Monday Book Review: Beyond the Idea: How to Execute Innovation in Any Organization

by John Kenney

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It would seem that it is completely natural to frame the innovation challenge as a battle between an innovation hero and a bureaucratic octopus. In the real world, however, innovation heroes get strangled, almost every time. Therefore, we need a more productive approach… 

... what is needed is mutual respect between innovation leaders and performance engine leaders…innovation leaders must recognize that conflict with the performance engine is normal. It is not the result of people being lazy or unwilling to change. Quite to the contrary, it is the result of good people doing good work, trying to make the performance engine run as efficiently as possible. Performance engine leaders, for their part, must remember that no performance engine lasts forever…(Beyond the Idea, p. 48).

Blueprint 2020 generated a lot of ideas and maybe just as many questions regarding if and how they will be implemented. What follows is a summary of Beyond the Idea: How to Execute Innovation in Any Organization and a few thoughts with respect to public sector innovation.

First, a few things about what the book is not:

With the exception of a couple of brief appendices on strategy and change, which I’ll discuss below, it’s not a guide for strategic or systemic approaches to innovation.* It picks up where the generation of ideas leaves off so doesn’t explain (directly) how innovation supports desired outcomes, needs and/or solutions to problems. It also doesn’t speak to innovation diffusion. There’s a deliberate focus on project-level innovation initiatives based on the authors’ survey of the field, which was primarily private sector companies...so the public sector is not the intended audience. The book, therefore, does not tell a complete innovation story, nor does it attempt to.

If I haven’t lost you after that preamble, I think the authors have some important insights with respect to managing innovation initiatives vis-à-vis ongoing operations. There are a number of jumping off points for further reflection and discussion.

The book’s premise is that orgs must shift time and energy from a focus on generating ideas to executing innovation initiatives. An innovation initiative is defined as “any project that is new to your organization and has an uncertain outcome.” The definition is intentionally broad.

The way the authors see it, most orgs are not built for innovation. They’re set up to deliver ongoing operations via the “performance engine.” “…Innovation execution is its own unique discipline. It requires its own time, energy and distinct thinking.”

Three models for executing innovation initiatives are presented. Orgs can have any number of innovation initiatives on the go; what’s crucial, say the authors, is to match each initiative to the proper model to ensure they are executed effectively. “The criteria for choosing the right model are internal. They are tied to the physics of getting the work done.”

EACH MODEL HAS ITS OWN STRATEGY FOR DEALING WITH THE PERFORMANCE ENGINE 

Model	Strategy for Dealing with the Performance Engine	What It Delivers
S Small	Squeeze It In Squeeze innovation into the slack in the system.	A very large number of very small initiatives.
R Repeatable	Make It Repeatable and Predictable Make innovation look as much like day-to-day operations as possible.	A series of similar initiatives.
C Custom	Separate It Separate incompatible innovation tasks from day-to-day operations.	One unique initiative at a time.

- Beyond the Idea, p. 15

Model S, for small initiatives, “squeezes innovation into the slack time” of the ongoing work of the performance engine, spontaneously and organically. This model is largely dependent on motivated employees, individually and/or collectively, doing their regular work plus the work to innovate, but only part-time given the performance engine has got to keep chugging along. For that reason, Model S can work for small initiatives only, but the cumulative impacts can be significant. E.g.:

• See Tanya Snook’s Hacking Our Way To Agile Government. 
• Tiger Teams, Insight Teams, and Tech companies’ “20 percent projects”.

Model R, for repeatable initiatives, is all about the process and making innovation systematic for a series of similar initiatives, big or small. It aims to make innovation as repeatable and predictable as possible. “…for all of Model R’s strengths, it is also its own worst enemy. Its drive for efficiency eventually becomes its undoing.” Systematic, process-driven innovation for specific initiatives requires some flexibility (e.g. time, budget) at times to allow for breakthroughs to occur. E.g.:

• Product development teams that pump out the ongoing series of your favourite smartphone,
• An HR team that develops and implements a new performance management directive using a similar process and people as the previous year’s exercise.   

