The Public Service Challenge:
Harnessing innovative thinking

by Ed Bernacki

The 2005 Federal Budget focuses on strengthening and modernizing public sector management. "We must work smart, pay attention to the needs of Canadians, and react more quickly to change," said Treasury Board's Reg Alcock. "Departments and agencies across government will…introduce new functions, equip people with new tools, enhance knowledge and skills…and prepare people for cultural changes."

What he is asking for is exactly what highly innovative organizations do — they think about what they do, about their customers, and deal with problems and opportunities quickly and effectively. The focus on new tools, knowledge and skills is crucial for building a greater capacity to innovate. But knowledge about a topic is not the same as having the skills to use that knowledge in innovative ways.

Our understanding of innovative thinking is limited. For some departments, the brief I get is: "Innovation is one of our values, but we don't know what that means." The reality is that most people don't know what it means to be innovative, or how to be more innovative. We often dive into a project without checking the tools we bring to a job.

To be innovative starts with 'thinking about your thinking' in your personal work, your team activities and those of the wider department. People need to step back to: Bring new perspectives to daily work — how we participate in meetings, how we select our projects, and how we apply our knowledge to the job.

Do things differently — look beyond the status quo or the obvious solution to seek a more effective option; we need new skills to make our decisions more effective. Focus on finding ideas and acting on them — while great ideas are useful, they must be executed to create value.

To get results, we must also broaden our understanding of how to be innovative. What would an innovative government department do differently? How would it do it differently?

WHERE DOES INNOVATIVE THINKING START?
Innovation takes many forms. We need two types of innovations in the public sector: how we work (we need new ideas for working together in meetings, workshops, collaborating, and our processes to achieve results) and what we achieve (we need to apply our knowledge effectively to create strong programs and recommendations).

Innovation starts in the mind with those who strive to find better or different solutions to everyday challenges. We can grow and nurture this capacity to innovate by planning for these capabilities:

Trust: without trust ideas die quickly. Staff must trust coworkers and managers to know that they will be listened to and respected.

Skills: the capacity to innovate takes skills to manage ideas. Problems with weak individual or team results usually stem from poor skills and ability to:
·     Generate ideas — defining the true problem and 'brainstorming' to find more and better options.
·     Develop ideas — understanding that ideas need to be developed and broadened before being judged. We develop our ideas to solve the problem knowing that each solution will have unintended consequences.
·     Judge ideas — recognizing the difference between good solutions and great solutions, and how to remove weaknesses to make these unintended consequences positive.
·     Communicate ideas — having a great solution is one thing, getting support, commitment and resource to act on it is another.

Style of problem solving: can you manage people who do not think like you? Some people find solutions to make something better while others focus on doing things differently. This is crucial for building high power teams.

Focus: can you answer this question: "Where are innovative ideas needed in 2005 and 2006 to get the results we need?" Most executives struggle with this.

A recent staff survey raised an interesting insight: “I'd love to see a challenge board that identifies areas where we need to improve as a region, as an office, as a directorate, and some requested solutions (for specific problems we may not be aware of). And this should be part of our regular staff meetings and annual business planning.” The simplicity of this comment is powerful.

If people develop their skills, they will build a capacity to innovate with commitment and conviction. It is this capacity that Alcock wants to harness to achieve his modernizing goals. Greater focus on the skills of how people work together to innovate will lead to more sophisticated solutions to the growing challenges facing the public sector.



Ed Bernacki started Idea Factory to help individuals and organizations develop their capacity to innovate through presentations, training and coaching (info@wowgreatidea.com or www.wowgreatidea.com).