Leading Canada's Newbie Parliament

The House of Commons faces an 'organizational transformation,' and that may be a good thing.

On May 2, the people of Canada sent more never-before-elected members to Parliament than ever before – several of them between the ages of 19 and 21. Parliament now faces the challenges many rapidly growing organizations see in situations where they must quickly engage and align a large number of new, inexperienced people. Parliament has also lost many experienced incumbents, and along with them much of its institutional memory and traditions. This happens in all rapidly changing organizations.

Both the Prime Minister and the new leader of the Opposition face significant challenges in engaging and aligning all of these new MPs – but no more than many organizations face during mergers and acquisitions, rapid growth, or large-scale projects.

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[Video] Introducing the NDP Freshman Class

An Open Letter to New MPs

How do leaders handle this kind of transition, and what are the key things they should be watching? Are there universal principles to align and engage a large percentage of new recruits into an organization? There is no question that losing long-established, experienced people creates a vacuum. But how to fill this vacuum and ensure that it leads to a positive outcome for the organization?

First comes clarity: making sure that the new recruits know what to expect and what is expected of them. Leaders need to find out very quickly what they are up against and immediately communicate the ground rules to the new recruits. They need to ensure that the newcomers are in fact there for the right reasons, and that they have the right mindset and level of commitment.

All political parties run classes for new MPs to teach them the basics, the ground rules, and the logistics of the new assignment, but never has there been such a high number of complete neophytes.

Many NDP candidates had zero expectations of being elected, but some now find themselves yanked out of university (four from McGill alone) or a bartending job to represent people some of them barely met during the campaign. The new Quebec MPs include nine students or recent graduates, a former Communist party candidate, a woman who spent part of the campaign vacationing in Las Vegas, and Canada’s youngest-ever MP, a 19-year-old who will now forgo his summer job at a golf course. He ran an active Twitter campaign.

The NDP has gone from being an anglophone party with only one Quebec MP, Deputy Leader Thomas Mulcair, to a caucus dominated by 58 newly elected MPs from the French-speaking province. This is akin to the situation that many companies are now experiencing as they find that their biggest growth opportunities are offshore, in places where they may not understand the culture. Being global is about far more than sending people from head office into remote markets and arranging conference calls for the convenience of other time zones (a problem we have right here in Canada, with our six domestic time zones).

Global organizations often encounter cultural and value differences that complicate teamwork – one widely held belief, for example, is that Americans live to work, and Europeans work to live. Organizations that need people from very different cultures and backgrounds to work together would be wise to pair up their people in a mentorship or partnership structure that melds old and new and creates a new unified culture of commitment and accomplishment.