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How have recent disruptive crises transformed you, as a person and as a leader? Have you made radical changes in your ways to see, to question, to observe, to think, and to act? If not, you are most likely missing out on a tremendous opportunity. Because crises present struggles, but they also offer opportunities for courageous changes: in our seeing, our thinking, our actions, and thus, and most importantly, in our impact, as a person and as a leader. To seize these opportunities is to act as a leader and as an innovator. Because a true leader is a synonym for innovator. 
Our recent article “Innovator is the other name for Leader” explores the intrinsic relationship between innovator and leader, between innovation and true leadership.

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Innovator is the other name for Leader

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

– Steve Jobs

The pandemic, the latest incarnation of multiple global disruptions in our VUCA world, challenges every aspect of our lives and the way we see, think, plan, and act. It also challenges the purpose, the mission, the processes, and even the survival of our organizations. And because almost everything is changing or must be reinvented – sometimes radically – we can say confidently that the organizations that succeed now and will thrive in the future are those led by and populated with innovators. 

But, who are those innovators?

How do innovative leaders see and think?

What is their relationship with knowledge and novelty?

How do they act to make their organizations a great place for innovation?

Great leaders are innovators by default.

They innovate in their views of the present and the future and in the ways they lead their organizations towards the future. Great leaders’ innovation derives from and results in seeing differently and having different perspectives. It also has a different ground, a different relationship with the knowledge and the certainties it engenders. 

Innovators are leaders by default.

They lead the new ways of seeing and thinking. It takes courage and leadership to dare to question the status quo, to see differently, and to open up new pathways.

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Great leaders and innovators:

– See differently

– Think differently

– Approach data and knowledge differently

– Act differently

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Innovators observe and see differently.

They explore and connect perspectives from different fields: they are not afraid to transgress the rules of disciplines and their boundaries; they acknowledge the conditionality of disciplinary-based seeing what we have named ‘science’, ‘art’, ‘design’, etc. They know that these boundaries have been created by the limits and the limitations of our knowledge and by our methods of observation. And they challenge these limits by enriching their methods of observation and by creating new perspectives. Leaders are inspired by nature’s lack of walls, by its masterful design of seamlessness and harmony. When the innovator’s different seeing crystalizes into a unique, distinctive and inspiring outlook of the future, we call it a leader’s vision or visionary leadership.     

Innovators question differently. 

They know that novelty starts with questioning and defying the status quo. Innovators have their questioning mechanisms always ‘on’. They are better equipped to capture the changes in their environment and to look for new perspectives and solutions. For innovative leaders, the questions are more important than the answers and the certainty of knowing. They focus on the questions because the questions bring openness while the answers too often bring closure. Therefore, for the innovators, the questions always outnumber and are at least two steps ahead of the generated answers. However, innovative leaders do not only question the status quo; they go further and explore the knowledge and the certainties that led to its reign. 

Innovators think differently by approaching data and knowledge differently.

They don’t succumb to linear or discipline-based models of thinking that have been engrained in us by our education. They prize the importance of the questions that lead to new knowledge and to informed ignorance because they know that innovation is grounded in knowledge but knowledge is not its territory.Innovation travels the lands of the unknown as much and as often – if not more – than the lands of the known. True innovation emerges in and from the gray zone between the known and the unknown: this is its genuine territory. Great leaders and innovators operate from this gray zone, with different from the common mortals’ approaches to knowledge and learning. 

Innovators act differently.

Innovative leaders do not innovate for themselves. They are connected to a higher purpose and they innovate for the common good. Innovative leaders also do not innovate by themselves. They innovate in and through their organizations and the people they lead. They inspire innovation and creativity in others. They promote a culture of innovation in their organizations. They learn unceasingly and continuously invest in developing themselves and their people.  

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Great leaders don’t manage people. 

Great leaders inspire people and their vision, creativity, originality, and search for meaning. And thus, they ignite people’s contributions.

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How do innovative leaders do this?

