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When Innovation (and Profit!) Can Save the World

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What if your business’ success could save the world?

That’s the underlying theme in our podcast episode with Borealis Foods CEO Reza Soltanzadeh. As a young doctor working with Doctors Without Borders, he saw first-hand the effects of poverty on health…and determined to do something about it. With Borealis Foods (NASDAQ: BRLS), he has…in the form of a humble noodle that just may be the catalyst to end malnutrition.

The key to his solution: relentless innovation!

With the pace of change in today’s business climate accelerating quickly, innovation remains vital to any work culture’s success. Reza took the standard broad strokes for innovating, then added several tweaks to help your team innovate successfully, too.

1. Reframe the question.

Often, the problem you’re facing has been defined by others—and seems intractable. Switching perspectives can make the solution suddenly obvious. While working in impoverished areas of India, the impact of poverty on health hit him hard. That sparked an epiphany: everyone defined the issue as “poverty creates hunger.” Reza realized there was another angle: poverty creates malnutrition…specifically, a lack of macronutrients and exceptionally affordable protein. That seemed more straightforward to solve.

2. Make sure you’re not the smartest person in the room.

The days of leaders having all the answers are long gone. Great leaders surround themselves with knowledgeable people. Reza recognized (to paraphrase Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy), “I’m a doctor, not a food scientist!” So, he assembled a team of experts, including food researchers, seasoned business execs, and even chef Gordon Ramsey! Their task is to develop high-protein food with efficient manufacturing so it’s super affordable and the business will thrive. That combined brain trust accomplished the mission.

3. Remember that failure must be an option.

The mission wasn’t accomplished without stumbles. No major innovation rolls to reality perfectly! It is critical to remember that. Failure is inevitable whenever you’re creating something truly new, unique, or out-of-the-box. Getting upset at failure makes your team risk-averse, and they grow less and less willing to innovate. Adopt the mind of a scientist instead: failure provides the knowledge and new data that feed your ultimate success.

4. It’s better when you’re not the center of the universe.

This is an extension of Point 2 above. In the same way you check your ego at the door when you work with your team, accept that your company can’t do it all. For example, a specialty manufacturer may have the best equipment and economies of scale to optimize your production. You may also get higher quality by sourcing raw materials from local providers as you expand to new regions. Or bring in a logistics firm to handle distribution more efficiently than you could imagine. You don’t have to reinvent every wheel: partner with other organizations to benefit from their expertise.

5. “We can figure this out.”

Attitude makes all the difference, mainly the attitude of leadership. Humans are remarkably creative creatures—“There is magic in human ingenuity,” Reza says. No problem is truly intractable. Assemble your team, forge your partnerships, and tell them you trust them. It will take time and failures, but always remind them you have every confidence that (to quote Borealis Foods’ mantra): “We can figure this out.”

Following these enhancements to the standard innovation steps, Reza and his team created the humble noodle we referenced at the beginning of this article. It’s a ramen noodle packed with 20 grams of complete protein and at a price point that makes it more affordable. Branded as Chef Woo, it can go a long way in helping the roughly 10% of the world’s population suffering from malnutrition.

What innovations will you bring to the world?

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Dan Mushalko adapted this article from our podcast episode, Noodling Solutions for Food Insecurity.

We strive to elevate the quality of leadership worldwide. Are you ready? If you need help developing your leaders, explore our services.

Dispensing Wellness: Walgreens’ Rx for Healthcare

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Whether it is visiting a doctor, understanding and paying a medical bill, or picking out the right health insurance plan, we can probably all agree that our regular interactions with the healthcare system are not as seamless or as easy to access as they should be. Healthcare is too hard to navigate, costs too much, and ultimately does not work well for the people it’s meant to serve — all of us.

 John Driscoll, executive vice president and president of U.S. Healthcare at Walgreens Boots Alliance, shared this article as a companion to his podcast Dispensing Wellness: Walgreens’ Rx for Healthcare.

Check out past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One. 

Too often, this lapses into pessimism, a belief that we can’t improve US healthcare. At nearly one-fifth of the economy, healthcare is too big to fail — and to fix. But the truth is that there is a lot that people can change in healthcare if they are motivated to take on these seemingly insurmountable problems.

The trick is to think like a basketball team, not a track team. In the latter, runners are out for themselves, and points are awarded for individual performance. In basketball, nearly every point scored relies on the skills and effort of the whole team. Assists are as important as goals scored, and strong defense makes offensive success possible.

Creating this collaborative environment takes embracing three principles: servant leadership, connectedness through authenticity, and innovating with transparency.

 

Servant Leadership

First, at the heart of everything is servant leadership. Servant leadership is all about keeping the people that you serve at the core of what you do. At Walgreens, our boots-on-the-ground leaders are our pharmacists. Walgreens pharmacists are in nearly 9,000 stores across the country, and especially in rural communities, pharmacists are the cornerstone of people’s perceptions of the healthcare system.

Our pharmacists embody servant leadership. Often, they are providing expert counsel while integrating kindness and compassion into every interaction they have with their community. Their servant leadership perspective prompts our pharmacists to truly go above and beyond for patients. Our pharmacists serve as the healthcare system’s air traffic control by coordinating care, knitting together patient needs, and following up to make sure those needs are taken care of. Walgreens pharmacists also help with minor injuries or illnesses and deliver care through vaccination, testing, and, in some cases, prescribing.

