A642.3.3.RB – Lessons Learned

             Canfield (2011) wrote that it is of business or organizational imperative for a company to be competitive and fruitful in the local and global market.  He further stated that for us to compete, we have to improve; to improve, we have to change; and to change, we have to seize our old practices that are not meaningful anymore and we have to start doing new things that are meaningful.  To be competitive locally and globally, organizational leaders must develop and harness an innovative culture and empower change.

            This week’s reading first, I have learned that organizations need to focus on the training and development of an innovative leadership if they want to improve the performance of their team.  We will be faced with unfamiliar positions, situations, and challenges that are complex and to make sense of those complex and complicated problems; we are in great dire need of innovation leadership.  According to Barsh, Capozzi, and Davidson (2008), an innovative approach to leadership and leadership for innovation are the two elements of innovation leadership.  An innovative approach to leadership denotes different behaviors and actions how a leader like me manages, leads, and goes about his/her work.  Leadership for innovation, on the other hand, meant that I must grasp or understand how to develop and promote my organization’s culture where freedom of innovative thinking exist to solve issues and create new products, ideas, and services.

            Second, one of the learning points from this week’s reading was that organizational leaders who are fruitful and successful shapes their companies to be more hyper-intelligent and flexible, to be more systematic to deliver value.  In today’s generation of collaborative networks and open source are becoming to be a solid source of innovation that resulted in 37% of CEOs pursuing extended partnership (Organisational agility, 2009).  Agility has differing meaning to the CEOs and the CIO.  To the CEOs, agility or flexibility meant improving a scenario planning in carrying some oversight role in the midst of a market fluctuation.  In the eyes of the CIOs, improving the organization’s flexibility or agility can be accomplished through the process of upgrading and integrating the market’s knowledge-sharing process.

            Research showed that more executives have the tendency to rate marketing, sales, and customer service operational units as the agilest within their organization.  IT, finance, and HR were considered to be the least flexible unit due to the poorly alignment of process improvements and strategic imperatives.  As an HR leader, I have the responsibility to ensure that the performance measures of the underlying departments and functional activities assessed and are aligned with our organizational goals and business objectives.  

Lastly, I have learned that leading innovation is becoming to be paramount that it gives organizations stronger position from competitors, it generates consumers’ favor or appetite apropos to the organizations’ offering, and innovation magnifies organizations’ capacity to impact the global market.  Although innovation is geared towards increasing efficiency and reducing the cost for the customers, we also have to keep in mind that innovation is a result of the creativity of the human minds.  Incentivising employees for their creative work in not enough to boost advancement in technology and employee morale, retention, and development.  Open communication that is built on trust and acknowledging the employee’s creativity and contribution is of utmost importance to continually promote and encourage innovative and creative thinking within the organization.

            When a leader is faced with a problem or situation that is challenging and complex, or there is a presence of unclear direction, leaders like me cannot just dive in to resolve complex and demanding issues.  It is at this time that leaders need to take things slow, reflect, assess, and approach the situation by the utilization of innovative thinking.  Creative thinking does not depend on current facts or past experiences.  Innovative or creative thinking is open to any possibilities; it is intuitive, and it is more advantageous to be ambiguous allowing us to ask the question of “what if?”.  Innovative thinking enables leaders to present new ideas and bring in new energy as a leader finding resolutions to challenging issues or situations.

            As a human resources professional, I have developed excellent skills in coaching, identifying talented individuals that fit the culture of my organization and their future business units, and I have developed a new way to align a current employee or candidates talent, skills, abilities, and interests to their position in the company.  Although my new idea of tailoring the “job description” to the individual's skills, talents, strengths, and abilities is getting good feedback and acceptance from the group of our leadership team, there is still a presence of resistance from a handful group of leaders.  Developing and sustaining the type of cultural transformation required for organizations like mine to achieve our innovation objective is an excellent opportunity for me as an HR expert to bring in this kind of change.

            Another way of influencing my company’s cultural shift is by developing and implementing a two-way mentoring program.  New hire employees when strategically paired with a seasoned employee, the newer employee can gain invaluable knowledge from the seasoned employee.  When seasoned employee is strategically partnered with a new hire employee, can perk up the seasoned employee’s imagination and acceptance to new ideas and new technologies.  Implementing a two-way mentoring program is not only to the benefits of the mentor and mentee, but it is also to the advantage of my organization.  It is a strategic and cost-effective way to develop emerging employees keeping them energized and engaged and mostly, it helps us in developing a pipeline of future leaders who have a full understanding of the required behaviors, attitudes, and skills to be successful within our organization.

            Finally, as an expert in human resources management, I can develop and influence a workplace setting that is focused on the integration of work and life or life and work visa vi.  Workplace flexibility can be now a new paradigm at the workplace environment.  We need to focus more on setting a value on the contributions of our workforce and focus less on the physical hours worked by our employees.  If organizations like mine embrace progressive practices like two-way mentoring and workplace agility, employee retention rate will increase, as well as an increase in employee satisfaction and employee morale, and we will be more competitive in attracting top caliber talents or candidates.

References:

Canfield, J. and Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and

innovation today. Blake Lake Press.

Barsh, J., Capozzi, M., and Davidson, J. (2008). Leadership and innovation. McKinsey

Quarterly. Retrieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/leadership-and-innovation

Organizational agility: How business can survive and thrive in turbulent times. (2009,

March). The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.emc.com/collateral/leadership/organisational-agility-230309.pdf (Links to an external site.)