• They recognize that there are multiple perspectives on everything; they refuse black-and-white visions and navigate the ambiguity of the grey zones.  
• They stimulate diverse thinking and views.
• They operate not within but from the edges of current knowledge.
• They challenge organizational culture of compliance. Compliance is not the innovators’ cup of tea. They acknowledge its limits and the risks of withering imagination and creativity. 
• Where others see errors or problems, innovators see opportunities to learn and act. 
• They take risks. They know that smart risk-taking is what too often distinguishes a leader form a manager.
• They reveal the colours in others and preserve the colourful birds in their organizations. 
• They promote experimentation and creativity by linking people and ideas and by creating interactions that inspire new thoughts and designs.
• They stand by ethical leadership grounded in humanistic values and they are always conscious of the impact of their actions on their people and communities.

True leaders are – like no one else – aware of the biases in their organizational data and knowledge. Swearing by the data available today is to ignore a basic rule: every bit of progress builds on the revision of the facts and/or of the exploration tools used yesterday. Innovative leaders know that changing the methods of data collection and/or examination leads to new observations and therefore to new perspectives and findings. Seeing one’s way of seeing is – for innovative leaders – a door opener to new worlds and new opportunities.   

Genuine leaders build resilient organizations. They achieve that by constantly developing and innovating. Their fields of innovation for resilience include organizations’ mission, structures, processes, people, and relationships. The pandemic crisis has demonstrated once again: organizational resilience goes hand in hand with innovation. 

In our VUCA and pandemic context, innovator is – like never before – the other name for a genuine leader. The one that dares to see, question, think, and act differently. In ways that draw the line between a leader and a follower. And most importantly, that create new meaning and positive futures in people’s, organizations, and communities’ lives. 

Every crisis is a test and an opportunity. Opportunities are revealed through new ways of seeing, questioning, thinking and doing. To reveal possibilities, every organization needs to awaken the innovation in its people. And for that it needs innovative leaders.

And you, how do you ignite innovation and populate your organization with innovators to lead in the world of tomorrow?

Contact us to engage in discussion and action to achieve this goal and to learn about our program Innovator is the other name for Leader.

©Blagovesta Maneva-Sleyman. All rights reserved.

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What is the crisis revealing about innovation and leadership in our organizations?

The pandemic – the latest incarnation of multiple global disruptions in our VUCA^[1] world – challenges every aspect of our lives and the way we see, think, plan, and act. It also challenges the purpose, the mission, the processes, and even the survival of our organizations. And because almost everything is changing or must be reinvented – sometimes radically – we can say confidently that the organizations that succeed now and will thrive in the future are those led by and populated with innovators. 

But, who are those innovators?

Genuine leaders build resilient organizations. They achieve it by constantly developing and innovating. Their fields of innovation for resilience include organizations’ mission, structures, processes, people, and relationships. The pandemic crisis has demonstrated once again: organizational resilience goes hand in hand with innovation. 

In our VUCA and pandemic context, innovator is – like never before – the other name for a genuine leader. The one that dares to see, question, think, and act differently. In ways that draw the line between a leader and a follower. And most importantly, that create new meaning and positive futures in people, organizations, and communities’ lives. 

Every crisis is a test and an opportunity. Opportunities are revealed through new ways of seeing, questioning, thinking and doing. To reveal possibilities, every organization needs to awaken the innovation in its people. And for that it needs innovative leaders. 

Is your organization a magnet for innovators?

Do you want to populate it with leaders-innovators? 

Contact us to engage in discussion and action to achieve this goal.

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Join the conversation. Here you’ll find short pieces on issues that attracted our attention… 

What is the crisis teaching us about corporate planning?

Seven lessons for the next planning exercise

You are undoubtedly – like many other leaders now – carefully observing and considering the impact of the current crisis on your organization. And you are also probably realizing that:

• the crisis is changing our world in a way that will make the return to old ways of thinking and operating not only difficult, but likely impossible;
• you have to lead your organization, not in bouncing back to the future you may have imagined before, but in bouncing forward to an altogether new future, one not yet charted;
• the window to make those changes may close sooner rather than later and you have to act now.

The crisis is a test and an opportunity for organizations. In a recent article, I outlined some essential steps to make the best out of the crisis, summarized below:

The surprise by which the current crisis has taken most organizations suggests that the way they have planned for the future has failed to produce the expected readiness for events such as pandemics. It is thus not surprising that many leaders identify the need to change their organization’s approach to the future as a priority. This starts with changing the way corporate planning is conducted.