Our pharmacists are truly connected to their communities, and they find ways where they can really help and make a difference. Their servant leadership mentality motivates them to do so, and that culture feeds up into the entire Walgreens organization.

 

Connectedness Through Authenticity

While servant leadership can create connections to the community, it’s also important to make internal connections that strengthen teams. Authentic leadership is hard to crystalize and almost impossible to rehearse, but when it’s not there, teams fall apart. Team members have to know that their leader has passion and has their back. More importantly, team members have to believe that their leader has heart and kindness in an authentic way. If the passion isn’t genuine, it’s obvious. But when authentic leadership is there, it’s a key differentiator.

When I was in military training, I was interacting with people who had graduated from military schools and places like West Point — they were much better equipped to take on the technical and logistical tasks of our training. I wasn’t the best at many of the military skills themselves, like loading weapons or excelling on drills, but in a leadership position, I was awarded for showing heart and passion, conveying that to my organization, and taking care of my team. That created connectivity and trust among all of us.

To me, that kind of magic happens when leaders and teams find a collective purpose and trust each other to achieve that purpose. This trust facilitates what General Stanley McChrystal calls in his book, Team of Teams, “shared consciousness,” or thinking and acting as a team rather than as individuals.

In healthcare, for example, we have a collective purpose, but we don’t always have trust between stakeholders or from our patients. To be better leaders in our teams and across the industry, we have to get back to basics — show authenticity, connect to our common purpose, and trust our teammates as we all work towards our goal of serving patients and improving quality of life.

 

Innovating with Transparency

The best leaders cultivate servant leadership and create authentic connections to tie their team together, but they also keep innovating. Many leaders and organizations focus on innovation, but what takes innovation from a buzzword to the next level is changing paradigms with clear goals and transparent communication.

No team or organization stays stagnant forever — nor should we want it to. Particularly in healthcare, change happens quickly, and organizations that don’t adapt technology effectively are often left behind. At the same time, change can feel scary and uncertain for teams, especially today when conversations about new technologies like artificial intelligence are also accompanied by discussions of how many jobs AI will replace.

During times of change, transparency in leadership takes precedence. That’s why, at Walgreens, we’re being thoughtful about where our existing strengths are — our servant leaders, our people — and how AI can complement what they do. Instead of spending time counting pills and doing paperwork, AI can help our pharmacists facilitate human connection by freeing time to really listen to people, understanding their health concerns so we can treat them better. Without transparent leadership about new technology, teams fall into fear. Strategic application of technology and open communication can help teams thrive.

 

Thank you for reading the Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week. We strive to elevate the quality of leadership worldwide. If you are looking for help developing your leaders, explore our services.

Key Lessons on Resilience and Innovation From Amazon

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Maureen Metcalf, CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, shared this article as a companion to her podcast with Beryl Tomay, Vice President of Last Mile Delivery and Technology at Amazon, To Err Is to Innovate.

Link to the entire interview:

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

What can leaders learn from mistakes made along their career journey? Beryl Tomay, Vice President, Last Mile Delivery and Technology at Amazon, shares unique insights from over 18 years at the company.

Everybody makes mistakes and everybody will always make mistakes, Beryl reflects. Early in her career as a software developer, Beryl struggled with errors and failures. However, Amazon’s culture of learning and resilience helped her cope.

Within Beryl’s first six months, she made a coding change that broke Amazon’s “Thank You” purchase page. “I had a pretty tough time with that,” she admits. However, her team provided support to understand the root cause and prevent recurrence. “It kind of makes me better,” says Beryl.

When beating herself up over mistakes, Beryl has kept perspective by remembering two things. First, errors are inevitable at all career levels. Second, the priority is to learn from mistakes rather than dwelling on perfection. This mindset has served to build Beryl’s resilience over 18+ years.

Later, Beryl took the risk to lead business divisions she lacked deep expertise in. The intimidating meetings and decisions challenged her, underscoring the need for investment in rapid learning. However, by asking questions and gathering knowledge from those around her, Beryl succeeded in adding value.

She also continues to take risks via Amazon’s innovation efforts. “Think Big Days” encourage teams to brainstorm creative ideas without judgement. Though not every moonshot works out, big wins like their Alexa technology make failure worthwhile.

What did Beryl learn about mistakes, resilience, and innovation over nearly two decades?

1. Errors happen; focus on learning and prevention.

2. Build resilience through support systems and perspective.

3. Take risks and learn from failures to drive innovation.

4. Foster a culture accepting of mistakes to unlock creativity.

What was your biggest career mistake, and what did you learn? Share your stories and insights below!

 

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Beryl Tomay has been at Amazon for nearly 19 years having joined in 2005 as a Software Development Engineer. She was part of the small team that launched the original Kindle device and remained in the Devices organization for the subsequent 8 years. She joined the nascent Last Mile organization (the logistics business that gets packages through the final steps on their way to customers’ doorsteps) in early 2014 as one of its first employees, and today is responsible for all of Amazon’s Last Mile delivery businesses, including the Delivery Service Partner, Amazon Flex and Hub Delivery programs. In addition, she oversees the Last Mile product and technology teams covering areas such as mapping, routing, capacity planning, pickup points, delivery station and driver experience technologies. Prior to Amazon, Beryl received her undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

When Produce Produces Innovation with Avocados From Mexico CEO

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Alvaro Luque, President & CEO of Avocados From Mexico shared this article as a companion to his podcast Avocados: When Produce Produces Innovation.