The bulk of the book is dedicated to Model C, for custom initiatives, which is the most difficult and robust model. This model is used for all other initiatives beyond the limitations of either Model S or Model R. Model C initiatives require a structure for disciplined experimentation that is incompatible with the performance engine. Each custom initiative has a “Special Team” and a “Special Plan.” The Special Team is made up of “Dedicated Staff”, who work full-time on the initiative and “Shared Staff”, who provide part-time support (as needed) and continue their role in ongoing operations. The Dedicated Staff is assembled as if you’re putting together a new, custom-built organization: the culture, ways of working and make-up of the team, which could include external talent, is designed for the specific initiative. The Special Team and Special Plan emphasize rapid learning to design and execute the initiative, and the work of the team is evaluated more so on that basis. E.g.:

• New ways of working and innovation executed via a skunkworks or design/innovation/change lab.

I buy Beyond the Idea’s argument that we have to acknowledge and manage the inevitable tension(s) between our ongoing operations and innovation initiatives. There’s some truth to “innovation heroes get strangled, almost every time.” Often, the performance engine is busy doing other things. Motivated employees with brilliant ideas get swamped or directed to work on other priorities. Or, the culture and ways of working of an established org unit (or an entire department) do not lend themselves well to adapting to new ways of working to achieve desired outcomes. The book includes info on the roles a Chief Innovation Officer and/or innovation support team can play in coordinating initiatives, providing support and guidance, and managing the potential conflicts.

There’s more to it than that though.

Beyond the Idea’s focus on using the right model for an innovation initiative is important, but is it the right initiative? A scattershot approach to innovation via idea generation will only take an organization so far, and possibly in an unknown direction (See Innovation is the Process of Idea Management and Why your innovation contest won’t work). We need to commit to the long game and take the necessary steps to get there. That may include taking a step back, looking at the big picture, and ensuring our overarching frameworks, business processes, and ways of working enable innovation and its diffusion. Check out You can’t impose a culture of innovation for tips on investing in long-term change and consider moving from incremental fixes to systemic innovation.

An argument that innovation requires “its own time, energy and distinct thinking” doesn’t mean that it happens in isolation of everything else. Alex Howard recently wrote about the launch of 18F, a startup within the US General Services Administration that is setting up to “hack the bureaucracy.” “18F builds effective, user-centric digital services focused on the interaction between government and the people and businesses it serves. We help agencies deliver on their mission through the development of digital and web services.” Also mentioned in Howard’s post was Clay Johnson’s response to 18F: “Is 18F a complete solution to the US government’s IT woes? No. But, like RFP-ITand FITARA, this new office is part of a broader strategy.” Ah, strategy.

Buried at the back of Beyond the Idea is an appendix on “Strategy.”. The authors claim that “everything a company thinks and does can be put into one of the [following] three boxes:

• Box 1: Manage the present;
• Box 2: Selectively forget the past; and
• Box 3: Create the future.”

Most organizations spend a lotof time on managing the present. Blueprint 2020 and the recent planning push have got us thinking about the future, but as we do that, are we making deliberate, well-informed decisions and challenging the enduring assumptions of the performance engine to selectively forget the past? We need to address the underlying problems and (sometimes perceived) barriers to new ways of working. Innovation is not just about doing new things. Sometimes it’s about making deliberate choices to stop doing old things.

The guidance in Beyond the Idea will not get us there alone, but being mindful that innovation initiatives come in all shapes and sizes and require appropriate models to effectively execute them is timely advice. Managing the tensions between ongoing operations and innovation initiatives and selectively forgetting the past will be crucial if the federal public service is expected to meet at the desired Destination 2020 rendezvous point.

*E.g. See the Three Horizons Approach in Appendix Six in Empowering Change: Fostering Innovation in the Australian Public Service and Innovation for Now and for the Future, and Kent’s post on Standardizing Innovation.