What are the key lessons the crisis is teaching us about corporate planning?

The crisis provides valuable lessons about planning and reaching for better readiness for and resilience in the future. We compiled them into seven key teachings inspired by our observations:

Lesson 1: Strategic planning is not the simple update of already existing plans

It is not a secret that many organizations see strategic planning as an administrative task, if not a chore, and often choose to conduct their planning process as a more or less sophisticated update of already existing plans. Yes, these existing plans, the fruit of strategic thinking exercises, have to be studied and analyzed for their good calls – but most importantly for their blind spots, for the important trends overlooked in previous trends analyses and scenario developments. Moreover, beyond integrating new data, corporate planning has to focus on identifying and exploring novel events, emerging trends, strong and weak signals and then apply a diversity of lenses to reframe and make sense of new possible futures, with their risks and opportunities.

Lesson 2: Constantly scanning the environment to detect risks and opportunities is not a luxury – nor is it a choice

Contrarily to what was advanced by some, COVID-19 was not a black swan event, the type of events that are beyond our ability to predict or detect them in advance. The truth is that the pandemic threat has been well documented in the literature, and forward-looking organizations have accounted for it as a prospective risk in their strategic plans. The crisis reminds us that the context of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), we live in gets more of the same, and in such a world, constantly scanning the environment is the most basic function we can perform to detect trends and drivers of change, and to understand our environment. Furthermore, to make sense of both present-day realities and the future, we need to apply diverse lenses and search for a variety of perspectives. We have to persistently challenge our assumptions and press play on our imagination to uncover risks and discover opportunities.

Lesson 3: More than ever, strategic planning has to engage and exhibit the collective intelligence of the entire organization

The crisis makes obvious another lesson in corporate planning: it is not a bureaucratic check the box activity performed by a few certified planners working in isolation. While organized by professional planners, providing structure and frameworks for the studies to perform and the discussions to come, strategic planning should engage the collective intelligence of the entire organization. The hugely complex reality we live and operate in requires multiple and diverse views. In every organization, there are multiple views and stories revealing our collective wisdom and aspirations. These stories do not only deserve to be heard; they have to find their way into the shared story of our next future, the one we are designing together. This is also the only effective way to make this story viable.

Lesson 4: Futures (Foresight) studies and systemic approaches are a must

It is not unusual – nor is it surprising – that major crises such as this pandemic lead to an increased interest in foresight and in longer-term thinking and projections about the future of our economies and societies. The crisis has made it clear that focusing on data (which by definition comes from the past and the present) alone cannot provide sound directions and solutions for the future. The crisis reinforces the importance of megatrend analysis, scenario development and exploration, and other futures studies methods as a must in strategic planning. This necessity – often driven by fears – finds relief in our imagination, our ability to project ourselves into the future and to envision better prospects for us – not only as individuals and organizations, but also as a human society. Futures perspectives offer the possibility to see the system holistically and to study its interdependencies and the interactions between all its elements, thus providing a much sounder foundation for strategic planning.

Lesson 5: Planning is not about reaching certainty; it is about experimenting with possible futures

The crisis teaches us that there is an urgency to examine our views of certainty and risk and to reassess our relation to organizational risk. This includes redefining and reconsidering risks as well as our organization’s tolerance and our responses to risks, not always in sync with the increasingly complex challenges offered by new realities. The crisis urges us to go beyond a one-time risk identification and assessment with some pro-forma mitigation “strategies”, and engage in continuous, enlarged in scope and deepened study of latent threats and their potential impact as well as the impact of the envisioned responses. It also points to the need to do this in a creative way. Planning is not about reaching certainty about the future; it is about experimenting with plausible futures to achieve better readiness for a variety of odds. There is also another lesson to take away from this crisis: when developing scenarios for the future, carefully consider biases. Desired futures are not the only futures that could happen – and nor are dystopias. Creating scenarios for a variety of prospective futures is how we can best identify a wide array of considerations and be in a position to react to a large spectrum of possibilities in the future.

