How to Thrive under Pressure - NATO's Human Capital Innovation Concept

How to Thrive under Pressure – Relevant Human Capital for a Relevant NATO

I am not going to shock the readers of NITECH if I state that the world is changing, and this change is marked by accelerating technology, a volatile economic landscape, fragile social contracts and uncertain geopolitics. Yet the speed of change somehow feels overwhelming. This fluidity of change pierces through the legacy systems (and our minds) due to the beautiful and powerful connectivity of everything to everything. So the question arises: how can organizations thrive in times of high pressure? How do we future-proof NATO and this connected ecosystem?

Allow me to tackle this through the human dimension in three interconnected lenses. We have to connect an organization’s mission to what we do all day. We then set a vision to amplify the impact that people have on an organization. Finally, we unleash the cultural change at work.

STAYING RELEVANT

So first, let’s connect the people element to the mission of the organization. NATO has been blessed with an evergreen mission that can be distilled into a simple statement – to defend freedom and preserve peace. We do that by staying relevant. This relevance is a combination of various things, from our shared values to military capabilities, from operational interoperability to resilient societies, and much more.

But from the institutional perspective, we are also a knowledge-centric organization that requires creative ideas and insights to ensure our relevance. Hence, the focus on people becomes crucial in our quest for innovative ideas. These innovative ideas and insights, generated by our people will, in turn, ensure NATO’s relevance, which is what the Alliance requires to deliver on its mission.

Second, there has never been a more urgent need to set a vision of how we should advance our human capital. Change is overwhelming for organizations and individuals, and the pandemic further accelerated this uncertainty. A clear vision underlined by key principles could serve as a stabilizing element, at the same time, offering resilience to the organization and an element of certainty to individuals.

At NATO International Staff, we have recently introduced the Human Capital Innovation Concept, which lays out the principles that will help solve human capital challenges for the NATO enterprise. The astoundingly simple vision – “relevant human capital for a relevant NATO” – implies a long-term view and focuses on the whatever-it-takes principle to deliver relevance.

To effectively progress toward the set vision, NATO has to become a tightly connected ecosystem collaborating on all challenges related to human capital. Four broad objectives, or the ‘4E model’, supports NATO’s vision of relevant human capital for a relevant NATO. Under the 4E model, the NATO enterprise will have to engage broadly to gain access to relevant human capital that is critical for our mission. We will evolve human capital by collaborating on talent development across the ecosystem. We shall enable human capital through a culture of innovation to solve the most pressing challenges that the Alliance is facing. Finally, we will aim to embed human capital as a core consideration in the Allies’ strategic discussions.

This set of objectives will guide the actions and initiatives by the entities of the NATO Enterprise to ensure we remain relevant by doing all we can to cultivate relevant human capital.

Third, with a glowing organizational mission and a vision for human capital progress set, how can we inspire change at work? Change is hard; change at complex institutions is even harder. But we also know that for actual change to happen, especially in the human capital domain, the effort has to penetrate the cultural building blocks of an organization. Our human resources team can design policies and procedures that will include the most progressive tenets of modern organizations, but if people do not internalize these innovations, the necessary change will not occur.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Therefore, grassroots-level effort becomes crucial, precisely because most ‘work’ happens at the individual and small-unit level. Individual motivation and team cohesion will determine both the quality of outputs and, eventually, will surface the outcomes to the whole organization. For all this to work, we cannot overstate the importance of diversity and inclusion initiatives in all we do in the talent domain.

Teams of diverse individuals operating in an inclusive setting will always have a better chance to arrive at creative solutions than homogenous ones working under constrained conditions. Selecting great people from all walks of life to work for NATO is vital, and so is the way we encourage our staff to grow, both through formal and informal training opportunities. Underlying all of this is a people-positive work culture that puts a premium on trust, collaboration and creative solutions.

To recap, I want us to think big. As the sun rises in the most western edge of the Hawaiian islands and sets in Eastern Europe, NATO stands ready to protect nearly a billion souls. NATO’s mission is beautiful, powerful and inspiring. As the next iteration of changes comes our way, we have to turn to the heart of what makes organizations work in order to stay relevant and to thrive. Because NATO is people.