Creating an Innovative and Agile Organization (Part 10 of 12)
For the past few years, organizations have been implementing new and innovative approaches to try and attain success. Many companies and businesses are placing emphasis on establishing an innovative and agile organization. Organizational agility is not just a trend or buzzword in the business world. It is a tactical mindset shift that mandates rampant methods and product development chains. Moreover, it allows employees to work on their collaborative skills in order to work towards their fullest potential.?
Shifting into an innovative and agile organization is not an easy venture to take on. Before anything else, it must always begin with a change of mindset. At some point, it becomes better to deviate from the legacy and traditional principles of the business. These traditions could hinder people to develop their flexibility, creativity, and engagement. An innovative and agile organization must be adaptive to change - whether that change is for the better or not. HR leaders under this kind of working environment value continuous improvement and learning, by acquiring innovative ideas from their employees, and optimizing these ideas into their products and services.
?With that being said, our panel for today will be focusing on the importance of having an innovative and agile organization. The invited guest speakers will be sharing tips, advice, and insights regarding the proper way of creating one.?
Before we move forward into the actual discussion, it is time to introduce our speakers first: Rajeswari Ramanan, Head of Talent, Performance, and OE of the United Health Services; Joe Pope, Director, HR Operations of the? Nixon Peabody LLP; Mindy Honcoop, Chief People Officer; and lastly, Temitope Azeez, Global Director People, Culture, and HSE of the PEG Africa.?
Starting with the usual, we have asked the speakers to briefly introduce themselves and share their thoughts on how they envision an agile and innovative organization.?
Kicking off the conversation was Rajeswari 一 Raji, as we call her. She stated that the pandemic is something that will never go away completely. As a result, we are left with no choice but to adjust our world of work. Now that we are in the transition phase, organizations are now prioritizing the implementation of an agile and innovative organization. But what does it look like??
Organizations that are agile and innovative are composed of people who constantly think outside the box. They are filled with willingness to challenge the status quo and learn new things. Aside from this, they are also open to new ideas because these ideas might probably work effectively with their target audiences and clients. Most importantly, an agile and innovative organization co-create innovative solutions, regardless of one’s position.
Following this, Joe mentioned that organizations who are agile and innovative are intellectually curious. They are always asking questions such as: “Why do we do things the way that we are doing them?”,? “Why should we want to change?”, and “What do we want to solve for?”. As a result, having the safety to ask those hard questions is very important in an organization in order for it to adapt to unprecedented changes that might occur in the future.?
Furthermore, he also added that the future of work is really not being bound by your traditional job descriptions. In some ways, traditional job descriptions can either empower or limit us. Thus, the organization of tomorrow is going to look past that and think about different initiatives, talents, and skills that each individual brings to the table to achieve great things
As for Mindy, she pictures agile and innovative organizations that reward and celebrate vulnerability. When there is vulnerability, trust comes along which is vital for us to have that intellectual friction in order to constantly innovate and improve.
Moving forward, the speakers were also asked about the role of HR as an architect of culture that allows innovativeness and agility to actually emerge and happen naturally in the organization.?
To Raji, perfectionism actually becomes a barrier that hinders people to be flexible and creative. If they focus on being too much of a perfectionist 一 to the extent that they are not allowed to make mistakes 一 they will not grow. This is why HR are now trying to mobilize themselves to be more risk friendly.
Mindy said HR must have the opportunity to facilitate its organizations and be able to give the employees the right tools to learn how to be safe and vulnerable with others. It is also important that HR knows how to get out of the way of decision making. Being able to put the decision-making down to the team and at the same time, help build self-governed teams that are able to have more autonomy will help drive work forward. Moreover, it is also important to set team norms that celebrate vulnerability.
Joe mentioned that it is important to give your team the bandwidth and the space to bring ideas to the table and figure things out for themselves. That's how they learn and grow without being instructed all the time. He also added that we, in HR, should also be asking the hard questions of the managers and not just supporting what they're saying. We must be challenging assumptions, making sure that they have done their part to model the right behaviors, communicate expectations, and drive the innovation that they're looking for.
For the last part of the discussion, the speakers shared some skills and capabilities that HR needs to build, both as individual professionals and as a function, in order to be agents of creating an agile and innovative organization.?
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According to them, it is vital to really understand what we are measuring, because a lot of times what we measure is what we get. It would be also helpful if we are capable of creating a scientific mindset into a hypothesis. Aside from this, the ability to gather data and be curious to put on an infinite mindset is also an edge for HR. We should have that commitment to being creative and innovative, challenge our barriers, and lastly, have an agile mindset.
You may also check out the other articles on our Expert Series:
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2 年This is excellent way to, Make Work Life Better! Challenging the status quo with what Hal Gregersen refers to as catalytic questions: "...Joe mentioned that organizations who are agile and innovative are intellectually curious. They are always asking questions such as: “Why do we do things the way that we are doing them?”,?“Why should we want to change?”, and “What do we want to solve for?” As a result, having the safety to ask those hard questions is very important in an organization in order for it to adapt to unprecedented changes that might occur in the future."