Innovation and Adaptability: Pathways to Sustainability and Resilience

(noticed a few grammar mistakes so fixed them - 5:24pm 28/06/17)

On June 26-27 I had the privilege of being a member of one of six groups of hackers during the #GCCIOSummit at The Canadian Museum of Nature. First off, our museums are amazing! We are so fortunate to live and work in our nation's capital.

Minister Brison and Alex Benay kicked us off with challenges to be bolder and to replace risk aversion with experimentation. Minister Brison, in his opening remarks, also noted that businesses that are not digital are dead and that governments that are not digital are out of touch with its citizens.

To more fully enable digital we need to create the environment for innovation to thrive and for adaptability in our people, processes, and strategies to be as common as the air we breath. He also said "I want you to disrupt....if you disrupt, I have your backs" - that's kind of a big deal coming from a Minister!

The challenges considered by the other hacker teams:

1.      How could data publication rates be accelerated within the Government of Canada (considering data preparation constraints)?

2.      How could data visualization, accessibility and manipulation be improved on the Open Data Portal?

3.      How could Blockchain be leveraged in the Government of Canada?

4.      How could a chatbot be developed/leveraged to improve GC recruitment?

5.     How could Canadian innovation within Small and Medium Enterprises and the Government of Canada be linked together?

During the two days my group who included Joshua Glover, Alexandra Salamis MSW, MA, CCMP, ACC (a noted Forbes Coaches Council member), Alexandre Enkerli, and Tom McLay were posed the challenge:

"How could intrapreneurship be enabled within the Government of Canada?"

We turned that around slightly into "how could we foster a Culture of Innovation?".

Using Soren Kaplan's "The Invisible Advantage" as our guide we laid down a few fundamentals:

1. Work with others who've done it before, like the Austrailian Government and the Canadian CED Network
2. Develop an Innovators Toolkit that is suitable to the GC context by adopting what is usable from open source toolkits and adapting or creating the rest
3. Provide training for people who want to use the Toolkit in the thinking and actions of innovators
4. Stand up an Innovation Growth Office within the TBS with a mandate to evolve the Innovators Toolkit, be the Chief S**t Remover, to waive policy for piloting new ideas. etc.
5. Promote collaboration between the GC and the private sector on bringing innovation to life that benefits Canadian citizens and businesses.

On the eve of Canada's 150th Birthday this coming Saturday, we used it as inspiration to complete Kaplan's Invisible Advantage Map. Our group's stated intent for fostering that culture was to "Improve the value to Canadian Citizens and Businesses so profoundly they cannot imagine going back to the old way".

Organization's that are both sustainable and resilient over the long run get that way by being innovative and adaptable. Being adaptable means not being afraid to change strategies that are not working, to see opportunity where other see challenges and run in the opposite direction, to have both a growth and a possibilities mindset where others prefer the status quo, to being able to recognize that if things are not working now that the real risk lies in doing nothing at all.

While digital is the focus of much of the innovation dialogue, with an overemphasis on the disruptive kind, within our group we agreed with Kaplan that a portfolio approach to innovation is needed that considers incremental, sustainable and disruptive innovation. According to Kaplan they should be split into 70%, 20% and 10% respectively. Think about this - if you have lots of people in your organization looking at incremental innovations, what's the likelihood that both sustainable and disruptive innovations will also be more likely to be uncovered? Think of the positive vibes it will generate and for your people in the sense of doing something that can make a real difference.

There are tons of areas ripe for innovation in the GC. To leverage those innovation opportunities we need to consider that some other areas of organizations also need to be innovate to support them - notably HR, Finance, and Policy development. Each of these have their own unique innovation opportunities that need to be closely considered in how those opportunities for innovation can enable the digital ones. Some examples include:

• Enabling pathways for people to move between the public and private sectors and vice versa
• Enabling more open space collaboration and access to WiFi for visitors to GC workplaces for the public and private sectors to co-create solutions to intransigent problems
• Creating policies that support faster procurement for the goods and services that teams need to move quickly in innovation
• Fostering the development of innovation mentors and coaches within both sectors who are allowed to participate in either

Our group left the CIOs with a challenge for the next two months- name a CIO sponsor, stand-up the Innovation Growth Office. For our part we would develop the toolkit and build and deliver the first round of training to the inaugural innovators for an early fall launch to begin fostering a culture of innovation.

Our main suggested metric to track is the perception among leaders, innovators, and citizens that innovation is actually happening - that is, are we are really moving towards a culture of innovation?

The hacks by the other teams were impressive – it truly is amazing what can come out of just two days of focus by committed people.

It was a privilege to serve.

Now we need to go get ready to disrupt some things.