Link to the entire interview:

Listen to the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

This year, Avocados From Mexico celebrates a major milestone — 10 years of fast, exponential growth. Our company was created to do two things: build a brand for Mexican avocados, and drive avocado demand in the U.S. In our first decade, we’ve tripled brand preference, becoming by far the preferred avocado brand in the U.S., and doubled the volume of Mexican avocado imports. All this while generating an economic output of more than 11 billion dollars.

Innovation and a passion for performance have been the driving forces behind our success story. By reinventing the way produce is marketed in the U.S., we have created a visible brand in a brandless category that is now considered a staple in the Super Bowl and have driven consumption to almost 9 pounds per capita in the U.S. Today, 8 out of 10 avocados in the U.S. come from Mexico.

I am incredibly proud of the team that we have built and the hard work that has gone into expanding the avocado market in such an unprecedented way. Since our founding, we have developed a long-term strategy to accomplish the goals of building a brand and driving demand, and we have successfully implemented our company programs following a disciplined business model approach guided by this process:

  1. Let STRATEGY be the igniter. First and foremost, in this company, we believe that everything needs a why. I love risky marketing ideas, but I firmly believe that strategy is king. A good strategic vision and a solid insight are the north star guiding you to the results you want to achieve. Always, always start there, and don’t let shiny objects distract you along the way.
  2. Stay in your lane and DISRUPT everything around you. Once you identify the why, the strategy allows you to set the playground where you can be creative. At this moment, go crazy and break the mold. Be as disruptive as possible and try to do what no one else has done, but always within your playground. I believe in innovation that matters — creative ideas that have an impact and drive results.
  3. Have a PERFORMANCE mindset from beginning to end. Measure, measure, measure. Creativity always needs accountability. Ideas can’t just be strategic and disruptive; they need to move the needle, and everything can be measured if you pre-define well your success metrics. Concentrate on the biggest opportunities in front of you and then bring the results.
  4. Repeat, improve, and build a CULTURE around it. Following this formula creates a discipline that sparks the innovation and brings results. Now, be sure to do that in a way you can enjoy yourself and collaborate with amazing people around you. That’s culture. I like to say, “Work hard and have fun,” and I believe that perspective helps keep our team motivated, bringing the results while having a good time. At Avocados From Mexico, the essence of our culture and brand is Mexicanity, our term for the celebration of meaningful good times. That’s the spirit we use to celebrate our innovative, high-performance programs that have built this brand in a brand-less world.

I’m a big believer in balance. I am a marketer, I love creativity, but with accountability and a strategy behind you that delivers results. If you can manage that balance between these two worlds and make them work seamlessly day by day, you are going to be successful. As the leader of the company, it’s my job to make sure that we’re moving the needle, but at the same time, I’m committed to fostering an environment where new ideas are supported. I must wear those two hats and be good at them simultaneously, but in the end, it is not only me that will drive this organization. It’s this group of highly engaged and effective people we have been fortunate enough to bring together at AFM. As their leader, it is also my job to offer my team the tools they need to be successful.

With that in mind, I’ve been developing some tools in each of the four quadrants of our thinking model to help our team execute our formula and foster a culture of innovative thinking and high performance:

  • Strategic Framework and Planning Process. We developed a detailed strategic framework that we have kept very consistent throughout the years. The framework defines very well our main targets, campaigns, channels, and strategic pillars. Every department in the company has its own framework that ladders up to our main one. That’s how you keep your company aligned and consistent. With a good framework in hand, we worked on a disciplined planning process that follows our thinking model, sets a solid foundation for creativity, and defines the goals we want to accomplish. We’ve been implementing and refining the process for years.
  • Innovation Ecosystem. We nurture our innovative spirit in everything we do. Disrupting is part of our DNA. To get to that mindset, you need to invest in it. One of our big priorities is training, so our team is constantly pushing the limits and thinking outside the box. We have identified within AFM “innovation champions” to make sure we continue thinking differently, and we have promoted innovation through our planning exercises and our own innovation awards that highlight our best ideas, always using the balance of creativity and accountability at the same time. We like to call that Brandformance.
  • Performance Platform: Measure What Matters. Tracking progress is just as important as the activations and ideas themselves. Using OKR thinking, we created our own customized digital platform where we track our growth. With this system, the whole company is measurable and visible to everyone. The process also inspires team members to consider clear goals and objectives that are defined from the bottom up not only to empower and encourage advancement but also to foster innovation and collaboration and serve as a place to ideate new ways to improve business. We even use this performance platform as our daily recognition tool to highlight our best work.
  • Develop a Culture Map. Our Culture Map defines our company’s purpose and the values we have as an organization. And because we are obsessed with performance, we develop our own operating guidelines for each value so we can operationalize our Culture and be sure we walk the talk.

After 10 years, I believe Avocados From Mexico’s thinking model is successful for a variety of reasons. Not only do we prioritize bold strategies and creative ideas, but we also understand that our creativity needs to drive results. That’s what modern marketing is all about, creating Value and Growth for our organizations.

