Who are the people with the “least formal authority” in your organization? Your interns! When you are ready to “redistribute power in a way that gives many more individuals the opportunity to lead,” why not start with them? At Company X, we interns are not all recent college grads. Some of us have advanced degrees in fields unrelated to the Company's products. We are intellectually curious and eager to apply what we know to our new domain. We don’t wear beanies and we don't make coffee (unless we want some). We work on meaningful projects. We take our laptops home. We meet with the CTO, who asks our opinion and sends us links to Harvard Business Review articles like “How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge.”
We are the (former) interns of Company X, and here is a sample of what we have done:
Intern 1 led meetings with OEMs to review Free and Open Source Software security issues and was made administrator of the company’s many security scanning tools. Intern 1 is now a Software Security Engineer.
Intern 2 coordinated the company’s International Trade Compliance standardization and documentation process and also documented the current state of the company’s Engineering department during implementation of the Oracle enterprise resource planning system. Intern 2 is now a Software Engineer.
Intern 3 took over NPD tracking for all Engineering tasks and deliverables and created several custom tracking tools as well as processes and procedures. Intern 3 is now a Project Manager with responsibility for Release Management.
Intern 4 revised documentation for the company’s intellectual property process and edited patent applications emerging from R&D projects. Intern 4 is now a Data Scientist.
Internship is not only a one way street beneficial to the interns who get to finish their training requirement for graduation or to the organization because of added input and savings from additional manpower. If organizations put their mind and support to designing an internship programs they can develop one that can harmass the enthuasiam to learn and drive of the trainees maybe tap innovative and fresh ideas from them. They just have to be given more trust and encouragement during their training. A good internship program to work well should be coupled with mentoring on the side of institution which send the interns and the organization which sponsors the interrship . Internship learning should be directed in mentoring so that the interns get the proper perspective of their experience yet allow them to explore the best of their potentials.
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Having guided many interns through challenging internships, I can only confirm that their fresh outlook and appetite for learning make them an ideal sounding board and a source of to-the-point questions. I can see this idea grow especially if it is complemented with a sort of mentorship. Mentors can help interns get a more broad and in-depth understanding of their organization's ecosystem, while also showing the 'real' working life in an organization and how that differs from the glossy pictures in the company newsletter. In return, mentors can 'test' hunches on interns or be surprised by a straight orward question that challenges accepted wisdom within the organization.
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