Reinventing an Organization to Do More with Less

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Communication, Business, Harvard, Strategy, Business/management, Teams, Business/marketing, Management, Leadership, Finance, Marketing, Hbr, Economics, Innovation, Business/entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does it take to manage a complex global institution when change is constant and resources are scarce? For Kelly T. Clements, Deputy High Commissioner at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), it's about building resilient teams, partnering across sectors, and balancing operational efficiency with humanity. In her more than a decade with the agency, Clements has helped steer key reforms in challenging circumstances, and she shares lessons for both public and private sector leaders about how to modernize systems, decentralize decision-making, and embrace innovation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Deal is not just another payroll platform.
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0:06.5	HR, IT, and payroll together finally.
0:09.3	Built in-house, built for peace of mind.
0:12.2	Visit D-EEL.com slash HBR podcasts.
0:18.7	Your next VP is already on your payroll, recognized by peers overlooked by leadership.
0:25.9	Future leaders by Work Human identifies your highest potential talent four years before traditional methods catch up.
0:32.9	Develop smarter with future leaders from Work Human.
0:49.3	Music smarter with future leaders from work human. I'm Alison Beard.
0:51.0	And I'm Adi Ignatious, and this is the HBR Ideacast.
1:00.7	Thank you. Alison Beard. And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR Idea Cast. Adi, we talk a lot about how hard changes and the latest research on how to do it successfully.
1:06.9	Today, though, we're speaking to a leader who has done it in practice at a large, complex, multi-stakeholder organization that you would think is especially resistant to change.
1:16.8	Yeah, there's probably nothing more fundamentally threatening than change.
1:19.6	It disrupts our comfort zones.
1:21.7	It challenges our assumptions about what makes us successful, and it takes us into the great unknown.
1:26.8	There is a reason companies get locked into their business models for longer than they should,
1:31.2	and that is because change is daunting.
1:33.6	Absolutely. And our guest today isn't a corporate leader,
1:36.7	but there is lots to learn from her about navigating bureaucracy,
1:40.6	motivating a workforce, and managing pushback.
1:43.7	She is Kelly T. Clements, the Deputy High Commissioner at the UN Refugee Agency.
1:48.7	She's essentially the number two at an organization that protects and supports people around the world
	...

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