[Music]
[Music]
I’m very pleased to be here tonight in
Brussels allow me to start my
presentation tonight with a story I was
fourteen years old and all I was
dreaming about was to become a vet a
medical doctor for cats dogs and animals
so I was dreaming to leave a countryside
to have form to run with horses and
cattle for dogs and cows and all sorts
of other animals but as I was born in a
city in Bucharest of Ceausescu and those
of you who remember the time get a bit
the picture all I could get my hands on
where little kittens and stray dogs that
I would rescue every two three weeks and
bring home to this despair of my parents
my parents were both teachers my mother
was a high school teacher teaching
history and my dad was at the University
at the chair of pedagogics so as I said
I was 14 and at a time usually in any
learning system you have to make a
decision you have to choose the path you
your fellow into your maturity or high
school and turning the university
naturally my parents being both in the
learning system wanted me to follow the
pedagogics high school which were very
conveniently which way our of a walk
where we’re living me I wanted to become
a vet which at that time in Bucharest
meant going to the very far place to the
banessa
school which would have taken an hour
and a half of trip every day so I’ve put
a big change from the kind of crisis and
screaming and shouting and only a
teenager can do and believe me now as a
mother of two I can I know what it means
from the other side so another story
short I convinced my parents this is
what I wanted to do so they allow me to
register and go to the
that’s cool which I followed consciously
for about four years and then I felt
gloriously at the university level but
my parents were there for me and they
allowed me to fail after at the time the
Revolution came around and those of you
who were big enough at the time know
that changed our life and opened all new
opportunities while I was in high school
my mother also insisted that I take
French classes which allowed me couple
of years after I finished the high
school to start working with the
Romanian Committee for UNICEF the Global
Fund for children the UN Global Fund for
children and that opened completely new
doors for me to what is called the
international organizations or the UN
where most of my career happened
afterwards I was then offered the
position in Geneva which I took and then
became the learning manager in one of
the big organizations there met working
with adults and with institutions couple
of years later when I became a trainer I
picked up a phone and I call my parents
to thank them for insisting that I try
pedagogy classes when I was 14 because
in the end I was doing what they wanted
me to do to teach but I was working with
adults as I said earlier and I was
looking into ways to making individual
learning into organizational progression
so tonight I’m not here to give you
answers but rather to invite you to join
me asking is innovation possible in big
organizations in big administrations and
what if so what would be needed for that
so before we get into we dive into the
subject I like to touch upon three of
the concept that to my view are alike
idea so these are administrative
structures innovation and courage so
when you think about administrative
structures you think of big institutions
that employ at least 1,000 of them is
usually spread across
regional boundaries could I be at a
local level regional level international
level who do all do cover the same tasks
usually the same time that we’re done 20
30 40 50 years ago and the key word here
is tasks as opposed to processes moving
on innovation here you know listen is a
process by which an idea or an invention
is turning to a process or a product
that will bring added value for an
innovation according to the business
dictionary.com if you look it up for an
idea or invention to become innovation
it needs to be replicated you need to be
able to reproduce it to be replicated at
an economic cost and to answer a very
specific need some of the most fertile
fields where creativity and innovations
first come from very rigid context which
puts a lot of boundaries procedural
boundaries behavioural boundaries or
ideological boundaries so for innovation
to happen you need the what I call the
the rule of three I the three I rule
innovation which requires both
determined use of information
imagination and initiative without that
you cannot have innovation and lastly
courage courage is a state of mind and
body it’s the moral and mental strength
to take action to fight to persevere to
venture and to address difficulties
challenges or danger orange is a
decision it’s an act that you take
willingly to do something to act and as
such it can be educated stimulated and
mastered so you’re thinking why
do we need innovation in big
administrations big institutions they
seem to be working for decades the way
they are now imagine a place where
hiring firing and the way people are
paying remuneration are very rigid very
well controlled but where it doesn’t
really matter how you do your job you
don’t know when your performance is good
or is not really rewarded if you perform
well or your mistakes are being punished
without you knowing how you could
improve them in this place reputation is
built only but through subjective
feedback if you’re lucky to get it from
your boss and then only the bold and the
reckless
make it through the ranks and get
promoted usually after they took a
leadership course preferably abroad so
at one point I was the higher the the
learning manager in this big
organization which was employing at the
time for 5,000 people spread across the
globe that grew very rapidly in a matter
of years three four years to 10,000
people
I had limited resources far less than
what my colleagues said in other
organizations but I had a very dynamic
team and motivated to try new things I
also had access to very good directors
and managers who were part of my board
who was more managing the learning
function to whom I could turn for advice
guidance and approval and very
importantly I had a pretty comfortable
room for maneuver in taking the
implementing the decisions we took so
all in all things were working fine
I was having fun my job was interesting
challenging and entertaining and yet
there was at one point I was this
in frustration growing slowly within me
