Some thoughts about organisational innovation
In 1948, Luther Gulick reflecting on the administrative lessons of World War II offered an insight into the extent to which individuals can triumph over an organisational system:
Good men seldom survive bad organisation.
The following (somewhat random and incomplete) thoughts came from thinking about the way we seem to talk about organisational innovation, and then reflecting on Mr Gulick’s observation.
Our innovation focus often seems to be on idolising the role of the individual. There is one story that comes to us in two forms.
There is the prescient leader (hero) who accurately forecasts the future, sees what no other can see, who wrestles a reluctant organisation (that fights him or her all the way) to an innovative outcome.
There is the lone worker (entrepreneur) who working at the coalface has a unique insight but must battle the sceptical management to have his or her idea accepted.
These stories of everyday organisational heroism may be true but in our haste to place the perceptive leader or entrepreneurial worker on a pedestal the organisational dimensions of innovation are overlooked.
In many organisations, I suspect there is a strong desire for ‘more innovation’ or ‘a culture of innovation’ but little progress is made on addressing ‘innovation’ as a practical business strategy. This approach is similar to Alice’s dilemma:
It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged. The only difficulty was, she had not the smallest idea how to set about it. (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland).
An organisational approach to innovation might take account of the need for leaders and managers to work within the current organisational system and with the resources that are readily to hand. Our conversations about innovation seem to assume these constraints away (other than as barriers to be overcome by our hero innovator). Unfortunately, most leaders and managers (no matter how senior or special) are not in positions where wholesale innovative change is possible or achievable.
Our leaders and managers, as is sometimes portrayed, are not in the control room with their hands on the big organisational levers. Rather, they are in a room filled with soap bubbles and they find themselves blowing madly to get the bubbles to go (mostly) in the same direction. Organisational leadership always seems to me to be uncertain, delicate and frustrating.
Organisations, and particularly large organisations, fight hard to stay the same. They fight to stay the same because they are made up of teams that are invested in the work of today more than they are the work of tomorrow. They are bound into systems that deliver value and are not within their gift alone to change. They fight to stay the same because every day individuals bring to work with them a bag of commitment, which is at their discretion alone to provide. To bring about change each individual must be convinced to invest their commitment to achieving that uncertain, collective and innovative outcome. So, ultimately, the weight of an organisation always tends toward stability. These are real constraints on the ability of organisations to implement innovative ideas that need to be understood and worked with, rather than assumed away.
What follows are half-formed, high-level and somewhat esoteric thoughts on the problem of organisational innovation. They are shaped by the need to think about innovation at the level of the organisation rather than the individual. They accept the messiness and uncertainty of innovation in organisations that are by necessity tightly-bound and structured. Mostly, these thoughts are based on the idea that organisational innovation only gets interesting when you think about your organisation as soap bubbles.
We might consider four ways of thinking about innovation and reform:
- Our approach should provide a sense of scale. It should appreciate the way innovation is a driver of simultaneous reform at different levels across the organisation. Innovation is never isolated. This is central to understanding the importance of innovation and negative reactions to new ideas and practices.
- Our approach must account for the way innovation produces a different effect and therefore a different organisational response at each organisational layer. The history of product and service innovation is that successful innovation changes organisational relationships, alters business models and challenges existing practices. These changes are not confined to a particular organisational level but spark concurrent and interdependent change at every level of the organisation. The speed and breadth of the change can differ across the organisation.
- Our approach should identify the role of the organisations leaders in maintaining the integrity of today’s organisation to meet today’s need while also making decisions about the path of innovation and change to meet tomorrow’s needs. Leaders are constantly engaged in the delivering policy, products and services; consequently, the stability and integrity of today’s organisation is as important as finding the ‘game-breaking’ innovation that might lead to improved performance. Balancing the constant tension between stability and change is a dilemma for all leaders. A problem that is often overlooked in discussions of innovation.
- Our approach should guide our understanding of the value of innovation. We need to look beyond input measures alone. Input measures are easy to see. They look like ‘hard’ measures, and we can spend considerable time refining them without recognising that we are focused on one part of the equation. We need to understand relationships and interaction, and how these contribute to converting an idea into a practice that has an effect. We need an understanding of value beyond what we can see and touch. For example, the evolution of an innovation introduced primarily to improve efficiency may have widespread and unintended effects. The ability to track the diffusion, evolution and impact of an innovation is central to understanding its value. It is central to organisational learning.
More to follow...maybe...
