How to operate agile teams within tight corporate structures? Spoiler alert: it is possible.

Once upon a pre-pandemic time, our Innovation Lab members at the International Trade Centre (ITC) defined a three-year strategy with the aim to show to our senior leaders and our colleagues how our learnings from the past 5 years (until then in 2019) had resulted in a coherent offering of innovation services for the organization. We didn’t anticipate?that our plans would look very different just one year after having started, and that wasn’t because of COVID-19, it was because of the very nature of innovation work. This is the recap of how an initiative that wasn’t in our strategic plan back in 2019, became the core programme of our team. ?

How it all started?

At the end of 2019, an organization-wide survey which was launched to get the perception of colleagues on the Innovation Lab yearly activities showed us that many colleagues appreciated our work. However, several of them didn’t see a clear link between the initiatives carried out at the Lab and the core work of the organization. ?

To tackle this issue, we changed the strategy around our offering and launched the Innovation Challenges initiative, the first long term incubation programme in ITC that would guide teams in a full-year cycle to develop solutions to key corporate challenges. ?

The first cohort kicked off in 2020 with different teams formed by challenge owners, and Innovation Lab focal points to address: knowledge sharing optimization, fostering an inclusive working culture, rethinking working environment, and greening ITC. In total, 16 colleagues were part of this first cohort.??

What happened along the way? Then things got interesting…?

Flexibility is the first word I can think of when reminiscing about the whole process, and this is because of two elements. First, the process that was initially designed to run for one year had to be extended for an additional year. This was because the team had to have multiple discussions to ensure that the buy-in from teams working on those issues was there to test solutions. Second, because the coordination within our team changed constantly, as we are a volunteer-based structure,?the challenge teams needed more time working around their own workloads. For us, patience worked as our fuel, and perseverance pushed our teams further. ??

Operating agile teams like the Innovation Challenges teams in our organization was not going to be easy, we knew that, because of the different procedures involved in making new things happen. However, innovators tend to have a more positive outlook on things before embarking on big challenges (or we’d like to think so), which is also what helps to push boundaries and reinvent the status quo. And we did push boundaries with our first innovation challenges cohort:?

First, for the first time we had continuous support from senior management, giving advice on the choice of the challenges themes, and meeting with teams in bilateral sessions to provide specific feedback. Various teams presented formally to our Senior Management Committee. This was key to keep most challenge teams engaged for the full two years. ?

Second, we selected challenge owners who were not traditional Lab members, fans of innovation as we would say, but people who had an interest on the challenge area and for whom it made sense to contribute to the solution. This resulted in a very low turnover of challenge owners. ?

Third, by the end of the programme, many challenge members stated that they would continue participating in the initiatives they had created during the challenges programme. They considered that team collaboration was one of the aspects they enjoyed the most and having the Lab as a supporter and a guide was crucial to making things happen. ?

What made us proud?

We asked our team members what made them proud about the process, and this is what they said:?

• Creating the 100 coffees for inclusion:??

Inclusion has multiple meanings and depending on each person’s cultural background, experiences with the concept can vary. To explore the different points of view, the team created a concept to have coffees between senior managers, members of the inclusion team, and randomly selected colleagues. The result of the random coffees were caffeinated ideas to create a male allyship programme and designate a new Focal Point for Geographic and Racial diversity. An article was published on the UNToday website by @Hannah and @matthew.??

Team members: @Hannah, @Joanne, @Claire.??

• Creating the ITC Shares concept for knowledge sharing:?

Since the first field coordinator’s visit in summer 2019, @steffi engaged with colleagues working in different projects across the globe and asked them what ITC could do to integrate teams better. Steffi found the ideal platform within the Challenges programme, to implement the suggestions that our colleagues had highlighted. Amongst these suggestions, the sessions called “ITC Shares” to enable conversations between colleagues in different project locations and colleagues in Geneva was born. We had three different sessions in topics related to MSME resilience, and connectivity. ?

Team members: @Stefi, @Julia, @Evelyn, @Raph, @Luisa, @Marina.??

• Adopting a data-based approach to address zoom fatigue:?

The team focused on “rethinking the working environment” had to do significantly pivot because of the pandemic. The team decided to focus on gathering insights from colleagues on how the pandemic and the related shift to working from home was affecting our colleagues and open a conversation where good practices could be highlighted, and recommendations could be captured. The “blazer and sweatpants” series was launched, to discuss the results from the data gathering exercise and design a way forward with the help from a professional facilitator.?

Team members: @ikuru and @rebeka.?????

What’s next??

The next cohort of the Innovation Challenges programme starts in 2022 with new ambitions. Our objective is to test a leaner model that could be accomplished within six months with the same levels of buy-in and collaboration. ?If you want to know more about our first programme, or if you are running similar programmes in your organization, feel free to reach out to [email protected] ! ?

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