nagging me more and more and without me
knowing exactly what it was so at that
point I realized I was miss content I
was not happy with the status quo I
didn’t like the way things were because
after realizing animals are lean really
not my passion I realized people are how
my passion and I like to work with
people and I get satisfaction from their
fulfillment and what I was doing at a
time was only part of the story was
covering only part of it at a time
learning and developing what the
development was really isolated with no
very clear beginning and no continuation
so I realized that as an institution to
make learning individual learning more
valuable and advance together we needed
to integrate it within a broader context
to make things more meaningful we needed
competencies to define the kind of
behavior that had needs to be rewarded
we needed to make sure that we have
elements that would enable us to compare
the performance between two people who
are doing similar jobs whether they were
in Geneva
Bucharest Jakarta or Mogadishu so what
did I do about it as I said earlier at
the time I was happily running the the
management function and I received at
one point some additional funds with the
motivation that the number of staff grew
so therefore we needed to do more
training we needed to organize more
courses but that’s when I decided that
the additional funds will not be used
for creating more learning that was the
rebellion moment that required courage I
went to my boss and I said I don’t want
to do that I want to do this I want to
create a new evaluation system that will
build on discussions that took place in
the organization years and years back
and they put on our shelf
forgot about it but I told my boss this
is what we need at a time I was one of
the youngest managers a woman working in
an organization that was very very male
oriented and quite traditional in the
way distributed science the idea was to
keep people around so that they can do
more of what they were doing rather than
using the new money for new programs so
all in all the odds of me doing what I
wanted to do were not very positive and
yet I knew it needed to be done and I
was excited about it so what did I do
and here’s the little model that I
followed it’s based on courage teamwork
and communication courage courage to
analyze the situation from all the
angles and realize what needs to be done
and accepted the first thing here is to
acknowledge the fact that you cannot do
things by yourself if you do that and
you think that you’re Superman or
superwoman you’re not going to go too
far then look around and see who are the
decision-makers around here
chances are even you’re the big boss you
are not the only one so go and talk to
those people these are the ones who have
to become your allies there are the ones
you have to convince that your idea is
worth pursuing my piece of advice is to
start from the bottom
take a bottom-up approach go and speak
to the people who are doing the
day-to-day work if you don’t include
them in the communication if they don’t
know what are the benefits of your idea
you really you run the risk of flowing
flat at the implementation level I
started with my team then I went to my
boss who then helped me create a
committee that’s very good international
guys are in big administrations put up a
committee to help you they took on then
the task of buying in other actors and
decision makers that are very important
for the for the success of your idea
that was the courage part team one piece
of advice lonely players
not particularly suited for big change
changes in administrations so you need
to make sure you have the team around my
team and I said earlier were we’re very
motivated and dynamic some of their
skills were needed in the new project I
also needed new ones but I also needed
new competencies so I had we had to hire
the skills the services of an external
provider that will help us integrate at
one point the the new module that we’re
creating into the platform so another
thing that happens in the big
administrations is that at one point
somebody will recommend an expert that
it’s going to be very good for your team
and you know very well that you’re going
to have a very hard time in in
integrating them into your trained inter
team resisting that suggestion is going
to be a total waste of time and energy
which are extremely valuable for your
project so go at it accept it include
the person or the person sometimes there
are more people in your team and use
what you get use everything you have
every competency every skill for your
project and your idea you need them all
on board but you also need to spend time
with your team talking to everybody
making sure they understand and they
like to work with each other
making them understand that is vital to
to do so otherwise the entire enterprise
will fall and then lightly communicate
therefore I exist so we do credit to the
cat I decided to use the same metaphor
and paraphrase him without good
communication any idea as brilliant and
genial I can be it will die without
proper communication and we’re talking
here about strategic communication with
the right messages the right audience in
the right quantity and frequency at the
right time we spent in this project
maybe half of the efforts and the energy
in putting up a strong communication
strategy that was based on Kampala
Terry messages emails nuggets of
information that we delivered focus
groups a new intranet page dedicating
all it for the performance management
system you name it everything that
needed to be done it was done so all in
all it took us two years but we managed
to do it it took a lot of effort a lot
of frustration sometimes a couple of
failures that almost killed entire
enterprise but we made it the new
evaluation process system was launched
in time and now it benefits more than
6000 people across the globe and the
data that we gathered serves in
improving all other recruitment talent
management and career mobility processes
so in the end we did succeed in the
meantime I love the organization I’m no
longer there but I know the process is
still ongoing and the change it
introduced triggered more changes in the
way people are looking at their role in
that big administration so my name is
Liliana Cisco and it was a pleasure to
be with you tonight thank you for
listening
[Applause]
[Music]
you
[Music]