Make no mistake these are impossible conversations

by Nick Charney

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On the heels of a lengthy discussion about the nature of faceless bureaucrats (See: Can Bureaucrats be Interesting When the World Demands That They be Boring) and borrowing a page from the highly successful Toronto based Academy of the Impossible, the expanding team here at cpsrenewal.ca wants to host a series of impossible conversations.

Conversations that bureaucrats just aren’t supposed to have, conversations that cut to the core of what it means to be a public servant and what it could mean in the future.

While we are still mapping out the ideal program for the next few months, we can say for certain that one of the ongoing core elements of the impossible conversation series will be a monthly review of books that address issues in the field of public administration.

Real, live, and in person

Does a semi-facilitated difficult conversation  around books that are obviously of interest to public servants but obviously shouldn't be talked about them beyond a dull whisper interest you?

We thought so.

The first review will drop Monday, the book in question is Andrew Cohen’s The Unfinished Canadian; and while that conversation has already happened, we are in the midst of planning our next conversation around Donald Savoie's Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher.

If you would like to be a part of that conversation, please let us know.

I want to thank Jesse Hirsh of the Academy of the Impossible for inspiring the idea, and Tariq Piracha for humbly agreeing to help us with the impossible task of pulling together a synopsis of these conversations to share with you here at cpsrenewal.ca.

Where ideas go to live and/or die

I just finished reading Steven Johnson's "Where Good Ideas Come From" and it's an absolute must read for anyone interested in the sweet science of innovation; he's actually got a TED talk that addresses some of these issues but it isn't nearly as compelling as the book).

I was so impressed with the book that I simply had to abandon my traditional Monday Book Review format and bring you a little something deeper. At its core the book is about the origins of good ideas, while explaining these origins Johnson goes through seven integral (and interrelated) concepts of innovation:

• the adjacent possible
• liquid networks
• slow hunch
• serendipity
• error
• exaptation
• platforms

What follows is a blend of the most pertinent excerpts form the book and my own thoughts on how those excerpts relate to the public sector writ large (warning: it's a long post, I've been chewing on these ideas for weeks).


The Adjacent Possible

The adjacent possible is a a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edge of present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent it self. Yet it is not an infinite space, or a totally open playing field... What the adjacent possible tells us is that at any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change, but only certain changes can happen. The strange and beautiful truth is that is that its boundaries grow as you explore those boundaries. Each new combination ushers in new combinations into the adjacent possible. (p.31)

Think of the adjacent possible as the doors leading out of the room you are in. The more you explore what's behind those doors, the more doors you find to explore. The key lesson here - one that I have argued repeatedly - is that exploring the edges of the organization is what creates the room for growth. In short, organizations need people who are willing to be nomads; they need tricksters who walk the line; they need people to open doors to new ways of thinking.

My own experience is that I find it is rather easy to stand out as someone who engages in these types of activities because (in my view) its the path least travelled by fellow bureaucrats. No one ever speaks out against the notion that the public sector needs to be more innovative (its an untenable position) but my sense is that few of us actually invest time in truly understanding (and pursuing) what is required to achieve it. This is, at least in part, attributable to a culture that rewards keeping conversations within established (and hierarchical) channels. Anyone who has ever been "corrected" by a manager for corresponding with a colleague above their current pay grade knows this truth intimately.

It's fair to say that the general criticism levied by many against governments in general is that they aren't exactly environments that breed innovation; which I suppose leads us to the question, what kind of environment creates good ideas? According to Johnson:

The simplest way to answer it is this: innovative environments are better at helping their inhabitants explore the adjacent possible, because they expose a wide and diverse sample of spare parts - mechanical or conceptual - and they encourage novel ways of recombining those parts. Environments that block or limit those new combinations - by punishing experimentation, by securing certain branches of possibility, by making the current state so satisfying that no one bothers to explore the edges - will, on average, generate and circulate fewer innovations than environments that encourage exploration. (p. 41)

One of the key points that Johnson makes later in the chapter is on the idea of sustainability and that while there may be incredibly innovative individuals who leap ahead of what is currently possible, the innovation they bring to the market isn't sustainable because the prerequisite doors within the adjacent possible haven't been unlocked yet. If organizations are looking to embrace a sustainable approach to innovation they need to do a better job of weaving exploration and solidification into their business fabric. The (slightly frustrating) implication for would fast moving innovators and earlier adopters is likely that they need to slow down and work on building a foundation that will support their downsteam efforts rather then simply jumping ahead to those efforts right now.