Lesson 6: Knowing is not enough: it must be translated into plausible actions

While many organizations conduct megatrend collection and analysis for their strategic planning, some – even meticulous organizations – fail to translate the knowledge they have gained into action plans that will adequately and reasonably prepare them for the future. This is how even the most watchful organizations failed to prepare for this pandemic crisis. Megatrend analysis cannot be a substitute for strategic planning: it is only one step of it. Beyond the scarce identification of megatrends, drivers of change, and emerging tendencies that could potentially influence the future, concrete action should be taken to develop forward-looking metrics and plan for tangible steps in the event of potential profound changes. The crisis has also reminded us that contingency planning is much more than a list of employees, along with their phone numbers and emails. It is also about identifying concrete actions and steps to dealing with real crises.

Lesson 7: It’s not (only) about the plan, it’s (all) about the planning… and building resilience

The crisis offers another essential reminder: the main objective of strategic planning is NOT to come up with a strategic plan product. The goal is to conduct a sound strategic planning process. And while I won’t go as far as Dwight D. Eisenhower, who affirmed that “plans are useless but planning is essential”, it is clear that the biggest value of corporate planning is not in the product (which is almost inevitably called to change) – but in the process of planning. In seeing differently the present, the past and the future, in engaging the collective organizational intelligence to detect trends, risks and opportunities, and in outlining concrete actions in response. As such, strategic planning is also an essential means to build and enhance an organization’s resilience, which is the best pledge for the future.

And you, what are you learning from the crisis and what will you change in your corporate planning?

 

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The crisis: A test and an opportunity for the organizations

At the beginning of this year, most assuredly, your organization, like most organizations, did not have a mention of Covid-19 in its 2020 plan. Most likely, it was taken by surprise by the pandemic. As we are just beginning to measure the impact of the pandemic wave, it becomes evident that this impact may be further-reaching than expected. The crisis will change and is already changing organizations. Increased telework and rules of social distancing in the workplace are only the tip of the iceberg of looming changes. Many others are coming our way and organizations’ futures will depend on their ability to foresee these changes and act on them.      

The crisis is a test:

What can we learn from it? 

When a big crisis hits, it shakes everyone and everything. It shakes the entire organization. All of its people: from the CEO to the frontline employees. All of its structures, systems and departments. All of its processes and services. All of its relationships with clients and stakeholders.

A crisis shakes the organizational culture. Some of the myths we were telling ourselves about our organization are exposed as such – as myths, deprived of real foundations. Others are confirmed as representing our profound understanding of our organization’s mission and purpose. New myths will be created, based on our capacity to imagine and to look into the future.

Every crisis represents a series of tests for leaders. The bigger the crisis, the harder the leadership test, and the probability of passing it honourably. A crisis reveals certain leaders as “naked emperors” while it also makes emerge new leaders, whether with formal or informal powers, and hopefully with authentic and ethical leadership to shape a brighter future for organizations.

The crisis test inevitably shows our organization’s vulnerabilities. Identifying them and acting on them is imperative. The crisis also shows our organization’s strengths. Acting on them is also imperative, at least as much if not more important than acting on some of our vulnerabilities.

The crisis makes emerge new needs – in our social and economic environment, markets, people, in our own and other organizations. Some of these needs are crisis-related and temporary. Others have the potential to enrich and reinforce our mission. They also show the road to the future. Our capacity to detect them and to act on them is a test of our readiness for the future.

Ultimately, a crisis is a litmus test for our organization’s resilience and positioning to succeed in the future.

What is the pandemic revealing about your organization?

What lessons are you learning from your organization’s crisis test?

 

The crisis is an opportunity:

How do we prepare the after-crisis? 

A crisis is an opportunity to assess our organizations’:

• context and the impact of the current and anticipated changes;
• vulnerabilities and strengths;
• resilience and readiness for the future.

The crisis is also an opportunity to chart our organizations’ path toward the future:

• to envision new possibilities and develop plausible scenarios;
• to build the capacity not only to bounce back but to bounce forward in the after-crisis;
• to transform the vulnerabilities into strengths and the challenges into opportunities;
• to revisit our strategic plan and reform our way of planning;
• to prepare a solid, thoughtful, and actionable blueprint for the after-crisis.

And you, what are you doing to prepare your organization for the after-crisis?

How are you reinventing your organization to position it for success?

