Article: Building the mindset for innovation

Leadership

Building the mindset for innovation

In a session at TechHR18, Chaitali Mukherjee, the People and Organization Leader at PwC India talks about the capabilities required to tackle the future.
Building the mindset for innovation

How do you innovate in a world of work that is constantly changing?

This was the central question of a session titled “Building the innovation mindset: Leaders in 2030” on Day 2 of TechHR.

Chaitali Mukherjee, Leader – People and Organization, PwC India noted that it is not just 'work' that is going to transform, it is the entire ecosystem – right from clients to competitors. 

Predicting the future

There are four possible scenarios that will dominate the future. It may also be the case that a combination of scenarios may define the world of work.

1)    The red world is one where innovation rules. It is about agility, innovation.

2)    The blue world is one where corporate is king – In this scenario, it is assumed that a few companies will be powerful. So much so that they will be more powerful than a few economies. People will want to work for these companies and performance augmentation will be key for work.

3)    The yellow world is a networker’s world – where humans come first.

4)    The green world is one where sustainability and care is central. Companies are caring and help solve problems for the larger world.

The paradox of planning arises from the recognition that although one needs to plan for the future, it is difficult to predict how the world will change even in the next six months.

In this context, how do you address ‘capabilities’?

The key differentiator will be “Learning intelligence” – which involves understanding why, what and how to learn. For organizations, to truly garner the impact of leader and organization capability, it is important to adopt a ‘capability driven strategy to execution’. This means understanding the ways to play, required capabilities and organizational implications.

The capabilities that would be pivotal to be job-ready include:

1)    Core capabilities: Which include the curiosity to learn and evolve, self-awareness, building and nurturing network.

2)    Emerging capabilities: Disruptive envisioning, multi-dimensional sense-making, orientation towards institution building, managing multi-dimensional diversity, personal credibility, talent magnetism.

3)    Leadership simultaneities: Courage to try new things and resilience, highly strategic and agile in implementation, technically savvy and humane, politically astute, and integrity, confidence.

The future is about blue, white and metal collar workers – all of whom will exist simultaneously. A leader’s credibility will be at stake. Both at an organizational and at the individual level, organizations need to ask themselves, ‘What are the capabilities I have? What do I need to learn that’s new and how do I manage that?’

Maintain the fine balance of capabilities across the organization and focus on one or two critical capabilities for the business.


 

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Topics: Leadership, Skilling, #TechHR2018

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