I am optimistic about the future of AFM — and the future of innovative marketing as a whole. If we as leaders have a solid strategy, a good thinking process, and a true commitment to think differently and drive results, you will ultimately be successful at anything you do. That’s how I’ve built AFM and how we will continue thriving for the future.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alvaro Luque has transformed the produce industry by delivering innovative marketing strategies that not only defy established paradigms but also deliver impressive results. With more than 28 years of marketing experience in the CPG and produce industries, Alvaro has successfully built a brand in a brandless category. Under Alvaro’s leadership, Avocados From Mexico (AFM) has led the growth of U.S. avocado consumption to more than 2.5 billion pounds per year, and today, 8 in 10 avocados in the U.S. come from Mexico. Alvaro’s vision for making AFM the first fresh produce brand to advertise in the Super Bowl is one of many industry firsts that have positioned AFM as the most preferred brand of avocados in the U.S. and one of the most innovative produce companies in the world.

 

Thank you for reading Innovative Leadership Insights, where we bring you thought leaders and innovative ideas on leadership topics each week.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One. Also, stay up-to-date on new shows airing by following the Innovative Leadership Institute on LinkedIn.

A Brain Is A Terrible Thing To Waste: Understanding The Inner Workings Of Your Brain

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Reimagining Leadership to Solve Food Insecurity

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Leah Lizarondo, CEO and co-founder of 412 Food Rescue, a social enterprise with a technology, logistics, and civic engagement model that aims to fight hunger and promote sustainability by preventing perfectly good food from entering the waste stream and directly distributing to organizations that benefit those who are food insecure provided the article as a companion to her podcast, Reimagining Leadership to Solve Food Insecurity.  Her interview is a part of the International Leadership Association Series from the conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in October of 2021.

Amidst the continuous flood of alarming climate change news, we are increasingly seeing stories about phenomena like “climate depression” and “climate anxiety.” The scale of the problem can be paralyzing, especially for ordinary citizens without wealth or political might to muster against it. But collectively, those regular people have the potential to make a huge difference – how do we help them overcome the inertia of climate despair and contribute to big solutions? The answer is to place effective and rewarding tools in their hands.

Designing the Right Tool for the Problem

Our organization, 412 Food Rescue, and its national tech platform, Food Rescue Hero, bridge the last mile between businesses with good surplus food and the people who need that food the most. I was inspired to start this work when I learned an alarming statistic: in the U.S., up to 40% of the food we produce is wasted, while one in seven households are food-insecure.

Almost a third of this waste occurs at grocery stores, restaurants, and other consumer-facing businesses. Every year, this sector finds itself with 23 million tons of surplus food that it can’t sell. Most of it ends up in landfills, where it releases methane, a greenhouse gas more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

Much of the food that is discarded at the retail level is still good to eat, but only a small percentage is ever donated. Retail food donation presents a number of logistical challenges: pick-up locations are dispersed; amounts and types of food are variable and unpredictable; and most surplus food is fresh and perishable and therefore needs to be consumed quickly.

The traditional spoke-and-hub model of retail food donation, based on trucks making regular pick-ups and delivering to a central food bank, misses too much food. We need a more flexible model to reach all available surplus and bring it to the nonprofits, community access points and homes where it can do the most good.

When we were creating Food Rescue Hero, we recognized that there was already an existing model for transport from a broad array of pick-up locations to a broad array of drop-off locations: ridesharing and food delivery apps like Uber and DoorDash. While those platforms are based on the work of paid drivers, we made Food Rescue Hero for volunteers. We believed that most people were looking to technology not only for ways to earn money, smooth over inconveniences, and get instant gratification, but also for ways to do good.

Our Food Rescue Heroes have vindicated that belief abundantly. We have recruited the world’s largest network of on-demand volunteer drivers, 27,000+ strong and growing, and they deliver on 99% of all available rescues from our hundreds of donor businesses. They are not only reliable but also, often, prolific. Many have performed hundreds of rescues. One particular septuagenarian in Pittsburgh has completed over 1,500 rescues.

Thanks to all of the volunteers across the 15 cities with active Food Rescue Hero networks, we have reached over 80 million pounds of good food saved to feed people instead of landfills. That’s equivalent to almost 67 million meals, carried to their destinations in our volunteers’ cars or trucks, in their minivans next to children excited to help, on their bikes, or even on their shoulders as they make deliveries on foot. And all sorts of people have stepped up to do this work: artists, activists, teachers, musicians, small business owners, parents, teenagers, retirees, and many more.

What is it that keeps these volunteers so engaged?

Centering the Human in the Design

Research indicates that one of the main barriers to volunteering is that people feel they don’t have enough time, or that volunteer schedules are too inflexible. The same ridesharing-style model that resolves the logistical barriers of food donation can also resolve these personal barriers.

Like a driver for Uber, a user of the Food Rescue Hero app gets notifications on their phone when a nearby rescue is available. They can also go on the app and search for local rescues any time they want. In this way, the app regularly presents users with opportunities to engage, on their terms. Once they accept a rescue, the app guides them through the process of pick-up and drop-off, for an easy, seamless experience. Most rescues take under an hour, and users can pick one up whenever they have time. There is no obligation to commit to a regular rescue – though many end up doing so.