 

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Preparing the post-COVID-19

We are going through difficult and troubling times. We worry about our health, our families, friends and communities, our economy and our businesses, and our future. The future will prove that this crisis – as all other disasters in the past – is temporary. It will however bring pain and it will question and challenge many of the rules and assumptions we lived by. As every other crisis, this “perfect storm” will also bring new perspectives and new solutions to our problems, individual and collective. It is every leader’s responsibility to fight the crisis and its immediate challenges. But this is also every leader’s responsibility to prepare the after-crisis and to build a better future for their organization and their community.    

When a big crisis as COVID-19 hits, it shakes everyone and everything. It shakes the entire organization. All its people: from the CEO to the frontline employees. All its structures, systems and departments. All its processes and services. All its relationships with clients and stakeholders.

The organization’s landscape becomes a moving land and the territory we knew yesterday suddenly appears to be less familiar, with more rocks (uncertainties) than a land ready to be cultivated (certainties).

The crisis will inevitably show our organization’s vulnerabilities. Recognizing them and acting on them is imperative.

It will also show our organization’s strengths. Acting on them is also imperative, at least as much if not more important than acting on some of our vulnerabilities.

COVID-19 will make emerge new needs – in our social and economic environment, markets, people, in our own and other organizations. Some of these needs will be crisis-related and thus temporary. Others will have the potential to enrich and reinforce our organization’s mission. They will also show the road to the future. Our capacity to detect them and to act on them is a test for our readiness for the future.

Ultimately, a crisis is a litmus test for our organization’s resilience. It is an opportunity to learn from the past and the present and to prepare the future. 

A crisis not only tests your organization’s resilience, vulnerabilities and strengths, it also offers opportunities to chart your organization’s new future. Transforming the vulnerabilities into strengths and the challenges into opportunities is the only way to prepare for a brighter future in the post-COVID-19 Era.

What lessons would you learn from your organization’s crisis test?

How can you prepare your organization to succeed in the post-COVID-19 era? 

Contact us and engage your action now.

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Presentations at OECD Seminar

On March 2, 2018, our President Blagovesta Maneva-Sleyman gave two presentations and participated in panel discussions at an OECD seminar in Kiev, Ukraine: Supporting Decentralisation in Ukraine: Enhancing local civil service performance for effective public service delivery.

The seminar was part of a series held within the framework of the OECD project: Supporting Decentralisation in Ukraine. It focused on supporting Ukraine’s public institutions to build stronger public employment and management capacity at national and sub-national levels, and provided a platform for Ukrainian authorities to draw on the rich and diverse experiences of OECD countries.

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Report on Academic-Employer Connections in Canadian Colleges and Institutes

At the CICan 2017 Conference, Colleges and Institutes Canada officially launched a report written by our team: Academic-Employer Connections in Colleges and Institutes: The Role of Program Advisory Committees. This report is the first to document the various activities of program advisory committees and the context in which they are developing. As such, the key insights it provides are timely and important, as colleges and institutes continue to develop strategic partnerships that create learning, work and innovation opportunities for students, employers and communities at large.

Click here to download the full report.

The leadership we need

I have been wanting to write about this story for a while because more people deserve to know, reflect on, and get inspired by it. When, finally, a few months ago, I decided to put the words together, I learned some sad news: one of the story’s heroes, Bernard Lachance, had suddenly passed away. The obituary, in the image of the man’s modesty, did not mention this story – possibly one of many he was involved in – nor the thousands human lives it helped change.

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I first heard of Mulheres Mil (A Thousand (Strong) Women) a few years ago, when I was conducting research for a study commissioned by the Asian Development Bank and Colleges and Institutes Canada on the lessons learned from the rich experience of Canadian public colleges and institutes.

What the case study revealed was a simple yet brilliantly conceived and executed idea, a true trailblazer that evolved from a pilot project involving 60 unemployed Brazilian women without any marketable professional qualifications, to a huge national initiative that transformed the lives of thousands and thousands of people.[1] What the people who were impacted and empowered by this initiative did not know was the story behind it: how it was born, and how it spread to the hearts of millions.

