Dr. Chitra Anand

Over the past several decades, we have become a more untrustworthy society. 2020 accelerated this into 2022 with a set of implications that has exposed a set of flaws – This includes flaws in institutions, businesses, governments, and media. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, we are in a “cycle of distrust.” This is a result of an epidemic of misinformation which has led to a wider spread of mistrust amongst societal institutions and leaders around the world. This has left many of us in existential crisis – distrust is now a default emotion.

Businesses have an opportunity to step up and intervene – in a new kind of leadership, where trust is at the core. Business partners who trust each other spend less time and energy focused on self preservation. When trust is present both sides achieve better economic outcomes. 

2022 recipient of The Globe and Mail’s Changemakers Award, Dr. Chitra Anand has hypothesized and tested a ‘Trust Trifecta’: Humanity, Reciprocity, and Practice.

During this session, Dr. Anand will share insights into the impact of the intersection of these notions and when met in this specific order – we can all benefit from the outcomes.

Dr Anand has designed this as an immersive, multi-sensory keynote, featuring music with M’ Michele, an electronic harpist with a masters in linguistics.

With marketplaces being disrupted at a rate like never before, companies need to re-think how they operate. To succeed, modern businesses need to foster the creativity of their team by providing an environment that promotes constant innovation. In this talk, Dr. Anand explores how Intrapreneurship can be used as a gateway for organizations to achieve sustainable innovation. She will show audiences how to harnesses the entrepreneurial drive within an existing organization to foster new ideas, creative thinking which will provide companies the problem-solving mindset to succeed in an ever-changing world.

With over 20 years spent in the technology sector working for some industry-leading organizations including Open Text, TELUS, and Microsoft, Chitra has led disruptive projects and initiatives which have created new ways for organizations to operate and think about the way in which they do business. Her book The Greenhouse Approach (a mandatory read for the Forbes School of Business MBA Program) shows organizations how to reimagine current norms and structures and develop a culture of innovation.

Learning objectives:

1. How leaders can practice intrapreneurship within their organizations, identify the true agents of change, and mobilize these agents to act.
2. Practical ways to apply Greenhouse principles that will drive intentional innovation within your organization.
3. Develop methods to best support the intrapreneurs that live inside your organization.

Greenhouse Thinking is about challenging the ideas that have created the world we live in, by exploring the realm of possibility in developing alternatives. Dr. Anand’s research has shown how many of the problems we face are systemic. She believes that the changes we need to make to solve these problems are actually quite simple and pragmatic.

While we know that innovation is the key to value creation, many organizations get stuck in the process of actually getting there. They become complacent, which increases the risk of becoming irrelevant. The Greenhouse mindset shift that Dr. Anand shares in this presentation will help audiences

Learning Objectives:
• A framework for healthy dissent and debate that can help boost true innovation amongst team members.
• How to leverage the power of first principles thinking in order to uncover fundamental truths that will set you on the path of innovative thinking.
• How leaders can apply the guiding principles of Greenhouse Thinking within their organization to drive a new paradigm of thinking
• Methods for unlearning learned behaviours, why and how we can challenge our current thinking

In the new world of work, creativity is one of the most coveted skills. It’s no longer seen as something exclusive to artists, musicians or designers, but rather, an essential skill for the modern workforce at large. Those who thrive are able to use creative thinking to look at things differently and bringing new ideas to the forefront.

Intrapreneurship is built on creative thinking. Having spent over 10 years researching Intrapreneurship through doctoral research, Chitra has gained new insights on the application and impact of creative thinking within the most successful organizations.

She’s also lived a life of creative thinking in the corporate world, having guided projects in her senior roles at Microsoft and TELUS to award-winning success, having won such awards as the IABC Gold Quill Award, Canadian Public Relations Society Awards of Excellence, CMA Awards of Excellence, the Corporate IT Hero award by the Information Technology Association of Canada and the Business for the Arts Awards.

In this presentation, Chitra combines the research with hands-on experience to equip audiences with the insights needed to reach new levels of success.

Learning Outcomes:
• The framework to create a culture instilled with imaginative thinking.
• Developing a lens where risk and failure are seen as a platform for learning and new ways of doing things.
• How to flex your creative muscle by framing and reframing concepts and ideas.

While the world is evolving, women are still lagging behind when it comes to leadership roles in corporations. Today only 26% of women are in CEO roles at Fortune 500 companies. Chitra believes that the “women in leadership problem” is not a male or female problem, but rather a human problem. This problem comes about due to biases we bring as a result of the language, culture and learned behaviors. Chitra believes it can be solved by applying a new lens to the way we look at these environments. 

While many would say that it is a difficult time for women in leadership, Chitra would argue that there is no better time to be a woman. By taking a pro-active approach to shaping your environment, possibility and opportunity will follow.  In this presentation, she shares insights from her time spent in corporate environments. Chitra provides audiences with foundational tools and strategies that can be applied to navigate complex environments. 

Learning Outcomes:
• Tactics to help develop your own narrative, and practice your principles.
• A lens to lead your interactions with a problem-solving mindset.
• How to have an authentic conversation based on facts in order to drive the right outcomes.