themselves to be, people who work in large organisations — and the [[JC]] speaks here from thirty odd years’ coalface experience, by the way — go out of their way to take absolutely ''no'' personal risk. The more they harp on about their “intrepreneurial spirit”, the less real-world risk they will take | However imaginative they feel themselves to be, people who work in large organisations — and the [[JC]] speaks here from thirty odd years’ coalface experience, by the way — go out of their way to take absolutely ''no'' personal risk. The more they harp on about their “intrepreneurial spirit”, the less real-world risk they will take. | ||
For as {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} has observed: ''all'' [[employee]]s have one, ''enormous'', [[tail risk]] — the one | For as {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} has observed: ''all'' [[employee]]s have one, ''enormous'', [[tail risk]] — the one those who have found themselves clutching [[Iron Mountain]] boxes outside the premises of [[Enron]] and [[Lehman]] know all about. But even that calamity is only the sudden discontinuation of a [[coupon]], rather rather than forfeiture of your [[capital]]. The men and women of Lehman and Enron who did not wind up in jail were quickly back in a saddle elsewhere. | ||
In any case that one big risk is plenty enough for most employees in large organisations. Thereby, successful ones will construct entire professional trajectories around the singular objective of ''avoiding'' anything — ''anything'', however innocuous at first sight it may seem — which could, in any conceivable light, even ''resemble'' [[risk]]. | In any case that one big risk is plenty enough for most employees in large organisations. Thereby, successful ones will construct entire professional trajectories around the singular objective of ''avoiding'' anything — ''anything'', however innocuous at first sight it may seem — which could, in any conceivable light, even ''resemble'' [[risk]]. | ||
To be sure, the organisation itself will take risks — it has to: there is no [[return]] without [[risk]] — but the key for the canny intrapreneur is to “syndicate” her personal underwriting capacity to the gormless | To be sure, the organisation itself will take risks — it has to: there is no [[return]] without [[risk]] — but the key for the canny intrapreneur is to “syndicate” her personal underwriting capacity to the gormless Boxer the Horse types — men and women who plough loyal furrows through valleys in the shadow of death, unwittingly risking their own limbs to clear a safe path through terrain infested with mines, snakes, vermin and illness, that their intrapreneurial colleages can safely follow, as soon as they are back from the [[panel discussion]] or [[awards]] presentation at which they have been blowing their own trumpet. | ||
Intrapreneurs are an organisation’s [[apex creditor]]s: they feed first, drink longest at the well, and manage their own private [[conflicts of interest]] — namely, to spend as little time at the well as possible, while drafting as much as is humanly possible from it — while the stockholders and actual workers stand by. | Intrapreneurs are an organisation’s [[apex creditor]]s: they feed first, drink longest at the well, and manage their own private [[conflicts of interest]] — namely, to spend as little time at the well as possible, while drafting as much as is humanly possible from it — while the stockholders and actual workers stand by. | ||