Work should be the foundation of people's well-being and a healthy work community should be its heart. Working life has enormous potential to promote well-being and meaning and enable the ability to renew for a sustainable and profitable future. Just as the company's growth and goals are achieved together, challenges and dilemmas can be solved constructively, keeping people at the centre. These sound like basic things that we agree on, but in everyday life, people's encounters, interaction skills and presence are often experienced differently.

Today, many industries are talking about the challenges of attracting and retaining employees. The way we work is changing and changes are happening rapidly in our country and around the world. Experts are changing jobs quickly or are starting to work on projects independently through different networks. Recruitment is also showing a boomerang effect, where old employees are being lured back. According to research, over 33% of Europeans intend to change jobs within 3-6 months (McKinsey 2022). The public sector is already in trouble as local professionals change fields, labor immigration is being re-regulated, and those who remain are becoming exhausted by the workload.

Structures should be renewed rapidly and concrete change should be achieved, where people and nature live in balance. We need a change in mindset, responsibility and courageous innovators. We need innovative thinking in leadership.

Where does superior competitive advantage come from?

An adult easily spends a third of their waking hours at work, which is why for most of us, meaningful work is at the heart of a meaningful life. It offers a passion for self-fulfillment and the opportunity to do something good for the world around us through our work. Should the role of leadership be radically changed and what impact that would have on the meaningfulness of work? That's what I'm thinking about in this blog.

Innovative thinking in leadership

It would be essential to identify the biggest bottlenecks in your own work community and put a stop to them. When your work community is meaningful to work in and the atmosphere is inspiring, it will also be transmitted in many good ways from the office to the outside. Motivated, courageous people can achieve miracles together. I strongly believe in this.  

Change requires leadership, and leadership first and foremost needs a renewed mindset. What is needed is a shared understanding of the impacts of renewal, as well as the ability and will to build the skills of being in change within the work community.

How many management teams have an ongoing dialogue about leadership and the relevance of work as a factor in the future success of an organisation? That is, real, authentic and analytical engagement with the topic, where the theme is delved into in the same way as the key business metrics. So it is not just a matter of HR checking eNPS results twice a year and updating them with the company's top-level KPI targets. I mean a discussion where existing practices are examined and constructively questioned, the work community's own ideas are widely heard, bold decisions are made and the work community and stakeholders are included in an open discussion.

Building a superior competitive advantage requires a renewed mindset and corresponding change management – ​​and there is no harm in attracting new world thinkers and innovative experts to help build a more sustainable and profitable future. Together as a leadership team, pioneers and genuine people, it is possible to unearth everyone's unrecognized potential, and together turn it into a superior competitive advantage and a seamless part of a renewed work culture. At the same time, we set an example for others.

Focus on three things

Successful change management requires a shared understanding and a new way of thinking. In my experience, current and future professionals want to live and work in environments where three important areas are strongly at the centre of what they do. They are:

• Innovation activities
• Circular economy
• Derivation  

Innovation activities

Innovation is a continuous process of experimenting together and looking ahead in a timely manner to find the next commercial success. It is an entrepreneurial activity that the entire organisation and its stakeholders in all its different configurations can participate in. Innovation is therefore a strong part of culture and it tells us how people are treated and valued in the work community. I believe that innovative actors win the competition for talent by offering meaningful work, for example, on new growth paths.

Circular economy

The circular economy will become mainstream as the economy shifts towards circular economy principles. The ambition of those building a more sustainable future is to significantly and rapidly increase the penetration of the circular economy. For example, the second-hand market is growing as consumers want to make more sustainable choices and look for equal alternatives before purchasing a new product or device. A more sustainable future challenges actors to do more than simply move a comma a couple of decimal places or order an ESG report from the “right” party.

We need experts who can drive structural change and make efficient use of recycled material flows. To move towards a future where there is only one economy, the circular economy. The national economy will also thank us when the circular economy challenges the principles of the linear economy.

Derivation

Leadership is directing one's own work in a chosen direction in a way that creates the conditions for success for everyone in a timely manner. Leadership is, on the one hand, presence and, on the other hand, the ability not to interfere in everything. There is enough space for dialogue in which learning frameworks can be implemented for individuals and teams. For me, leadership is responsibility for one's own work as part of a work community. It is collaboration that serves the team, where failures are allowed and learned from together. At its best, leadership builds a continuous experience of significance and intervenes accordingly in its absence.

With superior leadership experience, people are built to value a culture where future talents will seek one after another. Every management team needs to consider what their own leadership promise is, which will ensure traction and retention in a way that invites them to solve challenges and open up opportunities for a more sustainable future of collaboration and success in balance with a diverse work community and the surrounding world.