Dr Tracy Stanley

Dr Tracy Stanley has a corporate and research background. She is a social scientist, and she has an interest in behaviour in organisations. She has had internal and external consulting roles. She has developed passions in innovation & creativity, organisational change and creating the condition to flourish in an organisation. Tracy has always followed her passion. Large organisations are a vast and complex beast. Getting anything changed can be a curious and mysterious process. Change roles are now more prevalent in organisations. The change in the workplace around remote work and hybrid work has implications for the attachment to the organisation, the individual identity, how teams work and how leaders lead. Organisations have had change forced on them. They had to restructure quickly. In the aftermath, the thought has gone into how to do the remote and hybrid structure well. What is the best practice? Also, employees are thinking about what they want from work. Creativity is one of the top 3 requirements for the modern organisation. How can things be different in the future? Leaders need to be more conscious of the necessary conditions that permit employees and leaders to think differently. The right conditions need to be established in conjunction with the required culture, encouraging and rewarding risk-taking. Leaders need to exhibit creative behaviours. Show curiosity, listen and allow the requisite time for experimentation and testing. Doing this encourages the team to do the same. If you want creativity, the leaders need to talk about it and communicate it through the necessary channels. The requisite communication skills are the what. What is the understanding of the problem, and what is the process to best address the problem. How can everyone contribute and collaborate towards the solution? For young people, Tracy advises being constantly on a learning pathway. There is good knowledge and information available everywhere. Enter organisations through the side door. It's hard to get a role through traditional job applications. Try to find the key leader on LinkedIn and make a unique pitch to them. Use a creative approach. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. It's OK to admit you don’t know what something is. Keep a learning journal.