Liquid Networks

According to Johnson ideas don't happen in a vacuum. While we tend to characterize the greatest ideas of our times as sudden strokes of genius and "aha moments", this characterization is incredibly flawed and often misleading:

A good idea is a network. A specific constellation of neurons–thousands of them–fire in sync with each other for the first time in your brain, and an idea pops into your consciousness. A new idea is a network of cells exploring the adjacent possible of connections that they can make in your mind. This is true whether the idea in question is a new way to solve a complex physics problem, or a closing line for a novel, or a feature for a software application. If we're going to try to explain the mystery of where good ideas come from, we'll have to start by shaking ourselves free of this common misconception: an idea is not a single thing. It is more like a swarm...  

When you think about ideas in there native state of neural networks, two key preconditions become clear. First, the sheer size of the network: you can't have an epiphany with only three neurons firing...The second precondition is that the network be plastic, capable of adopting new configurations. A dense network incapable of forming new patterns is, by definition, incapable of change, incapable of probing at the edges of the adjacent possible. (pp. 44-46)

Density matters; it affects the size of the adjacent possible. Maintaining a dense and diverse network is important for anyone looking to be more innovative. The more ideas you come up against the more raw materials you have for connections to be made betwixt them. Malleability also matters; yet public sector working environments are anything but plastic. I hope that public sector work environments loosen up a bit as people are increasingly realizing that less rigid environments are more conducive to innovating than rigid ones.  If you are asking yourself how to push your brain towards more creative networks, Johnson agues that:

The answer, as it happens, is delightfully fractal: to make your mind more innovative, you have to place it inside environments that share that same network signature: networks of ideas or people that mimic the neural networks of a mind exploring the boundaries of the adjacent possible. (p. 47)

Slow Hunch

... the snap judgements of intuition - as powerful as they can be - are rarities in the history of world-changing ideas. Most hunches that turn into important innovations unfold over much longer time frames. They start with a vague, hard-to-describe sense that there's an interesting solution to a problem that hasn't yet been proposed, and they linger in the shadows of the mind, sometimes for decades, assembling new connections and gaining strength. And then one day they are transformed into something more substantial: sometimes jolted out by some newly discovered trove of information, or by another hunch lingering in another mind, or by an internal association that finally completes the though. (p. 77)

I suppose there is some sort of ironic corollory that can be drawn between slow moving bureaucracies and the slow hunch, I'd rather side step it and instead focus on the heart of the matter, namely that:

Because these slow hunches need so much time to develop, they are fragile creatures, easily lost to the more pressing needs of day-to-day issues. (p. 77)

One of the biggest challenges facing governments is that they tend to focus on the immediacy of pressing needs to the detriment of the longer game. Its the cultural underpinnings that give us table dropped documents, last minute changes, and rush translations.


Serendipity

The premise that innovation propsers when ideas can serendipitously connect and recombine with other ideas, when other hunches can stumble across other hunches that successfully fill in their blanks, may seem like an obvious truth, but the strange fact is that a great deal of the past two centuries of legal and folk wisdom about innovation has pursued the exact opposite argument, building walls between ideas ... Ironically those walls have been erected with the explicit aim of encouraging innovation. They go by many names: patents, digital rights management, intellectual property, trade secrets, proprietary technology. But they share a founding assumption: that in the long run innovation will increase if you put restrictions on the spread of new ideas ... The problem with these closed environments is that they inhibit serendipity and reduce the overall network of minds that can potentially engage with a problem. (pp. 123-124)

I'm not sure this needs elaboration; it may be sufficient to poke you in the direction of thinking about how open to serendipity your organization is, whether or not you are encouraged to meet and engage in dialogue with people outside it, and how important it is that you be physically present in the office even when its inconsequential to your ability to deliver on your responsibilities.


Error

"The errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one." This is not merely statistics. It is not that the pioneering thinkers are simply more productive than less "vigorous" ones, generating more ideas overall, both good and bad. Some historical studies of patent records have in fact shown that overall productivity correlates with radical breakthroughs in science and technology, that sheer quantity ultimately leads to quality. [There is a] more subtle case for the role of error in innovation, because error is not simply a phase you have to suffer through on the way to genius. Error often creates a path that leads you out of your comfortable assumptions ... Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore. (p. 117)

Again, think about how accepting of failure your organization is; are the majority of new projects are born out of comfortable assumptions - the way we've always done things - or are they prompted by an admission that something is a miss and needs to be fixed from the ground up?


Exaptation

Taking ideas from other sectors and applying them to the public sector is what Johnson calls exaptation:

If mutation and error and serendipity unlock new doors in the biosphere's adjacent possible, exaptations help us explore the new possibilities behind those doors. A match you light to illuminate a darkened room turns out to have a completely different use when you open a doorway and discover a room with a pile of logs and a fireplace in it. A tool that helps you see in one context ends up helping you keep warm in another. (p. 156)

I've said repeatedly to people that if they want to be recognized as an innovator, all they have to do is look in the direction others aren`t. If the entire organization is looking left, look right. The marginal value of another set of eyes looking left is negligible. The value of the first set of eyes to look right is enormous.

What would you rather be known for?


Platforms

Platform building is, by definition, a kinds of exercise in emergent behaviour ... platform builders [don't] just open a door to the adjacent possible. They build an entire new floor. (p. 183)

The above statement isn't surprising if you are already familiar with the idea of government as platform; however what is surprising is what Johnson has to say about the potential of bureaucracies to be a platform:

Government bureaucracies have a long and richly deserved reputation for squelching innovation, but they possess four key elements that may allow them to benefit from the innovation engine of an emergent platform. First, they are repositories of a vast amount of information and services that could be of potential value to ordinary people, if only we could organize it better. Second, ordinary people have a passionate interest in the kind of information governments deal with, whether it's data about industrial zoning, health-care services or crime rates. Third, a long tradition exists of citizens committing time and intellectual energy to tackling problems where there is a perceived civic good at stake, And, finally, the fact that governments are not in the private sector means that they do not feel any competitive pressure to keep their data proprietary. (p. 196)

The first three points are bang on - and make a great case in support of open data - however Johnson's final point, that governments don't feel competitive pressure to keep their data proprietary, is (in my experience) wrong. There is tremendous pressure to keep things out of the public sphere, to minimize data sharing, and horde information; furthermore these pressures are felt at both the organizational and individual levels.


A visual conclusion selon moi

Based on my interpretation of Johnson's book; I've cobbled together the following chart that shows where I think ideas go to live and where they go to die (click to enlarge):

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

MBR: Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

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

Basic Info

Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday

Why I read it

A buddy of mine gave me a heads up about the book after he heard Ryan Holiday on Q that week. I hadn't heard the interview, but based on how my friend reacted, I figured I had to pick up a copy of this book (Note: I listened to the interview after reading the book, even if you don't grab the book, the interview is worth the 24 minutes or if you prefer video, Holiday sat down with Andrew Keen for an interview).

How it connects to the Public Sector

The book makes you rethink the relationship between blogs and the mainstream media. While Holiday is talking about the tech/celebrity scene in the US when you consider his experience in the context of the public sector it gives you pause. It makes you wonder about how much of the coverage of the Hill is based on PR spin and speculation instigated by media manipulators like Holiday leveraging traffic hungry blogs, if you don't think it can happen, I'd encourage you to look into the Shirley Sherrod Scandal for a reality check (FYI Holiday goes into detail about this example in his book).

What I got out of reading it

The book confirmed my suspicions that a lot of what you read out there (online) is bullshit; and it has made me even more sceptical of the blogs covering the tech scene than I was.

The biggest takeaway for me was that fact checking (regardless of your profession) is probably one of most important (and in time pressured environments often overlooked) parts of your job; the last thing you'd want to do is provide advice to the powers that be based on some speculative blog posts spun by someone like Holiday.

While at times Trust Me I'm Lying reads like a a revenge book (Holiday basically gives the finger to a lot of the online powers that be) the underlying message is compelling: a short shadow of the future and perverse business models built on pages views creates intense competition for your attention while simultaneously delivering you sub-par and filler content; whereas a longer shadow of the future - say like the one I try to adopt with this blog - offers less immediate short term gains but (hopes) to deliver more compelling and useful content (and thus impact) over time.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

MBR: Wait: The Art and Science of Delay

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

Basic Info

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy

Why I read it

The giant 30% off sticker caught my eye in the book store; I flipped it over and Dan Pink had a blurb on the back endorsing the book, that was enough for me.


How it connects to the Public Sector

The book is essentially about how moving/acting/reacting as late as possible to a given situation is likely to produce the best results and that success is determined by the effort and knowledge expended in the lead up time before the action is required.  In other words, delaying until the last possible minute to pull the trigger on something doesn't mean that you are slacking off but rather building the capacity to understand precisely how to move quickly when the situation finally merits it.


What I got out of reading it

If you buy into the the argument that upstream effort makes you nimble and allows you to reap significant downstream benefits than you may also need to accept the fact that work - the real rewarding work of decision-making - only comes in fits and starts and that if we are to continue to find meaning in our work we must learn to derive it not from the crucial decision making nodes but rather the preparatory work that goes into getting us there.

In closing, I suppose its worth mentioning that I took over two weeks to read this book (maybe it has something to do with the title). I read it slowly, and was initially unimpressed with it, but as time passed and I dug deeper into the book, it steadily got better.

If you're interested in some concrete examples on how delaying decision making leads to better results across a bunch of different scenarios you may want to consider picking up a copy of Wait.


Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

MBR: Overqualified by Joey Comeau

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

Overqualified by Joey Comeau

Why I read it

It was recommended by a friend whose literary chops I trust; she made the suggestion via this comment on a previous MBR.


How it connects to the Public Sector

I'm not sure it does explicitly, but damn this book hit the spot.


What I got out of reading it

The book slowly reveals the history of its protagonist through a series of increasingly absurd cover letters. Having never read a work of fiction for a MBR I found reading Overqualified as part of the series a much needed reprieve from the world of business books.

I can't tell you much more about it other than I read it in a single day, spread over 3 separate sittings; and when I wasn't reading the book, I was looking forward to the next time I was going to.

Thanks for the recommendation Chelsea, I'm passing it along to everyone here.


Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

MBR: The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely

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

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely

Why I read it

I had already read (and reviewed) another of Ariely's book on irrationality; this one caught my eye on the clearance counter at my local bookstore.


How it connects to the Public Sector

A lot of the book deals with interpersonal relationships and decision making and subsequently how our irrational behaviour can shape those relationships (for better or for worse). While Ariely doesn't specifically talk about the public sector many of the allegories he uses involve the workplace.


What I got out of reading it

This:

"Ergo, We - and by that I mean You, Me, Companies, and Policy Makers - need to doubt our intuitions. If we keep following our gut and common wisdom or doing what is easiest or most habitual just because "well, things have always been done that way," we will continue to make mistakes - resulting in a lot of time, efforts, heartbreak, and money going down the same old (often wrong) rabbit holes. But if we learn to question ourselves and test our beliefs, we might actually discover when and how we are wrong and improve the ways we love, live, work, innovate, manage and govern." (p.288)

And, if the science behind that statement is something you'd like to learn more about, then I strongly suggest reading the Upside of Irrationality.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect