One of the most important roles of a leader is to allocate resources, and with the cost of capital promising to remain low for the forseeable future, differentiation increasingly depends on the effective allocation of human resources. There is an additional challenge – and opportunity – for leaders in accomplishing this key task; in the finance, insurance and real estate industries, the rate of self employment doubled from 8% to 16% between 1987 and 2008. Upside recently co-hosted a series of kitchen table conversations with Rick Wolfe of PostStone to bring together the great minds in our networks to shed some light on this topic. Entitled “Getting Work Done” the discussion explored the challenges and opportunities of assembling resources for key projects in a world where the right talent often exists outside the organization. The discussions elicited a number of powerful insights that we will share in this blog in the weeks ahead. For more about kitchen table conversations, visit www.poststone.com

Perspective is everything

HSBC’s award-winning ad campaign highlights a persistent challenge – and opportunity - faced by leaders today. In a world where efficiency gains and incrementalism are no longer enough to win, new ideas are the lifeblood of any organization. The problem is that they are extremely difficult to come by, so difficult, in fact, that it’s rooted in our own physiology.

One need not look very far to understand why the problem is so pervasive, and why it’s so hard to fix; the root cause lies in how our brains process information. In a nutshell, the brain makes sense of the complexity around us by slotting new inputs into categories of things that are familiar to us. The implications of this are two-fold: first, a different structure of categories is needed to come up with truly novel ideas; second, something needs to be materially different about a person’s experience set for these different categories to be established.

So what does this mean for executives trying to lead the organizations to greatness? The first step is awareness; understand that knowledge, skill and experience are only a piece of the puzzle and the composition of the team’s perspective impacts the outcome. Accordingly, it should be consciously factored into team design. Be clear about the nature of the perspective needed to make your project a success. For example, projects focused more on growth, innovation and risk management require above all, the injection of new, different ideas. In contrast, change management projects need team members with a deep knowledge of existing norms and behaviours and sensitivity to the emotional states of the stakeholders.

Once you have identified the type of perspective you need, consider the following to configure the team for success:

- Develop cross-functional teams and structure the work plan to approach the task holistically rather than in functional silos. Solicit HR’s input on operational challenges and IT’s take on getting at customer insights. Combining right brain and left brain thinking in this fashion will elicit new approaches.

- Dig deeper into the backgrounds of available resources to understand unique perspectives they might bring to the table. Steve Jobs credits the groundbreaking user interface of the original Apple products to a calligraphy class he took in college. In a similar vein, fresh perspective can come from things like hobbies, volunteer work, travel, reading historical biographies – any pursuit that causes the brain to establish different experience buckets which it can use to frame new ideas.

- Consider trying the following exercises to stimulate stretch thinking:

o Seek out case studies of different industries with similar challenges. Understanding how the pharma industry sells drugs to physicians can offer lessons for mutual fund companies wholesaling to investment advisors. Similarly, energy efficiency firms can learn much from the enterprise software industry.

o Look for classical stories exploring themes that are consistent with your challenge. Jim Fisher at the Rotman School of Management uses Shakespeare’s Henry V to teach leadership because it’s a timeless story of strategy and spirit triumphing over adversity. (see also the recent HBR article entitled “The Business Case for Reading Novels”)

- If the necessary perspective doesn’t exist within your organization, retaining outside help can often be helpful. However, there can be limitations to this approach. Consultants with too deep of a specialty in any given area could suffer from the same limited thinking as your internal resources, particularly in mature industries where there is little differentiation between the players. Once you’ve consulted to a handful of different organizations on the same type of issue, fresh perspective is increasingly difficult to come by.