But what about state and local governments?
Although not driven by profits or shareholder demands as in the private sector, public agencies still need to innovate in order to effectively serve their constituents. Innovation also plays an important role in maximizing available resources to get the most out of limited public budgets. And by innovating new and better ways to deliver public services, it demonstrates that government officials and organizations are working with their constituent’s best interests at heart.
Whether in the public or private sector, one of the critical barriers to innovation is a lack of understanding about what it is and how to create it. Too often, people see innovation as a mystifying process that requires blinding flashes of creative insight to come up with new products that change the world. In reality, there’s nothing mysterious about it.
As defined in the dictionary, innovation is simply “making changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas or products.” Those blinding flashes of creativity that change the world represent maybe .001 percent of all innovation. The rest are a combination of hard work and seeing the world just a little bit differently than everyone else.
To de-mystify the innovation process and help you see the world a little differently, here are 10 leadership skills for sustaining innovation in your organization.
1. Challenge your assumptions
In businesses, the biggest enemy of innovation is the unspoken attitudes and beliefs we cling to about our customers, markets and ecosystems. In the public sector, those unspoken attitudes and beliefs are more about how government should go about serving its constituents. In both worlds, the more success we achieve based on those assumptions, the more we tend to focus on protecting the status quo versus exploring what could be.To develop the skill of challenging your assumptions, ask: What has changed with the needs of the community we serve? What assumptions are we continuing to make about the way we operate simply because we “know them to be true”? What ideas for new public services (or new ways of delivering them) have we come up with recently but didn’t follow through because “that will never work”?
In today’s business world, market leaders get ahead by shedding old ideas and ways of thinking faster than their competitors. In government, it’s not so much a race to the top as it as a way to serve the public more efficiently and effectively. This can only happen by challenging your assumptions on a regular basis.
2. Change your perspective
The human brain tends to screen in data that proves us right and screen out anything that contradicts our prevailing point of view. As a result, we often filter, distort or ignore the information coming in, so that we only see what we want to see.Changing your perspective enables the brain to break out of its rigid thinking patterns and see the world in new and different ways. It opens the mind to new possibilities, and focuses your attention on what could be rather than what is or what was. It also enables you to spot new patterns and connections that others might not see – a critical factor for successful innovation.
To see things from a different perspective, talk to people who don’t see things the way you do. Ask employees, “What do you see as getting in the way of providing our public services more effectively?” Ask a constituent, “What is our greatest strength? Are we using it to good advantage?” Ask yourself, “What if a 6-year-old was involved? What if I had to explain what we on a daytime TV talk show? If I just got hired, what would I do first to make things different and better?”
Changing your perspective doesn’t mean throwing out all your old ideas; just the ones that get in the way of ongoing innovation.
3. Ask the right questions
Questions can offer a powerful tool for opening people up to new ideas and possibilities. However, they often keep people stuck in the past by focusing on the problem rather than the solution. For example: “Why hasn’t your team come up with a new or improved service in the past three months? What are you going to do differently to innovate?” These kinds of questions put people on the defensive and shut down creative thinking.Instead, ask future, active, past-tense questions that get people thinking and acting like the desired future state is already happening. For example: When we have successfully innovated, what does the new service look like? What problems is it solving for our constituents? How is it bringing greater value to all we serve?
Imagining that the innovation already exists shifts people’s attention from why they can’t do something to what they did to achieve it. Once this shift has been made, the brain fills in with all sorts of options on how to achieve the goal.
4. Question the right answer
From an early age, we’re taught that there is only one right answer to every problem. As a result, we often pass over potentially better solutions because we’re so sure the one we have is right.In business, almost all problems have multiple solutions. Some are better, easier, cheaper or more feasible than others. But very rarely do we encounter situations where there is only one right answer. While options may be more limited in government agencies, there is almost always more than one potential solution. To nurture ongoing innovation, forget about finding the right answer. Instead, focus on identifying as many potential answers as possible. Then choose the best one (or combination of ones) that most supports your innovation goal.
Don’t settle for the first good answer, even when it seems like the right answer. Good often gets in the way of great.
