Status quo: The biggest enemy for an HR Leader !

The advent of technology and rapidly changing customer requirements are ushering in marked changes in the way organizations innovate and manage their growth. The best examples of innovation are those that have an element of disruption, or of challenging the status quo. This kind of innovation creates entirely new avenues for growth, often around customer needs that have been previously overlooked. Continuous change in this VUCA world is imperative for business survival – an imperative that demands a disruptive role from HR.

An organizational instinct for challenging status quo cannot be built overnight. It is a habit that has to be cultivated and nurtured gradually, yet consistently. All leaders in organisation, across levels, need to play their part in encouraging this behaviour and making it part of a deep-rooted organisation culture.

The key test for any leader’s leadership ability is when the status quo is challenged. Leaders in any organisation are not meant to be content, but rather to make things better. HR plays key role in influencing leaders to make things better, and therefore specially obliged to challenge the status quo. Challenging the status quo is inspiring ordinary people to deliver extraordinary results.

This transition is fraught with challenges. Here are some of the challenges:

1. Confronting existing processes

This requires self-confidence, clarity of thought and courage to express path-breaking ideas. In the Indian context where confrontation soon becomes a personal battle, this is one of the very challenging and difficult barriers to overcome. Challenging status quo sometimes is also seen as an act of reversing the decisions of predecessors and can be misconstrued as a political stride. Therefore one has to handle it very delicately. Experienced and seasoned leaders are well aware of this reality and are capable of dealing with it.

2. Lack of orientation

Some leaders lack an entrepreneurial mind set, they cannot align expertise, break down silos, operationalize change or figure out ways to evolve and incentivize their people to connect the dots in an environment that encourages outside the box thinking.

3. Lack of ambition

Aspiring to grow and take on higher responsibility is a critical component embedded in the latest definition of High Potential Employees. Employees who carry stars in their eyes and are ambitious enough to progress in their career will adopt the culture to change the status quo and do something very different in their role positively impacting the organisational growth.

4. Hierarchical monster

Most organizations have a tremendous deep belief in company hierarchy, and if hierarchy is the game, any attempt to challenge the status quo will fail. In a lot of companies, managers tend to view new ideas more as threat than somthing that could drive business forward.  Ultimately, this attitude becomes frustrating for most people especially the youngsters and ultimately they quit organisation.

However here are some ideas to overcome these challenges:

1. Fight against mediocracy

The leader should be flag bearer of fighting mediocracy. When someone says it can't be done, or that it is impossible, the leader should be the first one in line to try it out. Test the practicality of the idea, and then put everything behind it to make it work somehow. That will bring you way above average through the skills you learn in handling difficult problems, never giving up, and through realizing that your potential is far greater than you believe.

2. Overcome ‘Chalta Hai’ Attitude

‘Chalta Hai’ attitude is the biggest enemy of anything you do. HR can carefully monitor this behaviour and get rid of this from the organisation. This is not easy and requires lot of patience, sometimes to the extent of obstinacy, but once it is established, it is easy to sail.

3. Embracing risk

Embrace risk is the new normal in leader`s life.  We live in uncertain times. We must learn to anticipate the unexpected and create high-performance environments in which people work well together under pressure and can readily adapt to a constant wave of change to stay ahead of the market and the competition.

4. Leaders have to evolve as leaders

You may be a leader in your jobs for 25 years or more and you know everything, but if you do not reinvent yourself as a leader to serve the changing workplace and marketplace, you have not gotten your hands dirty enough to evolve – and see and seize new opportunities even as you manage existing ones.

5. Do not form one man army 

Aligning oneself with people at the power core of the organisation is essential. The idea of challenging status quo has to be sold to critical group of people and their buy-in should be sought. Work is largely about protecting perches and keeping like minded people together. If you come in and try to mess with that, it will be too jarring and your ideas will go nowhere. A lot of managers tend to  withhold information down a business chain, it protects their perch in the process. And, sadly, many managers believe that organisational breakthroughs can only occur at their level. At this intersection, it becomes really hard for anyone to challenge the status quo.

6. Organizational readiness

Organisation values should support behaviour that encourages the culture of change where employees and leaders consistently embrace them. Success comes only when it is surrounded by people who want their success to continue and are inspired to do more. HR has to play a key role in building this culture.

Simply put, challenging the status quo actually means challenging something that everybody wants but few are willing to do. Though every business can benefit from repeatable practices that are designed to ensure consistency, a few leaders find value in questioning the standard operating procedures and HR has a role to create these leaders. For creating a culture of challenging status quo, HR has to develop skills to influence business leaders to adapt to changing times and question the traditional approaches, develop an external view of the latest trends and to apply best practices to the organizational requirements. HR has to come out of the traditional role in which they simply assist business leaders in their thought process and will have to add a fresh perspective.

Research shows that employees prefer to work in organisations that constantly offer a challenging work environment where they see an opportunity to expand their capabilities. In the absence of this they become uninterested, their excitement fades gradually and they are left with nothing but the existing foundation not built to disrupt substitutional and evolutionary thinking. Obviously, a challenging work culture is a proven retention strategy for aspiring and high performing employees.

In spite of massive advantages only 2% of leaders challenge the status-quo. Organisations that fail to build this culture, cease on their ability to innovate results during adversities. Question arises, how often do we witness HR leaders challenge the status quo and lead to build this culture in organisation?

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