A problem like food waste can feel both daunting and distant. If you are not a grocery store employee tasked with dumping pounds and pounds of nutritious food into the dumpster every night because it will not be sold before its “best by” date, you may not be able to wrap your mind around the problem.

But if you show up to the grocery store and load boxes of that good food into your car instead, the problem becomes tangible. And if you then deliver that food to a community center or a public housing complex where people are excited to see you and find out what you’ve brought to help them through the week, you vividly experience just how much power that simple act has. A carload of food that could be rotting in a landfill is instead ensuring that a community will not go hungry.

Our app delivers donated food, but it also, crucially, delivers that pay-off to volunteers: the incomparable, indescribable feeling of fulfillment at your core after you know you have made a difference. It’s a million times better than seeing a “like” on your social media post. It’s life-changing. It keeps people coming back.

 

About the Author

Leah Lizarondo is the founder of Food Rescue Hero®, a technology, logistics and civic engagement model that fights food waste and hunger in 16 cities. Her work has been featured in NPR, Fast Company, and The Washington Post, among others. Leah is originally from the Philippines and currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Facing a Global Leadership Crisis—Insights from GCSP

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Peter Cunningham, Head of Leadership at the Geneva Center for Security Policy provided the following article as a companion to his and Ambassador Thomas Greminger’s podcast Facing a Global Leadership Crisis—Insights from GCSP

 

Here’s a short clip from the interview:

 

 Here’s the full interview:

 

It is widely held that it was Seneca who said, “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. While for many of us, luck is not a term we might particularly associate with the past two years, there is an ongoing, globally shared, developmental opportunity underway. We are all exposed to higher levels of complexity, ambiguity, and the uncertainties they generate. Senior leaders (especially in the private sector and the military) often go through many years of preparation to deal with the experience of no one telling you what to do and being expected to make sense of complex situations and judging what direction to take and what choices to make.

In some sense, over the last two years, everyone has had a taste of what that feels like, when it comes to making decisions that affect our families, our colleagues, and our communities. Without having had the benefit of those years of preparation, for many it can be unsettling and confusing. Like any potentially transformational experience, there is discomfort to navigate if we are to grow and learn from it.

The year 2020 could be characterised as a huge wave of disruption – we had to ride it as best we could, experiment with entirely different ways of living and working, and be tolerant; 2021 became about the hard work of learning how to live and work well within this ongoing disruption. As we enter a 3rd year of disruption there is a cumulative change dynamic, and we need to lift our sights beyond crisis response (that has itself become normalised) while maintaining the capability to quickly flip back if needed.  Leaders are faced with the task of having to cast their minds into the future to try and predict what might happen in the months ahead and how best to respond and prepare themselves, their teams, and organisations.

From having paid close attention over the last decade to many organisations and leaders in the International Peace & Security sector – characterised as having high exposure to ambiguity, tensions, humanitarian challenges and complex multi-actor issues – the following 4 practices may set leaders and therefore organisational cultures apart in the year ahead.

 

  1. Engage in Collective Sensemaking

Attempting to predict the future is for the most part a fool’s game. However, there is real value in dipping into the toolkit of the Strategic Foresight community and engaging in identifying plausible scenarios you might experience 9 or 12 months from now and how you might prepare for these or even work toward the realisation of a preferred scenario. An important element is to make this a diverse and collective activity. If only a small, homogenous group does this then the scenarios they will come up with will be limited and of less value. The more diverse perspectives that you can involve, the richer, more nuanced, and more informative those scenarios will be. Revisiting and amending these scenarios every few months will instill a practice of continuous sensemaking over time, meaning people will be more attuned to early signals of change and feel safe enough to bring them to everyone’s attention.

 

  1. Provide medium-term clarity and focus

It will be important in 2022 to define some medium- and longer-term changes that you believe should remain beyond this pandemic. As Yogi Bear once remarked: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

 

A head of strategy for an international foundation recently explained how they pushed for the organisation to set out a 10-year strategy, effectively doubling their normal time horizon. It involved less detailed metric-driven specificity and more purposefulness to counter the external disruptions they were experiencing. Doing this was challenging for the leadership team yet it helped them communicate a clear direction that stretched beyond the immediate crisis response experience and helped provide a sense of reassurance and focus to counter the anxiety many people felt.

 

  1. Create space for curiousity

Alongside many advantages, one of the risks associated with working remotely, for fortunate enough to be able to adapt to this, is the tendency to become overly task-oriented when you do meet online but also when you are working alone from home. It is important to invest in creating the space for less structured guided interactions and thought. You can revolve these around a particular topic or issue or leave it entirely open with just a simple guiding question.

It can be valuable to carve out some space for more curiousity led thinking and interaction without always having a detailed agenda, task, or a pre-determined outcome. These tend to limit people’s openness to thinking about possibilities and reduce their ability to engage with high levels of ambiguity.

Not only is this motivating for many people, but it will also generate insights and ideas on how to choose what longer-term changes are needed. It also sends a message that you trust people to come up with meaningful ideas and solutions. There is another longer-term benefit; curiousity lies at the heart of a learning mindset and it is such a mindset that tends to better tolerate complexity and ambiguity.

