Leadership and Vision

Five Good Ideas about leading your organization in a time of disruption

Andrea Barrack

Published on October 26, 2016

We are living in a time of disruption. Whether in the public or private sphere, this disruption is challenging our existing assumptions and models, leading to new and innovative solutions. How we perceive ourselves as leaders and the role we play in leading change in this environment can impact the success of our organizations. Andrea Barrack asks: How can we ensure we are at the forefront of this evolution and not left behind? Most importantly, how do we achieve our mission in the midst of new challenges and a shifting context? How do we adapt to ensure our personal leadership positions our organizations to be agile, dynamic and ready to take on a new world order?

Five Good Ideas

There is a big difference between leading change and managing change.
Reach beyond the usual suspects to find disruptive ideas.
Be mindful of those who benefit from the status quo.
Social disruption is about the means, not the ends.
Achieving impact is rarely linear.

Resources

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. In his exclusive biography about Jobs, Isaacson refers to the co-founder of Apple as the greatest innovator of his generation.
Moneyball is a 2011 film that tells the story of how Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane changed Major League Baseball by challenging the system and defied conventional wisdom when he was forced to rebuild his small-market team on a limited budget.
Find Innovation Where You Least Expect It is an article published in the Harvard Business Review in 2015. Written by Tony McCaffrey and Jim Pearson, it imagines how a shift in thinking can inspire innovation. hbr.org/2015/12/find-innovation-where-you-least-expect-it
Sir Ken Robinson delivered a moving TED talk called Bring on the Learning Revolution in which he makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning – creating conditions where children’s natural talents can flourish. ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution
Stanford Social Innovation Review Podcast – any of the 50 episodes. https://ssir.org/podcasts

Andrea Barrack

SVP, Corporate Citizenship & ESG, RBC

As Senior Vice President, Corporate Citizenship & ESG, Andrea Barrack is responsible for RBC’s ESG strategy, including performance management, reporting, and scaling knowledge and insights across the enterprise. Andrea is also responsible for RBC’s global Citizenship strategy and serves as the Executive Director of the RBC Foundation, one of Canada’s largest corporate donors. Her mandate includes delivery of measurable social, employee, brand and business impact through community investments.

Prior to joining RBC, Andrea was Global Head of Sustainability and Corporate Citizenship at TD Bank. She also served as an Executive Advisor on ESG, Sustainability and Climate Change at Deloitte, and as CEO at Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Andrea is an active volunteer – she participated on the Board of the International Planned Parenthood Federation at the regional, national, and global level for over 15 years, chaired the Dean’s Council at Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) from 2014 – 2020 and was an inaugural board member of Ontario Health from 2019 to 2021. She is currently an Executive in Residence at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and teaches in the ESG Certification Program.

Andrea Barrack earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology at the University of Guelph and a Master of Health Science in Health Administration at the University of Toronto. In 2016, she was named in the Women’s Executive Network Top 100 Most Powerful Women in the Trendsetter and Trailblazer category. In the 2022 provincial election, she was the Ontario Liberal Party Candidate for University Rosedale.