From innovation to business-as-usual

by Kent Aitken

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Last week the Mowat Centre released a report called Creating a High-Performing Canadian Civil Service against a Backdrop of Disruptive Change. The author, Mark Jarvis, pegs "innovation" as one of the six characteristics of a high-performing civil service. We'll borrow his words and define it as "the capacity and skill to develop new approaches to policy development and service delivery...  to meet the changing circumstances facing government."

He also included this: "While it may not be desirable for all civil servants to innovate in their individual roles, innovation needs to be a core competency of the civil service."

I'm worried that there's a disconnect between what we might call macro-level innovation - that is, the idea of government writ large experimenting with new approaches - and the experience at the individual level. 

At the individual ideas level, we  talk about crowdsourcing, ideas markets, and open innovation (MIT Press is dropping a book called Free Innovation later this year). Our co-op students are pitching to a "Dragon's Den" for interesting ideas conjured up from the working level later this week.

There is a lot of power and potential in open innovation systems, whereby ideas and experiments can spread and anyone can add to them or pick them up and run with them. 

But here's the disconnect: time and effort is not free; it's not even discretionary. Public servants have a duty to spend their time on the activities they've been directed to accomplish. (Although I do think we should often take a broader view of this (see: Short-term Thinking and Why Communication Can't Defeat Silos).)

Ideas and approaches succeed when they becomes embedded in the right place, and the people that can make it happen are the same people who need the approach to problem-solving in the first place. The lifespan of experiments and proofs-of-concept is determined by whether or not they ever get folded into mandates and business-as-usual.

And for any given good idea, there might be one person or team well-suited to making it a reality. Maybe a few, and in some cases maybe one in every department.

Next, even if the idea and that person or team do come into contact, there's another set of variables. Does that team have the resources? The time? The expertise? Have they just committed to a contradictory idea? (For instance, many otherwise "good" IT ideas are unfeasible when alternative, long-term IT decisions have already been made.)

In a true open innovation ecosystem, there's a much bigger critical mass of actors who can latch on to a given idea. And they can freely choose to spend their time on it. Government innovation, where it requires the exercise of government resources or even represents the choice of one approach over another, removes the "free" and "open" elements (see: On Somewhat Simpler Taxonomies). Duties, authorities, and mandates suddenly become fundamental.

Which is not a showstopper. But for those interested in government doing things differently, it means the conversation has to get into how ideas, once surfaced, are resourced and supported. Far more so than in the external collaboration ecosystems that serve as reference models.

Tune in, Turn on, Drop out - Planning and Idea Generation in Government

by Tariq Piracha

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In response to my last post, a friend commented about the risk involved in trying to generate the best merit-based ideas: “best ideas according to whom and why? What is best?”

Clear and measurable objectives are crucial to success when tasked with idea generation in government. I think her question is well worth consideration. But if we’re looking for an objective or static measurement for what constitutes the “best idea”, I think we’ll be disappointed with the results.

It is the essential nature of democracy: the ideas that are generated, tweaked and implemented are a matter of choice. We look at the data, the issues, the context, and we make the best recommendations we can. It may not be the most effective or efficient course of action, but once we incorporate the multitude of interests, risks, and limitations, someone must ultimately make an informed choice.

That said, the best choice, that is made within a particular context at a particular point in time, may no longer be the best choice as the environment changes. The question that interests me is not so much “what is best”, or even “what are we going to choose”, but instead “how are we going to adapt?”

To do that, I think we need to address at least three elements: With a nod to our 60’s counterculture, I’d suggest it’s important to know how to tune in, turn on, and drop out.

Tune in: We need to pay close attention to our environment. If our environment is changing, we should know about it now; not in a year when it is time to wrap up a project and evaluate performance.

Turn on: We need to know how to turn on a dime. If we’ve got our finger on the pulse, we are better positioned to pivot and adjust course if necessary.

Drop out: Sometimes, well, we just may need to abandon an approach and start from scratch, or move on.

If we have established clear, measurable goals, and we are evaluating our progress every step along the way (and not just at milestones), we may discover that our ideas need to change. The environment, the data, may show us that it needs to.

I've written in past about the need for agile government and the dangers of focusing on projects instead of iterative process. It’s that iterative approach that can help us be more agile.

Cass Sunstein in Simpler talks about the need to assess and adjust policy after it has been implemented. We can no longer afford to “set it and forget it” when it comes to policy and law as no policy or law will be perfect out of the gate.

This position was also recently expressed by Dana O’Donovan and Noah Rimland Flower from the Monitor Institute with regards to how we assess and implement strategic plans.