 

  1. Capacity to collide and converge

When we ask people to reflect on a team or collaborative experience that they were proud to be part of, it often involved tensions or conflicts that were overcome. In fact, having overcome such tensions and turning them into positive relations and outcomes is often what people are most proud of. At a time when returning to more face-to-face interaction is likely and public polarisation is high around issues like vaccines and work preferences, pay extra attention to early warnings of issues that can lead to conflict and develop the capacity at all levels to not just navigate this but encourage openness and constructive discussion that surfaces ‘elephants in the room’ can improve collaboration.

If it is indeed true that there will be an increase in talented people seeking to contribute to organisations and initiatives that align with what matters to them most. All four of these practices have in common that they contribute to increased trust, inclusion, psychological safety and are foundations of a resilient, more caring and courageous culture of work.

About the Author

Peter Cunningham is Head of Leadership at GCSP and Co-Founder of the Geneva Leadership Alliance, a network of associates and partner organisations working together to advance the understanding and practice of leadership for the benefit of peace and security worldwide.

Peter has over 20 years of experience in leadership development, adult education, and executive coaching across private, public, and non-profit sectors. He is constantly seeking new, diverse, and innovative ways to bridge the study of leadership with the practice of leading, especially at international level and across cultural, geo-graphical, political and organisational divides. Leveraging his diverse experience and background, he creates safe spaces for learning and encourages brave spaces for application, enabling people to learn leadership mindsets and practices in transformative ways and adapt them to their own work and life.

 

Photo by Fabienne FILIPPONE on Unsplash

A Competitive Advantage: Building Communities Within the Business

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Alice Yoo LeClair, Divisional CHRO at Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC, originally published this article in Inside CHRO, the go-to magazine for HR leaders brought to you by Connex Partners. It is a companion to her podcast  A Competitive Advantage: Building Communities Within the Business,

Watch the two-minute video of Alice

 

Listen to the full conversation with Alice and Maureen
  • What is your best leadership advice?

It’s your aptitude plus your attitude that sets you apart as a leader. These two things build the story of your personal brand and can accelerate your development over your peer group. This advice applies whether you have worked at an organization for two months or 25 years, whether you’re a senior leader or just taking the lead as a contributor in a meeting.

  • If you could go back in time and meet your sixteen-year-old self, what would you tell them?

Firstly, when you hear about this thing called ‘Bitcoin’ that goes for sale, buy it immediately in mass quantities! The second thing I would tell myself is ‘chin up’. Over the course of time, you will see a material shift when it comes to Asian inclusion and representation. There will even be an Asian superhero, Shang-Chi, brought to life on the big screen, in mainstream culture. It’s really tough now – but know that the world is going to learn faster, collaborate more and come together as a global community in the very near future.

  • What is the most-read book on your shelf?

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. I discovered this book through Bill Gates’ book blog, Gates Notes, and he cited it in a New York Times article as one of his favorite reads. The theories the author presents about why sapiens, of all the species that have inhabited this planet, have been able to develop enormous infrastructure, technologies, religions, governments and currencies are fascinating.

One of his theories is that as a species, our ability to imagine and apply our imagination to our real-life circumstances is what enabled our brains to create all of these institutions. I recommend it to anyone who is curious as to how we went from hunter-gatherers to doing things like cryptocurrency in the present day.

  • What’s the one film, TV show or podcast you would urge every CHRO to check out, and why?

I have a different approach to this. I don’t actually have an HR industry-specific magazine or podcast that I regularly turn to. What I have curated for myself instead are ‘digital mentors.’ In the HR and business worlds, there are incredible leaders who, through their public content, answer questions and give advice on topics I would have asked them to elaborate on through those mentorship coffee sessions. It was through this curation of digital mentorship that I discovered my career aspiration to become a Chief Experience Officer. I got there from the online presence of an executive named Julie Larson-Green who held the role at Microsoft and Qualtrics.

To read this article in full, and to find out more about how the pandemic has shaped Alice’s views on the future of HR, sign up to receive Inside CHRO, the new magazine written by – and for – HR leaders. Brought to you by Connex Partners, the #1 executive network for HR.

About the Author

Alice Yoo LeClair is the Chief Human Resources Officer for Euromoney PLC’s Financial & Professional Services (FPS) division. She is responsible for leading talent management, DEI, recruitment and performance enablement initiatives, in alignment with the organization’s strategic objectives. In this capacity, she also serves as a member of the division’s executive committee and the group’s HR leadership team. Before joining Euromoney, Alice was the Head of HR for the Americas GTM region and multiple product verticals at Refinitiv, an LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) business. Previously, she held global people strategy and commercial program management roles at IPC Systems, IntelePeer and Level 3 Communications (now Lumen Technologies). Alice holds a bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of Hartford where she double majored in Piano Performance and English. She also has a certificate in Plant Based Nutrition from eCornell, Cornell University’s external education unit

 

Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

Stewards of the Future – A Guide for Competent Boards

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This week’s article is an excerpt from “Stewards of the Future – A Guide for Competent Boards”, by Helle Bank Jorgensen, CEO of Competent Boards, which offers the global online ESG Competent Boards Certificate Program.  It is a companion to her interview on Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future titled Stewards of the Future: A Guide for Competent Boards. This podcast is part of the International Leadership Association series.