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It all started one evening in 2005 at a dinner table, with a small piece of paper, a big vision, and hearts determined to help other people who had fewer chances in life. A handful of Brazilian and Canadian educators were discussing informally a problem that had been at the heart of their life’s work, and yet appeared to be unsolvable. Extreme poverty meant too many Brazilians, especially women, were either uneducated or poorly educated, thus preventing them from having jobs. Conversely, lack of access to employment caused millions of people, mainly women, to live in poverty and sometimes in extreme poverty across Brazil, thus barring them and their children from a good quality education. This vicious circle often perpetuated itself from generation to generation, condemning entire families and regions to poverty and to personal, social, and economic impasse.

With clear goal in mind, Brazilian educators and public policy developers were passionately searching for solutions to these problems and looking at other countries’ experiences in the matter. Inspired by the Canadian public colleges’ innovative practices with adult learners, namely the Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) method and the access to continuous education for all, the Brazilian pioneers connected with Canadian educators with previous extensive and convincing experiences in countries with similar problems.

The collective passion of these enthusiasts envisioned a pilot project and quickly spread to higher education institutions in Brazil and Canada. The power of the idea captured the hearts of educators and administrators from institutions in North and North-Eastern Brazil and Canadian colleges, with Niagara College at the forefront.

Sérgio Luis Alves de França, the father of the initiative, engaged the enthusiasm and streamlined the efforts of the Brazilian educators and institutions. Gutenberg Albuquerque became its fervent educator-in-chief and intermediary between cultures and approaches. Jos Nolle, Paul Brennan, Marie-Josée Fortin and many others (unfortunately, it is impossible to name everyone) provided their expertise and engaged their passion in a project many of them afterwards considered as one of the most exciting endeavors in their lives.

The Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition process offered opportunity and structure to recognize – in terms of college credits – the wealth of knowledge and skills mature students acquire not only through education but also through employment, volunteer work, and life experiences.

Also off the beaten track, inspired by the Canadian public colleges and institutes’ open access to post-secondary education for all, the Institutos federais (Federal Institutes) – Brazil’s venerable public education institutions – until then focused on high-end beneficiaries, opened their doors to non-traditional learners, thus reconnecting with their initial mission and purpose. Essential skills and on-the-job skills training programs, career counselling, job placement services, follow-up systems, and close relationships with local employers and communities were developed and multiple access support structures were created.

To scale-up the project, the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (now Colleges and Institutes Canada) and government organizations, such as the Brazilian Cooperation Agency and the Canadian International Development Agency, provided administrative and financial support to the initiative. Municipalities, civil and community associations, business and volunteer sector’s leaders joined their leadership in spreading the effort. Ultimately, thousands of Brazilian women galvanized their own leadership to change their lives and the lives of their families and communities.

Mulheres Mil thrived like no other initiative before it.

The small pilot project with 60 unemployed women in North-Eastern Brazil evolved into a national initiative with thousands, and then hundreds of thousands of participants across the country, when Mulheres Mil integrated another skills training program, Pronotec.

In a few short years, Mulheres Mil provided thousands of women with vocational training, matching students’ interests with available jobs in each region of the country, in addition to providing citizenship, human rights and women rights education.

These newly developed skills paved the road to employment and a new life for many women. The country’s large skills deficit was reduced and economic and social outcomes improved for thousands of people, families, and for entire communities and regions. A dialogue was established between people, institutions, and cultures.

Mulheres Mil courageously went to some of the roots of the problem of poverty and exclusion and reached out directly to the most vulnerable members of society. Women were specifically chosen as the main beneficiary group of Mulheres Mil: a large amount of empirical evidence shows the greater return on human capital investment in women, because of the extended benefits – often intergenerational – to the entire household and community.

Authentic and ethical leaders unearth the best in other people and inspire their leadership. In the case of Mulheres Mil, the quiet leadership of a few inspired global citizens enabled an expression of outstanding leadership in thousands of people, changing their lives for the better. It was as though to provide an illustration to the famous quote attributed to Margaret Mead:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

It is difficult to resist the temptation to ask ourselves:

And us, what legacy will we leave to the world?

 

[1] The Mulheres Mil story is told beautifully through moving first-person narratives in this publication commissioned by the Ministry of Education of Brazil: http://mulheresmil.mec.gov.br/images/stories/pdf/geral/livro_mulheres_mil_ingles.pdf

©Blagovesta Maneva-Sleyman. All rights reserved.

Join the conversation. Here you’ll find short pieces on issues that attracted our attention.