I’m very pleased to be here tonight in
Brussels allow me to start my
presentation tonight with a story I was
fourteen years old and all I was
dreaming about was to become a vet a
medical doctor for cats dogs and animals
so I was dreaming to leave a countryside
to have form to run with horses and
cattle for dogs and cows and all sorts
of other animals but as I was born in a
city in Bucharest of Ceausescu and those
of you who remember the time get a bit
the picture all I could get my hands on
where little kittens and stray dogs that
I would rescue every two three weeks and
bring home to this despair of my parents
my parents were both teachers my mother
was a high school teacher teaching
history and my dad was at the University
at the chair of pedagogics so as I said
I was 14 and at a time usually in any
learning system you have to make a
decision you have to choose the path you
your fellow into your maturity or high
school and turning the university
naturally my parents being both in the
learning system wanted me to follow the
pedagogics high school which were very
conveniently which way our of a walk
where we’re living me I wanted to become
a vet which at that time in Bucharest
meant going to the very far place to the
banessa
school which would have taken an hour
and a half of trip every day so I’ve put
a big change from the kind of crisis and
screaming and shouting and only a
teenager can do and believe me now as a
mother of two I can I know what it means
from the other side so another story
short I convinced my parents this is
what I wanted to do so they allow me to
register and go to the
that’s cool which I followed consciously
for about four years and then I felt
gloriously at the university level but
my parents were there for me and they
allowed me to fail after at the time the
Revolution came around and those of you
who were big enough at the time know
that changed our life and opened all new
opportunities while I was in high school
my mother also insisted that I take
French classes which allowed me couple
of years after I finished the high
school to start working with the
Romanian Committee for UNICEF the Global
Fund for children the UN Global Fund for
children and that opened completely new
doors for me to what is called the
international organizations or the UN
where most of my career happened
afterwards I was then offered the
position in Geneva which I took and then
became the learning manager in one of
the big organizations there met working
with adults and with institutions couple
of years later when I became a trainer I
picked up a phone and I call my parents
to thank them for insisting that I try
pedagogy classes when I was 14 because
in the end I was doing what they wanted
me to do to teach but I was working with
adults as I said earlier and I was
looking into ways to making individual
learning into organizational progression
so tonight I’m not here to give you
answers but rather to invite you to join
me asking is innovation possible in big
organizations in big administrations and
what if so what would be needed for that
so before we get into we dive into the
subject I like to touch upon three of
the concept that to my view are alike
idea so these are administrative
structures innovation and courage so
when you think about administrative
structures you think of big institutions
that employ at least 1,000 of them is
usually spread across
regional boundaries could I be at a
local level regional level international
level who do all do cover the same tasks
usually the same time that we’re done 20
30 40 50 years ago and the key word here
is tasks as opposed to processes moving
on innovation here you know listen is a
process by which an idea or an invention
is turning to a process or a product
that will bring added value for an
innovation according to the business
dictionary.com if you look it up for an
idea or invention to become innovation
it needs to be replicated you need to be
able to reproduce it to be replicated at
an economic cost and to answer a very
specific need some of the most fertile
fields where creativity and innovations
first come from very rigid context which
puts a lot of boundaries procedural
boundaries behavioural boundaries or
ideological boundaries so for innovation
to happen you need the what I call the
the rule of three I the three I rule
innovation which requires both
determined use of information
imagination and initiative without that
you cannot have innovation and lastly
courage courage is a state of mind and
body it’s the moral and mental strength
to take action to fight to persevere to
venture and to address difficulties
challenges or danger orange is a
decision it’s an act that you take
willingly to do something to act and as
such it can be educated stimulated and
mastered so you’re thinking why
do we need innovation in big
administrations big institutions they
seem to be working for decades the way
they are now imagine a place where
hiring firing and the way people are
paying remuneration are very rigid very
well controlled but where it doesn’t
really matter how you do your job you
don’t know when your performance is good
or is not really rewarded if you perform
well or your mistakes are being punished
without you knowing how you could
improve them in this place reputation is
built only but through subjective
feedback if you’re lucky to get it from
your boss and then only the bold and the
reckless
make it through the ranks and get
promoted usually after they took a
leadership course preferably abroad so
at one point I was the higher the the
learning manager in this big
organization which was employing at the
time for 5,000 people spread across the
globe that grew very rapidly in a matter
of years three four years to 10,000
people
I had limited resources far less than
what my colleagues said in other
organizations but I had a very dynamic
team and motivated to try new things I
also had access to very good directors
and managers who were part of my board
who was more managing the learning
function to whom I could turn for advice
guidance and approval and very
importantly I had a pretty comfortable
room for maneuver in taking the
implementing the decisions we took so
all in all things were working fine
I was having fun my job was interesting
challenging and entertaining and yet
there was at one point I was this
in frustration growing slowly within me
nagging me more and more and without me
