Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER JUNE 2018 6 NEWS Pursuing innovation requires revamped leadership agenda: Expert Five strategies to help CHROs build an employee-powered innovation culture BY MARCEL VANDER WIER CONTRARY to most leader- ship mandates, innovation is not a top-down procedure, according to Polly Labarre, author and edito- rial director of the Management Lab in New York. "Most large change programs or transformation programs fail… because they are tightly scripted and engineered from the top down, because they're rolled out and pushed out to the organiza- tion versus trying to figure out where is the momentum," she said. "If you look at the history of suc- cessful… change and social move- ments, often the most impactful change starts in the smallest way and the most unexpected places," said Labarre, speaking at CHRO Conference 2018, hosted by the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) in Toronto last month. e role of a CHRO is to foster a culture that mobilizes those types of movements through a reshaped leadership model, she said. "e vast majority of employees still work under the dead hand of 'business as usual,'" said Labarre. "For far too many people, the world is far less creative, far less productive, and far less fulfilling than it could be. at is profound- ly limiting for individuals and it's increasingly ruinous for the orga- nizations in which they work." "It's not that leaders don't grasp the grave, existential importance of expanding their ability to adapt and innovate, to keep pace with all the relentless change in the world. It's not that they haven't seen de- cade after decade of insurgents crushing incumbents," she said. "It's because… while (industry leaders) have so many resourc- es… It's the challengers that tend to have the resourcefulness, the agility, the ingenuity, the audacity to reinvent their industry and to keep reinventing themselves." Modern organizational struc- ture was not designed for adapt- ability or innovation, said Labarre. Rather, it was created more than a century ago to maximize predict- ability and control. "The processes, systems, the power structures that rule orga- nizations of every stripe today, they were invented at the same time to routinize, to standardize, to control human unpredictabil- ity and variation — to effectively squash all kinds of initiative and imagination and passion. at's called bureaucracy." Such a framework does not foster creative disruption — the order of the current economy — "where it is the creative and the disruptive individuals and orga- nizations that win," she said. "All change, by definition, is against the rules. Creativity is fun- damentally subversive in nature. Inventing the new is an act of de- fiance in a world that's character- ized by obedience to convention," said Labarre. "It's the outliers, the individu- als and the organizations who are eager and willing to challenge the status quo who tend to come up with the ground-breaking and the world-changing solutions today." An organization's capacity to adapt and innovate is a function of an HR leader's ability to unleash and mobilize employees' ingenu- ity, she said. "Your challenge is to migrate, to create a migration path from the well-entrenched models of lead- ership and employment, and work to a more fully human design." ere are five strategies that can help CHROs and human resources departments build an innovation culture pow- ered by engaged employees, according to Labarre: lead with authority, operate with transpar- ency, "hack your org," prototype the future, and learn as quickly as you can. Lead with authority e most vibrant and innovative employers operate with a different set of design rules, where leader- ship is conducted by committee, ideation is encouraged and career paths are individual, she said. "ese principles — and ones like them — they are on the march. ey're woven into the DNA of the next generation of leaders." HR leaders need to shift their mindset to foster mobilization and inspiration of employees in a collective effort to achieve great- ness, said Labarre. Even as the world moves in the direction of individual freedoms such as global connectivity, and endless creative platforms, "that kind of individual autonomy — the expansion of it — lags far be- hind in the world of organization." Operate with transparency Allowing all employees an op- portunity to align themselves with new ideas or initiatives is another pillar of the new leadership agen- da, according to Labarre. "e work of leadership is less about directing and planning and making decisions and visioning, and it's more about involving people," she said. "One of the most powerful ways you can become more than the sum of your parts, where you can punch above your weight as an organization, is to devise a pow- erful architecture of contribution, which is something that enlists, inspires, mobilizes a rich mix of creative, talented, passionate people wherever they sit in your organization, and even beyond your organization, to become true co-creators of the future." Innovation can often become a charisma contest, excluding quieter, fringe voices on the front lines of the organization, said La- barre. Organizational leadership needs to instead find a solution that democratizes the production of all ideas. Hack your org Realigning an organization to fuel innovation is another critical step for HR leaders, she said. "If you really want to create a sustaining capacity for innovation CAREpath is the only Canadian Health Care navigation program of its kind offered in Canada. We have extensive experience in navigating Canadians through the health care system. Cancer Assistance Seniors' Care Assistance HealthCare Assist Your Wellness Partner "All change, by definition, is against the rules. Inventing the new is an act of defiance in a world that's characterized by obedience to convention." QUESTIONS > pg. 12 A CHRO's role is to foster a workplace culture that mobilizes successful change movements through a reshaped leadership model, said innovation expert Polly Labarre at HRPA's CHRO Conference 2018 in Toronto on May 3. Credit: Ali Aghtar/HRPA

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