Kinal is Co-Founder of Unleash, a consultancy that specialises in helping knowledge intensive companies make strategy happen. She completed the Corporate Finance Programme at LBS in 2008.
She describes the brave new world of business, with ever more women in the workforce on all levels of management and organisations with a high diversity of ages. Then there is the advancement of technology: 65 per cent of children currently in school will work in jobs not yet invented. Add globalisation with two thirds of the mergers and acquisitions industry now being cross-border transactions, and one in eight people now working in countries other than where they were born. And on top of all these changes, the economic downturn has created a backlog of global unemployment of 200 million people.
Therefore Kinal argues it is “the ability to take action and adapt to a constantly changing environment that will separate the successful leaders and organisations of tomorrow from the rest. Traditional management is fine if you want compliance, but if you want innovation and growth, you need to engage your people on a whole new level.”
In Kinal's view creating the productive workforce of the future is not about team building exercises or lucrative benefit packages, but about creating an “environment that offers purpose, mastery, challenge and autonomy and, in turn, creates more business value than the traditional approach.”
She then goes on to describe the method of Unleashing naming six ingredients – plus care and passion – to help organisations to innovate and grow.
A real, pressing and complex problem
Change happens when a team goes through a transformational process that requires personal engagement, group interdependency, collaboration and intense learning. This can only be achieved in the context of solving a real, pressing and complex business problem that has no clear solution at the outset. Furthermore, the team must be given the mandate to solve the problem within agreed boundaries such as budget.
A diverse team with the right mix of skills and influence
Diversity is no longer about simply sitting on cross-functional teams. Change requires diversity of thought. A good starting point is selecting a subset of all the potential subgroups that are involved in the creation and use of the solution.
Learning through action
For learning to take place, an individual must learn through real life action, making personal adjustments to the learned material, developing ownership and internalising new knowledge. Planning is minimised and action through piloting, prototyping and other mechanisms of testing out new processes, products or services are given priority.
Going through a battle
As the team tackles the complex and pressing problem through exploration and action, it will go through conflict and turbulence, or what I like to call the battle. This is a crucial part of the change process and needs to be managed by an experienced coach. If not managed well, or if dismissed entirely, this conflict will significantly affect productivity, morale and results.
Synergistic co-creation
To avoid traps like groupthink, it’s important to understand the difference between traditional teamwork and 1+1=3: synergistic co-creation. In traditional teamwork your ability to influence, communicate and sell your ideas are common success factors. In 1+1=3 however, team members are required to have an open mind, receive other’s thoughts and input and build on and challenge their ideas. The team has to break down old ways of working and create a culture of cohesion and collaboration.
The coach
Just like in professional sports, managing the battle and ensuring the team is practising 1+1=3, requires a coach. He should be trained to empower teams to work through issues and create solutions. He should work side-by-side with the team, managing the change journey, challenging thinking, providing external perspective and ensuring the team creates breakthrough solutions and innovations that they believe in.
http://bsr.london.edu/lbs-article/801/index.html