The 5-year plan, or even annual strategic plans, are no longer providing the flexibility and effectiveness in a world that is changing so rapidly, where citizens are needing responsive and responsible government support.

“Best” may be a misleading word - it is certainly not some objective measurement when it comes to how the government works. It is contextual relative to the various pressures that any developing policy may face.

However, if we can set clear, measurable objectives, scan the environment frequently, measure our progress early and often, and adjust appropriately to changes in the environment, then I think we'll be well on our way to seeing useful progress. And useful ideas.

Redefining diversity in the search for ideas

by Tariq Piracha

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With Nick and Kent’s recent focus on a new way forward for policy development, I began thinking about the sourcing of design thinking from Nick’s piece, and the system for more reliable problem solving from Kent's piece. If we are to assume that policy making is to take this proposed course, who is the source of the design thinking? Where do the ideas come from?

Diversity, old school.

When I first joined the public service in 2001, I remember attending a Town Hall related to visible minorities and diversity in the public service. The question back then was not all that different from questions we see today: how to we attract and retain *diverse* talent for the public service?

The assumption is that there is value in a diversity of backgrounds and what those backgrounds can bring to the table. The focus for visible minority groups, of course, is to provide more opportunity for those who are otherwise shut out of the process due to the colour of their skin. 

And they weren't the only groups who focused on representation based on a particular demographic. Our meetings or consultations became an exercise in ensuring that we included a visible minority, a woman, a person with a disability, a member of First Nations, someone younger, someone older – the list goes on. A successful exercise in inclusiveness was a room filled with demographic diversity. 

However, if the nature of policy development is going to change (as Nick and Kent suggest), then it follows that a redefinition of diversity may be required. 

As Blueprint 2020 uses digital tools to bring public servants together across the country to envision a new future for the public service, the focus is on ideas. In short, government may need to shift from visible to invisible inclusiveness.  

A good idea is a good idea is a good idea

When I say “invisible inclusiveness”, I'm talking about a focus on the source of design thinking: tapping into a diversity of experience, opinion, and ideas.

It’s the notion that cognitive authority needs to supplant institutional or positional authority. We should be drawn to good ideas and we lose out if we retain biases of any kind that favour source (one's position or influence) over merit (of an idea).

It means a good idea is a good idea, no matter where it comes from and is treated as such. It means that there is value seeking out other voices and ideas (even dissenting ones). It is a belief in producing better outcomes through consultation, collaboration and cooperation. It is an acknowledgement that no one person has all the answers. 

The opportunity here is that one's value is determined by their contribution, not by the colour of their skin, the year they were born, or the nation to which they belong.

It’s asking for a change in culture, which is no easy task - there is still a long way to go. Collaboration and the use of collaborative tools, while increasing in use, are by no means pervasive in the public service. And the use of these tools and the culture that may be fostered through the use of these tools are no guarantee that racism, discrimination and exclusivity are going to disappear. 

However, if better policy outcomes and an effective public service are the goals for the public service, then the focus on finding the best ideas will truly need to shift from obsessing over who is getting a seat at the table to stepping out of the boardroom.

Positive-Sum Leadership

by Kent Aitken

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I love this:

That's the concept art for a hypothetical public transit system described in a blog post by Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla Motors.

From http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/hyperloop:

The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart. Around that inflection point, I suspect that supersonic air travel ends up being faster and cheaper. With a high enough altitude and the right geometry, the sonic boom noise on the ground would be no louder than current airliners, so that isn’t a showstopper. Also, a quiet supersonic plane immediately solves every long distance city pair without the need for a vast new worldwide infrastructure.

Musk, described in one Wikipedia article as a "Serial Entrepreneur", essentially invented a mode of transport in his head, explored the technological assumptions, and explained how to do it. Then, he dropped the mic and left it for someone else, saying that he was too busy.

The idea of a Hyperloop is awesome on its own. But it's far more interesting for the philosophy behind the fact that he wrote about it, but didn't do it:

• Even if you're good at what you do, don't run with every good idea. There may be others better positioned to do it, or there may be more important goals for you to pursue.

• It's worth sharing your ideas. Take the time because it's low-risk and high-reward, even if that reward doesn't necessarily accrue to you. Do it just in case something amazing happens.

• In a market economy world that many see as a zero-sum game - in which people win only when others lose - you can be the one that takes the first step, the leader that makes a small sacrifice to try to redefine the world as win-win. As a positive-sum game, in which we can make something greater than the sum of our parts.

Be deliberate about your goals, err on oversharing, and look for the win-win. And you’ll lose nothing in the long run.