In this episode of HBR IdeaCast, Kelly T. Clements, Deputy High Commissioner of the UN Refugee Agency, shares insights on leading a massive organizational transformation amidst rising global displacement and severe funding cuts. She discusses decentralizing decision-making, fostering innovation from the ground up, and maintaining team morale during crises, offering lessons for any leader navigating change with limited resources.
Summarized by Podsumo
The UN Refugee Agency underwent the most ambitious transformation in its 75-year history, decentralizing decision-making to be closer to the people they serve.
Innovation, such as blockchain-based cash delivery and connectivity partnerships, enabled the agency to serve more people efficiently despite budget constraints.
During recent funding cuts, the agency adopted a step-by-step approach to avoid draconian measures, focusing on region-specific impacts and redoubling resource mobilization.
Cultural transformation involved flattening hierarchies, ensuring every voice in meetings is heard, and shifting from a top-down Geneva focus to a whole-of-agency approach.
Clements emphasizes the power of communicating constantly with staff during crises and the morale boost from direct field missions, which she describes as 'oxygen.'
"We've been on an efficiency agenda... when you're steering a ship as big as an organization that at one point was 20,000 people in 550 different locations, that ship moves rather slowly as it turns in different directions."
"If you're invited to a meeting, you should be prepared to speak, your views are important and they need to be heard."
"For me, those operational missions... it's like oxygen. You just feel reinvigorated. It reminds you what you do while you're doing it and why you're doing it."