Standardizing Innovation

by Kent Aitken

---

Voices have been asking how government could take advantage of interesting models such as gamification, crowdsourcing, nudges, etc., looking for opportunities to innovate. I've tended to think that, if there is value in such approaches, the better question would be "Why are we not already using them?"

And there's a reasonable answer: misalignment between the hypothetical incentives of an organization and those of individual decision makers within it (the principle-agent problem), which holds for experimentation with creative solutions to problems.

Such experimentation might work for a project. But it would definitely benefit the broader organization, in terms of pathfinding approaches that might be scalable for many projects. But, those benefits would be long-term, widely distributed, and hard-to-measure. In contrast, the risks would be immediate, local, and direct. Creative solutions and organizations are mismatched.

Nick shared on Twitter this article about creativity's uphill battle, which connects solidly on the topic.

"Even people who say they are looking for creativity react negatively to creative ideas, as demonstrated in a 2011 study from the University of Pennsylvania. Uncertainty is an inherent part of new ideas, and it’s also something that most people would do almost anything to avoid. People’s partiality toward certainty biases them against creative ideas and can interfere with their ability to even recognize creative ideas."

Games are their rules, and in most cases these rules discourage deviation from the established path.

"In terms of decision style, most people fall short of the creative ideal … unless they are held accountable for their decision-making strategies, they tend to find the easy way out—either by not engaging in very careful thinking or by modeling the choices on the preferences of those who will be evaluating them."

So how could we hold ourselves to account for our decision-making strategies? That is, how could we best change the rules of the game?

The Rules of the Game

I think that there is opportunity to change the rules where performance measurement, strategic planning, and project approvals meet. In the field of Environmental Economics there's a decision-making model called Adaptive Management, which in effect mandates innovation. This is a standard business planning cycle:

Adaptive Management, by contrast, adds three key features:

1. It mandates experimenting with multiple models to solve a problem

2. It adds a "hypothesis" gate to solution design, mandating a statement like "This is what we think will happen" (inevitably accompanied by why,which is crucial to enable the 3rd)

3. It makes "the acquisition of information with which to make future decisions" a part of the outcome on which managers are measured

So instead of deciding on the singular course of action and following through regardless, an Adaptive Management process would apply the scientific method to complex solution design and test multiple solutions. Then, dissect what worked, what didn't, and why.

This isn't new, even to government. The U.K. government has been working on randomized controlled trials for public policy. And I think it could work closer to home.

There's even a governance model for it. Government real estate projects now go through a P3 Screen. That is, an assessment for suitability for a public-private partnership. Organizations could institute an analogous Experimentation Screen for program and policy development.

So what would this do?

This would dissolve risk aversion: delivering two models that don't work is part of the goal, so managers would have policy cover and incentive for bold experimentation with policy and program design.

This would create a body of well-documented experiments on which to base future solutions.

This would create situations in which novel solutions are proven to work, and there'd be little need to justify their pursuit over more conventional approaches.

This would lead to crowdsourcing, gamification, and crowdfunding. Or not. The important thing is that it'd lead to what works, and we'd know it. And how, and why.

Leadership Lessons from The Little Prince

by Kent Aitken

---

Recently, a police officer in Halifax was asked by a pedestrian what they should do about a broken walk signal. The officer replied that they should call the municipality's phone number, noting that it was illegal to cross the street without a walk signal.

Facing an empty street, a pedestrian was told that a 10m walk was impermissible. This is the dark side of accountability; it's not in the officer's interests to allow common sense, but rather, to ensure his safe legal standing.

Thus, the officer is forced to support an unreasonable position. It reminds me of The Little Prince.

Generals and Sea Birds

In the classic book, the little prince comes upon a king:

For what the king fundamentally insisted upon was that his authority should be respected. He tolerated no disobedience. He was an absolute monarch. But, because he was a very good man, he made his orders reasonable.

"If I ordered a general," he would say, by way of example, "if I ordered a general to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not obey me, that would not be the fault of the general. It would be my fault."

"May I sit down?" came now a timid inquiry from the little prince.

"I order you to do so," the king answered him, and majestically gathered in a fold of his ermine mantle.

Ideally we'd be like the king, and only ever ask that which is reasonable. But sometimes we'll be like the officer. In the real world, we ask people, daily, to do things they cannot: navigate labyrinthine client service processes, or understand anchor-heavy, unreadable documents. Or, we prohibit people from doing things that are fairly reasonable, like cross an empty street with a broken walk signal.

Everyone knows this, but it happens anyway - because what people can reasonably be expected to do isn't sufficient for organizations' accountability requirements. Likewise, the king isn't ordering the little prince to sit down because he wants a seated prince; he orders such to be safe in the knowledge that he ordered it.

On the whole, this system of relentless t-crossing, i-dotting, and general ass-covering works out well for us. But we need strategies to deal with the ridiculous outlier cases.


Creatively Saying Yes

Fortunately there is a middle ground. The king could order the tired little prince to stand - honouring an unreasonable policy that all subjects must stand - but provide a shoulder to lean on.

• Like the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, leaders can hire both lawyers and designers to find the middle ground between what is legally required in a document and what is understandable.
• Like the Pacific region of Public Works, leaders can prepare a lengthy annual plan for corporate responsibilities, then remix the information into a interesting roadmap for everyone else.
• Like one manager I know, leaders can informally implement flex time for employees to work on projects of their choosing, in the absence of a organization-wide policy.

Leaders can, as my colleague Suzanne wrote on her blog, creatively say yes.


It's a Fine Line

In 2012, the Niagara Parks Commission received an application from Nik Wallenda (7th generation of a daredevil family) to tightrope walk the falls. Such stunts were banned. Here's how they explain it on their website:

NPC approved Nik Wallenda’s application to walk a tightrope stretched between the two countries... NPC has ruled that it will consider proposals by stunting professionals no more than once in a generation, or approximately once every 20 years, as a way to pay tribute to the stunting history that helped make Niagara Falls a top global tourism destination.

Such virtuous chicanery, that! The easier answer would have been “stunts aren't allowed.” But by creatively saying yes, they reaped the tourism and publicity benefits while avoiding violating their policies or facing a flood of similar requests.


Get Creative

This is the point at which a normal blogger would draw principles out of the above case studies. But there's nothing particularly clever or shocking, here: It's simply persistence, and resisting blaming a situation on external factors. It's simply not saying "it's not my job." It's reframing problems, and digging through the rest of your toolkit.

It's getting creative, when it'd be easy to give up.

How to stop being tech support in 30 days

Be warned this is a radical approach to a complex problem as such it would require a certain degree of intestinal fortitude to pull off; I came to it on the fly in a moment of guerilla inspired creativity during the Next Generation of Government Summit last week:

1. Put a mason jar in your office for every person who asks you for tech support. 
2. Label each jar with the name of one of your colleagues who asks you for help
3. Place a marble in person x's jar every time they ask you 
4. Photograph your jars at the end of everyday
5. After 30 days make a 15 second video that shows the evolution of the filling jars
6. Gather the people in the boardroom
7. Show them the video
8. Explain to them that each marble represents a a time when one of them asked you to do something that took time away from your substantive duties
9. Hand each person the jar with their name on it
10. Tell them that it represents the karma you've built up over the past month and to kindly remember that when you come asking them to do something for you

If all that fails, just wear the T-Shirt.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

MBR: Steal Like an Artist

I decided I was going to read a book a week for a year, here's a quick review of this week's book.  You can see the ongoing list here.

Basic Info

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon

Why I bought it

I was getting tired of reading business books and wanted to try something a little different; besides the public sector is probably due for a healthy dose of creativity.

How it connects to the Public Sector

No particular connection to the larger public service discourse to be honest (but I didn't expect much of one when I picked it up).

What I got out of reading it

I have mixed feelings about this book. I really appreciated the aesthetic and the simplicity of the book compared to some of the tomes I've been reading lately, but I'm not sure I walked away with a whole lot of new tangibles.

The most valuable part of the book for me was chapter 4: Use Your Hands. I've been thinking a lot lately about the need to step away from the screen more often (which is one of the reasons I'm trying to read more books) and Kleon drives the point home fairly well. The trick, Kleon says, is to divide your workflow into analogue and digital halves and proceed only to the digital side when the creative process is completed. I already move off the screen to do creative work (via my whiteboard), but I think I'm going to make the divide more explicit. I'm also planning on picking up a nice Moleskine notebook so I can move slightly away from my reliance on digital notes and use my hands more often.

In sum, Steal Like an Artist was the easy read I was looking for given the week I was having.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect