Promoting Innovation in your Council
JOHN RAVLIC
INTRODUCTION
• Welcome to the Workshop on
PROMOTING INNOVATION IN YOUR COUNCIL
• My main objective for this afternoon is to encourage you to participate in what will very much be
a peer learning session
• I hope to provide you with some information and background that will promote some thinking
and generate some discussion
• It is my intention to call on you to record your key discussion points and present them to the
group
• I will collect, collate and write-up your ideas with a view to making the material available to you in
a couple of weeks
• While you are welcome to take notes you should also be aware that I will provide you with the
background paper on which this workshop is based and a copy of the presentation slides
Why are we talking about “promoting innovation in
your council” at a Human Resources Conference?
Take a few minutes to introduce yourself to the
other delegates at your table and then discuss why
this is a topic for a HR Conference and record the
key discussion points
Innovation has everything to do with
Human Resources … Leadership … Engagement … Ownership
So what is innovation?
How do you know when you see it?
Take a few minutes to discuss what would be seen
as innovation in the local government context and
record the key discussion points
DEFINING INNOVATION
Innovation is defined in Empowering Change: Fostering Innovation in the Australian
Public Service as the generation and application of new ideas. This definition helps
us remember that:
• Innovation is not always a new product, service or process. An innovative idea
may be stopping something (such as an out-moded or now unnecessary function)
or it might be a new way of thinking about an issue
• Innovation is not just about coming up with ideas, but also their application,
integrating them with other systems and processes, and monitoring the results
over the longer term
• Innovation is a process. It involves people, resources and systems and it is
something that can be managed and encouraged
• Everyone has the capacity to be innovative, and many people actively want to
innovate and bring creative and new ways to bear on the problems or issues
faced in their work by their organisation or their clients and stakeholders
LGA UK FUTURE FUNDING OUTLOOK
What proportion of your council’s savings do you estimate could come from
innovative new approaches to service delivery, as opposed to incremental efficiency
gains, restricting access to existing services and other kinds of cutback?
>=50
40
30
20
<=10 % of savings
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
DOING MORE WITH LESS!
This mantra has been heard the world over as
government agencies and councils try to continue
service delivery against a backdrop of falling
revenues and funding cutbacks.
The expectation is that the public service will find
a way to stretch whatever resources are available
to meet all the community needs.
In the past two years the number of
Google hits on the words
"government innovation"
has increased from 38 million to 1.4
billion as leaders and line staff at every
level of government look for ways to do
more with less.
http://www.governing.com/blogs/bfc/col-bloomberg-philanthropies-innovation-delivery-teams.html
What are the most common stereotypes used by
ratepayers, residents, politicians, media etc to
describe councils/local government?
Take a couple of minutes to discuss, agree and
record your top 5 responses.
What do you think are the main barriers to
innovation in your Council?
Lack of time to
focus on innovation
Lack of skills
necessary for innovation
The public is resistant to change
Lack of belief in the potential of
new ideas to deliver practical change
Staff are generally
resistant to change
Too few good ideas being
generated within the council
Lack of the political buy-in
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
EXPECTATION WITHOUT APPRECIATION
The expectation from many quarters was that councils will have to innovate their
way through austerity. At the time there was little appreciation for the
development and implementation of innovation in traditionally bureaucratic
institutions like councils.
In implementing an innovation agenda councils need to have greater regard for:
• time it may take to ‘innovate’
• lag between development, implementation and results
• required cultural shift and skills to innovate
• innovation not leading to immediate benefits and savings
• innovation needing time for experimentation – trial and error
• significant investment at times is required to innovate
• innovation generating service improvements without savings
What organisational culture and workplace
conditions would best support innovation?
Take a few minutes to discuss and describe the
culture and workplace conditions that will best
support innovation.
CONCLUSION
• Workforce planning
• Defining skills and attributes for an
innovative future
• Position Descriptions
• Incorporating the desired
responsibilities, knowledge, skills and
experience
• Recruitment and selection
• Appoint diverse people with the right
skills and experience
• Induction
• Promote how we do things around
here
• Training and development
• Provide the necessary skills and
experience to support innovation
• Performance reviews and rewards
• Establish and review KPIs that
promote innovation and reward
• Management development
• Impart skills and experience that build
and supports cultures that promote
innovation
• Budget/resource allocation
• Implement systems that encourage
and sustain innovation across the
organisation
You want an organisation
that does things differently,
that thinks differently?
Then be different!
Your council may not be ready for pink hair,
nose studs and leather boots, but allowing
deviations from the norm when you can
is a step in the right direction…
Promoting Innovation
in your Council
Workshop
John Ravlic
GOOGLE’S NINE PRINCIPLES OF INNOVATION
• Innovation comes from anywhere
• It can come from the top down as well as
bottom up, and in the places you least expect.
• Focus on the user
• focus on the user, all else will follow
• Aim to be ten times better
• If you want radical and revolutionary
innovation, think 10 times improvement, and
that will force you to think outside the box.
• Bet on technical insights
• organization has unique insights, and if you
bet on it, it leads to major innovation.
• Ship and iterate
• Ship your products often and early, and do
not wait for perfection
• Give employees 20% of time
• Give employees 20 percent of their work time
to pursue projects they are passionate about,
even if it is outside the core job or core
mission of the company
• Default to open processes
• Make your processes open to all users
• Fail well
• If you do not fail often, you are not trying
hard enough
• Have a mission that matters
• Everyone has a strong sense of mission and
purpose
10 WAYS TO PROMOTE INNOVATION
• Give employees a reason to care
• Feeling connected gives employees a
reason to be innovative
• Stress the importance of innovation
• Ensure all employees know that you want
their good ideas
• Schedule time for brainstorming
• Allocate time for new ideas to emerge
• Train staff in innovation techniques
• Employees may find training in formal
techniques worthwhile
• Encourage change
• Broadening employees experience can be
a great way to spark ideas
• Change the way staff work
• Encourage employees to look for new
and better ways to do their job
• Be supportive
• Respond enthusiastically to all ideas
• Tolerate mistakes
• Risk taking is inevitable – allow your
employees to learn from their mistakes
• Reward creativity
• Recognise individuals and teams and all
the ideas that have been generated
• Act on ideas
• Innovation is only worthwhile if its
actioned
http://blog.bayt.com/2014/01/10-ways-to-promote-innovation-at-your-workplace/
PROMOTING INNOVATION IN YOUR WORKPLACE
• Be easy going
• A relaxed and flexible work environment increases your team’s productivity by letting ideas flow
• Recruit for culture
• Look for team members who understand your vision and align with your culture
• Bring on people who love what they do
• Hire people that are passionate about their work. You want people who really care; people who are
excited to go to work everyday because they believe in what you do
• Encourage diversity
• Having a group with different backgrounds, passions, and capabilities - diverse ideas and problemsolving approaches helps push your outcome forward
• Incorporate sprints
• Distractions are endless – that’s where a “sprint,” a set amount of time in which your team works to
finish a project, can be the solution.
• Take ample time off
• Communicate how important time off is and make it non-negotiable
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2012/12/31/6-ideas-to-promote-innovation-in-your-workplace-this-year/
APPROACHES TO SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION
• Nurture innovation in-house
• invest in creativity training to help unlock innovation within the workforce
• Collaborate with a partner
• Joint innovation with external partners
• Cultivate many partners
• innovates through a network of third parties
• CrowdSource or co-create
• Encouraging wider public innovation
• Find an innovative start-up and acquire it
• Complimentary but different core capabilities
FOUR INNOVATION LESSONS
• One thing leads to another
• Innovation begets innovation
• There are almost always unintended consequences with innovation
• Leading to innovation that could not otherwise have been imagined
• The best spring not from EUREKA moments but slow hunches
• Process of an idea coming into focus over years or even decades
• Following a hunch for a long period of time
• Innovation arises from collaboration
• The most successful innovators tend to work with others and bounce ideas
• Lone genius with a blind spot may miss the obvious
• Altruism has inspired some crucial innovations
• Sometimes its just about making life better for someone
• There's no business in it afterwards
FEW ARE ABLE TO MAKE INNOVATION A WORKPLACE REALITY
Cultural Shift
• Businesses want innovation and some expect it without accepting the
required cultural shift that breaks with tradition or conventional
wisdom– new ideas, behaviours or lifestyles
• In highly innovative circles, thinking-outside-the-box isn’t just an
expression, it’s a way of life
• encouraging employees to become more curious thinkers could be a
first step toward a culture that seeks new solutions for businessrelated challenges
FEW ARE ABLE TO MAKE INNOVATION A WORKPLACE REALITY
Make Time for Innovation
• Google asks its employees to spend one day a week working on
projects outside their usual job description to encourage innovation
• Encourages employees to take something old and make it new again
• If innovation is seen as ‘how we do business’ and its recognised
employees are more likely to get involved
FEW ARE ABLE TO MAKE INNOVATION A WORKPLACE REALITY
Problem Solving
• Develop an environment where problem-solving is encouraged
• Desire to solve problems is what can lead to a more innovative workforce
• Once problem-solving becomes a part of one’s daily work responsibilities,
solving larger organizational issues becomes much less daunting
• You don’t need to hire a team of geniuses to achieve innovation, but you
do need to give your workforce the confidence and incentive to solve the
problems around them, until problem-solving becomes just another part of
the culture. challenges
Channel
Socitm 2012
Socitm 2009
Face to Face 8.62 per transaction
8.23 per transaction
Phone 2.83 per transaction
3.21 per transaction
Web 0.15 per transaction
0.39 per transaction
With 600 million plus customer contacts received by English
Councils per annum you can see for yourself what that translates to
in terms of costs and potential savings if there was a strategy to
drive channel shift to digital. Today two thirds of all contact with
English councils comes through online/digital channels.
INVENTIUM
INTERNAL INNOVATION DEVELOPMENT
• investing in training
• adding innovation to key performance indicators
• building a dedicated area for creativity and idea generation
• holding idea creation sessions and
• appointing a dedicated innovation director
Why does the public sector seem so
completely immune to innovations that deliver
more for less over time?
• Disruptive innovation in government is an oxymoron.
• Government is a monopoly that lacks both competition
and a profit motive.
• It’s an institution that deliberately protects incumbent
producers and programs against disruptors.
• Policymakers and voters tend to be averse to both risk and
failure when it comes to government.
http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/03/disrupting-the-public-sector/