5. Conduct a cold-eye review
Think about areas, processes or services in your office or agency that have gone unchanged for a long time. Then bring in people from outside that area of expertise to ask questions like:- How long have you been doing it this way? Why?
- What is one thing you have always wanted to change?
- What is the biggest barrier to the process being more efficient or delivering better quality …?
- If you were in charge of this area, what’s the first thing you would do differently?
- If you were creating this process all over again, what would it look like?
- If money were no object, what tools/equipment/resources would you replace and what advantage would that give you?
6. Kill a dumb rule
In order to innovate, we sometimes have to first get rid of the obstacles getting in the way. One quick and simple method for eliminating barriers to innovation is to kill a dumb rule.At your next team meeting, ask, “If you could get rid of any rule in this office or agency – either kill it or change it – what would you do and why? Don’t worry about if the boss won’t like it or whether it might cost too much. Just what would you kill or change, and why?” Then sit back and let people throw out ideas for 10 minutes.
Next, choosing from all the ideas presented, have everyone write down on a sticky note the one rule they would most like to kill or change. Group the sticky notes together on a white board, depending on whether they would be hard or easy to implement and would have a low or high impact on the organization. Sort out the rule changes that would be easy to implement and have a high impact on the organization. Then ask the team: What do we need to do to make this happen?
7. Think like Napoleon
To innovate, organizations must first have a clear vision of winning. To get that clear vision, Napoleon imagined himself on the battlefield before stepping into battle. Conrad Hilton pictured himself owning a hotel before he ever bought one. Dr. Charles Mayo mentally rehearsed performing an operation before he suited up.So pause for a moment and focus on what winning looks like for your organization. Describe it to yourself with as many details as you can. Who is involved? What are you doing differently? What are the outcomes? How do you feel about winning? Then ask: What did we do to get there? This triggers our "proving ourselves right" instinct and helps us open up to "how" we did it versus what is in the way.
Mental rehearsal of this type frees the imagination to roam, to consider different options, and to confront and achieve a new and better future.
8. Pre-think
Take a deep breath. Get rid of as many distractions as you can. Then ask: What significant changes have we seen in the needs of the people we serve and how have we responded?Think about how changes over the past six months to several years are impacting your office or agency. What challenges are you facing today, and which ones are you likely to encounter again? What have others experienced that may be coming your way that you need to prepare for? What possibilities and probabilities are out there?
“Pre-think” about how you will react when these challenges and opportunities happen in your sector. Then ponder what you should be considering and exploring now to get ready for their arrival.
9. “What if?” it
Consider what often gets said in meetings when a new idea or way of doing things is introduced. For example: “We can’t do it that way; it will never work.” Or, “We don’t have the budget for that.” Or, “That will never fly with the boss.”Pause for a moment and recognize these as thought bubbles – unspoken assumptions about your operations and way of conducting business that you automatically believe are “positively, absolutely so.” Then ask, What if. ...
- I'm wrong? What else might I see?
- there are other possibilities?
- others see it differently? How would they see it?
- I had to prove myself wrong? What other data might I consider?
- we no longer had to follow these rules? How would we do it differently?
10. Stop jumping to solutions
Today’s hyper-fast world creates a lot of pressure to make quick decisions. So we often tend to go with the first feasible solution rather than looking for better or different ideas. Not a good recipe for ongoing innovation.To encourage your team to look for different and better solutions, ask, “What underlying attitudes or beliefs are causing us to see this as the best or only solution?” Then solicit alternative viewpoints from people who see things differently. For example, “It sounds like we’re all in agreement on the solution here. Does anyone see it differently?”
Ask questions that look beyond the solution at hand. “What if our ‘right’ answer is wrong? What if there is another way to look at this problem? What if we looked at it from the constituents' perspective; how would they solve this problem?”
Ultimately innovation comes down to changing the way we think and learning to see the world differently. No easy task, but it can be done. Those who make it a habit will reap the rewards that ongoing innovation can bring.
As CEO and Managing Director of The Human Factor Inc., Holly Green helps business leaders and their companies achieve excellence by creating clarity on what winning looks like and determining how to get there.