“Stakeholder concerns are shareholder concerns. The increasing focus by investors, consumers, and other stakeholders on sustainability is directly influencing value creation.” — Jane Diplock, chair, Abu Dhabi Global Market Regulatory Committee; director, Value Reporting Foundation

 

Case study – Ørsted

One company that has successfully managed the transition from passive to active engagement is Ørsted, Denmark’s largest energy utility. Ørsted has undergone a dramatic transformation since its inception in 1972 as Dansk Naturgas, and later as Dansk Olie og Naturgas. For the first thirty years of its existence, its business centered on coal-fired power plants in Denmark, and offshore oil and gas drilling rigs in various other parts of Europe. In 2006, however, it decided to shift its focus to green energy, closing its coal-fired plants and putting its resources instead into offshore wind farms. As of 2020, the Danish company was the world’s leader in offshore wind power, with a 30 percent market share; it forecast that it would produce enough power for more than 30 million people by 2025.

Stakeholder engagement has been a key pillar of the transition strategy. In 2007, for example, the company began fostering a dialogue with activist groups such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the Danish Society for Nature Conservation. Rob Morris, a senior editor at the London Business School, noted in an article that Ørsted “had to convince people that the future business could be as successful as the old one.” One example was a lengthy op-ed piece in Denmark’s Politiken newspaper written by then-CEO Anders Eldrup in which he stressed that transformation would not be an overnight miracle. Eldrup publicly debated the company’s climate action strategy with Greenpeace’s then-executive director Mads Flarup Christensen at a 2009 meeting hosted by the Copenhagen Business School.

While the Danish government still owns 50.1 percent of Ørsted’s shares, the company has been listed on the Copenhagen stock exchange since 2016.  The following year, it opened another useful avenue to tell its story to international investors by launching its first green bond.

“A lot of it starts with a company needing to be clear about what its purpose and its real priorities are, and that can be quite difficult to formulate,” says Ørsted’s current board chair Thomas Thune Andersen. “We have a wide debate about strategy that covers everything from the annual strategy plan to the long-term strategy, to our strategic priorities. If you’re able to really explain what your strategic priorities are, you’re able to get the shareholders and others to buy in.”

Ørsted now conducts a thorough materiality assessment each year, which involves identifying its most material stakeholders as well as assessing shareholder priorities and how these priorities intersect with society’s overall challenges. It has identified five key stakeholder groups: political stakeholders and authorities, local communities, employees, investors and shareholders, and NGOs/multiple stakeholder networks. The company has a specific interest in each group. Political stakeholders are vital allies in its plans to develop green energy. Local communities and employees provide valuable input on skills, talent retention, education, and local environmental initiatives. Investors expect strong financial returns as well as robust performance on environmental, social, and governance issues. Finally, the company engages NGOs and multi-stakeholder networks on topics such as biomass sustainability and human rights. It has worked to strengthen implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and has identified minerals and metals in its supply chain where environmental and human rights risks are greatest. The Danish company also has no problem collaborating with other utilities to develop wind farm projects. For example, in March 2020, it joined forces with Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings to bid for an offshore wind power project in Chiba prefecture, near Tokyo. The two companies have several other joint projects.

Ørsted has set a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2025 and no carbon emissions at all by 2040. Corporate Knights magazine named it the world’s most sustainable energy company for three years in a row, from 2019 to 2021, and ranked it number two across all sectors in 2021. But sustainability has not come at the expense of financial performance. Ørsted’s market value has more than doubled since its listing in 2016, surpassing rivals such as BP with a far greater dependence on fossil fuels. It achieved a 10 percent return on capital and a 4 percent advance in operating profit in 2020. As of mid-2021, its share price had almost quadrupled since the 2016 initial public offering.

Taken from “Stewards of the Future – A Guide for Competent Boards”, by Helle Bank Jorgensen, now available in hardcover and ebook.

About the Author

Helle Bank Jorgensen is the CEO of Competent Boards, which offers the global online ESG Competent Boards Certificate Program with a faculty of over 95 renowned international board members executives and experts. A business lawyer and state-authorized public accountant by training, Helle helps global companies and investors turn sustainability into strong financial results. She was the creator of the world’s first Green Account based on lifecycle assessment, as well as the world’s first Integrated Report and the first holistic responsible supply chain program. Helle has written numerous thought leader pieces, is a keynote speaker, and is interviewed by global media outlets.

 

Photo by Damir Kopezhanov on Unsplash

What Leaders Won’t Talk About When Scaling a Business

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Greg Moran, a C-level digital, strategy, and change leadership executive with extensive global operations experience, provided this article as a companion to his interview on Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future titled What Leaders Won’t Talk About When Scaling a Business.

No cute titles, no click-bait tag lines – just an honest conversation about some of the things I’ve learned from creating, launching and getting through the first couple of stage gates on scale.  I spent most of my career working at big companies like Bank One (Chase), Ford Motor and Nationwide Insurance attempting to transform to meet competitive pressure or to maintain the status quo of a business model that hasn’t changed since before I was born.  Starting a company is way more fun, but much of my experience did little to prepare me for the challenges of actually going through the process in a leadership role – kind of like how watching the Tour de France on TV does little to prepare you to ride your bike 100 miles in a day.  For this blog, I’ll summarize the headlines that we cover in the accompanying podcast.  I encourage you to listen so you get the nuance of what the words mean because they can look obvious on paper without hearing the dialogue.