knowing exactly what it was so at that
point I realized I was miss content I
was not happy with the status quo I
didn’t like the way things were because
after realizing animals are lean really
not my passion I realized people are how
my passion and I like to work with
people and I get satisfaction from their
fulfillment and what I was doing at a
time was only part of the story was
covering only part of it at a time
learning and developing what the
development was really isolated with no
very clear beginning and no continuation
so I realized that as an institution to
make learning individual learning more
valuable and advance together we needed
to integrate it within a broader context
to make things more meaningful we needed
competencies to define the kind of
behavior that had needs to be rewarded
we needed to make sure that we have
elements that would enable us to compare
the performance between two people who
are doing similar jobs whether they were
in Geneva
Bucharest Jakarta or Mogadishu so what
did I do about it as I said earlier at
the time I was happily running the the
management function and I received at
one point some additional funds with the
motivation that the number of staff grew
so therefore we needed to do more
training we needed to organize more
courses but that’s when I decided that
the additional funds will not be used
for creating more learning that was the
rebellion moment that required courage I
went to my boss and I said I don’t want
to do that I want to do this I want to
create a new evaluation system that will
build on discussions that took place in
the organization years and years back
and they put on our shelf
forgot about it but I told my boss this
is what we need at a time I was one of
the youngest managers a woman working in
an organization that was very very male
oriented and quite traditional in the
way distributed science the idea was to
keep people around so that they can do
more of what they were doing rather than
using the new money for new programs so
all in all the odds of me doing what I
wanted to do were not very positive and
yet I knew it needed to be done and I
was excited about it so what did I do
and here’s the little model that I
followed it’s based on courage teamwork
and communication courage courage to
analyze the situation from all the
angles and realize what needs to be done
and accepted the first thing here is to
acknowledge the fact that you cannot do
things by yourself if you do that and
you think that you’re Superman or
superwoman you’re not going to go too
far then look around and see who are the
decision-makers around here
chances are even you’re the big boss you
are not the only one so go and talk to
those people these are the ones who have
to become your allies there are the ones
you have to convince that your idea is
worth pursuing my piece of advice is to
start from the bottom
take a bottom-up approach go and speak
to the people who are doing the
day-to-day work if you don’t include
them in the communication if they don’t
know what are the benefits of your idea
you really you run the risk of flowing
flat at the implementation level I
started with my team then I went to my
boss who then helped me create a
committee that’s very good international
guys are in big administrations put up a
committee to help you they took on then
the task of buying in other actors and
decision makers that are very important
for the for the success of your idea
that was the courage part team one piece
of advice lonely players
not particularly suited for big change
changes in administrations so you need
to make sure you have the team around my
team and I said earlier were we’re very
motivated and dynamic some of their
skills were needed in the new project I
also needed new ones but I also needed
new competencies so I had we had to hire
the skills the services of an external
provider that will help us integrate at
one point the the new module that we’re
creating into the platform so another
thing that happens in the big
administrations is that at one point
somebody will recommend an expert that
it’s going to be very good for your team
and you know very well that you’re going
to have a very hard time in in
integrating them into your trained inter
team resisting that suggestion is going
to be a total waste of time and energy
which are extremely valuable for your
project so go at it accept it include
the person or the person sometimes there
are more people in your team and use
what you get use everything you have
every competency every skill for your
project and your idea you need them all
on board but you also need to spend time
with your team talking to everybody
making sure they understand and they
like to work with each other
making them understand that is vital to
to do so otherwise the entire enterprise
will fall and then lightly communicate
therefore I exist so we do credit to the
cat I decided to use the same metaphor
and paraphrase him without good
communication any idea as brilliant and
genial I can be it will die without
proper communication and we’re talking
here about strategic communication with
the right messages the right audience in
the right quantity and frequency at the
right time we spent in this project
maybe half of the efforts and the energy
in putting up a strong communication
strategy that was based on Kampala
Terry messages emails nuggets of
information that we delivered focus
groups a new intranet page dedicating
all it for the performance management
system you name it everything that
needed to be done it was done so all in
all it took us two years but we managed
to do it it took a lot of effort a lot
of frustration sometimes a couple of
failures that almost killed entire
enterprise but we made it the new
evaluation process system was launched
in time and now it benefits more than
6000 people across the globe and the
data that we gathered serves in
improving all other recruitment talent
management and career mobility processes
so in the end we did succeed in the
meantime I love the organization I’m no
longer there but I know the process is
still ongoing and the change it
introduced triggered more changes in the
way people are looking at their role in
that big administration so my name is
Liliana Cisco and it was a pleasure to
be with you tonight thank you for
listening
[Applause]
[Music]
you
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