Back Office

The thing about back-office investment is that you don’t want to make the investment until you need to, but when you need to, it’s usually painful and distracting – like changing the tires on a car that’s going 70 mph.  The trick of it is to be ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead of the curve.  I’ve found it useful is to remember 2 things:

  • “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” – Wayne Gretsky
  • Tech costs a lot less than people do, so get on platforms that will make sure your back office stays off the critical path of your growth, otherwise you will have to compensate with people.
DEI and ESG

Nobody wants to talk about this because they are afraid of getting canceled or saying the wrong thing and getting attacked.  There are some cold hard truths you need to know about this space if you are starting a tech company (and many other types of companies as well):

  • The talent pool of people that can tolerate the perceived risk of a startup is not as diverse as the general labor pool.
  • The talent pool of people that are experienced in the functions you need to fill AND have start-up experience is even less diverse, and you rarely have the luxury of time to go find that unicorn.
  • The people who are attracted to the risk profile of the startup world expect to be compensated with equity in a way that rewards them for the risk and have little practical interest in the other ‘equity’. Everyone has a good set of talking points these days, the expectations remain (I’m living this now, even though we are well beyond the risk-equity phase of growth).
  • Your ability in the early days to create ESG metrics will be limited and probably irrelevant.

So what does this mean for you?  My suggestion is the following:

  • Have a clear set of principles on DEI and ESG that guide the company’s decision-making and are very transparent to the board, the leadership team, every employee and every prospect.
  • Back up the principles opportunistically at every turn, without compromising the integrity of your commitments to existing employees and investors. In the early days, compromises on competence will stick out like a sore thumb and may kill the company if the role is important enough.
  • Rely on advisors to help bolster/refine the thinking of the team over time.
  • As soon as you can begin to build a pipeline, invest in talent resources that have the clear accountability to do so.
  • Use search firms to amplify your reach to great diverse candidates.
  • Insist on equally engaging events and practices within the company.
  • Don’t virtue signal with grand statements that you can’t back up and just invite criticism and ‘gotchas’.
Space and People

Scaling and Covid combined have raised some interesting questions on space and people.  As you grow, does your philosophy on space and employee experience change?  Is remote your new operating model – going full virtual?  How do you handle in-person collaboration when it benefits the company and/or the process and/or the individuals who may desperately want to have and build personal relationships?

I think any singular answer to this question would end up being a ‘one size fits none’ solution, so I’ll stick to some principles we have embraced (for now) in light of the ever-shifting landscape in which we all find ourselves:

  • Don’t be definitive and don’t show a preference for remote vs. in-person. If you really want to allow either to give you access to more talent and allow you to grow faster (or whatever reason), then truly embrace and invest in both.
  • Model both from a leadership standpoint, even if you have a strong preference. Your modeling will empower.
  • Make in-person compelling – give people a reason to come in, regardless of the frequency.
  • Do the same for remote – support the gear that makes it a great experience for the remote employee and those they interact with. Provide stipends and perks to enhance the remote experience.  Create quality virtual events – serious and fun.
  • Communicate and get feedback as the game changes.
Value Chain Balancing

As you scale a business, maintaining balance throughout your value chain is essential.  You really are only as strong as your weakest link and if you are over-invested in one element of your business, but constrained in another, you are just wasting money.  One of my friends that had exited a start-up gave me some great advice as we started our company.  ‘Never confuse having a product with having a company’, he said.  It was brilliant advice and has value chain balance at its heart.  If you build a better mousetrap, the world will not beat a path to your door.  In fact, the world will probably never know you exist.  If you have no pipeline, hiring people to close deals is a waste of money.

Pay attention to and build specific metrics around your funnel – know the numbers for you and for your industry and stay on top of it!  Keep the operations functions off your critical path by making sure they have the capacity to support your growth – HR, Finance, Facilities, etc.  Force business case discipline on your product and engineering functions (which is not to say don’t place bets, but the business cases force the homework to be done and give you data on which to base the bet, which will lead to better decisions and board-level buy-in).

Avoiding Distraction

One of the most insidious things that can happen as you scale is that the world will want to talk to you and your team about your success.  The temptation to do so is pretty irresistible and you should fight it aggressively.  When you start up the steep scaling curve is when the company needs focused leadership the most.  I’ve seen great young companies and budding CEOs get totally derailed by the seduction of publicity that makes them feel good but does nothing for the company, its customers or its team.  Do a couple of carefully curated and well-managed events per quarter and stay focused on your broader objective.

I hope this practical approach is useful.  I’m not looking to impress you with clever aphorisms (I have a bunch that perhaps I’ll drop in another blog someday), but rather to give you some super simple, easy-to-implement concepts.  Upward and onward!!

 

About the Author

Greg Moran is a C-level digital, strategy, and change leadership executive with extensive global operations experience. He led corporate strategy for Ford and designed the plan that Alan Mullaly used to turn around the company. Greg held C-level IT positions in app dev, infrastructure and core banking applications at Ford, Nationwide Insurance and Bank One/JPMC, respectively. He began his career in consulting with Arthur Andersen Accenture, working across industries with 100 companies over the course of a decade. He is passionate about leadership and culture and teaches part-time on the topic at Ohio University.