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When I think back over the most well known innovation successes over the last few years, and I am not specifically referring to the public sector, an aspect that springs out at me is how often these innovations occurred during a major crisis or due to a funding crunch.
In other words, these innovations frequently happened when organisations were placed at the wrong end of a gun.
It appears to me that often these innovations only occurred, or were allowed to see the light of day, because the pressure put on organisations by environmental or internal changes altered the perceived risk of innovating to be less than the perceived risk of not innovating - "the ship is sinking anyway, so we might as well try something different.
This raises several major concerns for me. Firstly that some organisations are incredibly resistant to innovation and can place themselves, or their management, into unviable situations by not beginning to innovate soon enough.
Secondly if the leadership of an organisation can see this conservative at work but wish to see innovation occur they may draw the conclusion that they need to place the organisation in significant distress - cutting budgets or hoping for (stimulating?) an external crisis that threatens its future viability.
This places enormous stress on individuals, with all kinds of negative consequences.
Isn't it better for organisations to proactively institutionalize innovation and change processes? Become capable and willing to change before a crisis occurs? To make innovation a key strategy for organisational adaptation rather than a last resort when system failures are already well underway?
This would involve changing the view of innovation to be an activity that is rewarded as a behaviour and activity, rather than being one that is punished, except at the organisation's "death's door".
A few organisations have successfully integrated innovation into their DNA as a core driver of their success. I hope more do so in the future and, at a larger scale, more societies as well.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
In traditional organisations, innovation often appears to happens at the wrong end of a gun | Tweet |
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Pfft - who needs to understand social media to be a social media advisor | Tweet |
Over the last year I've observed a couple of good and bad trends in governments around Australia.
The first - the good trend - is towards the recognition that social media is a valid and significant channel for government communication and engagement. This has led to the creation of a new type of role, the 'social media advisor', separate to online communications functions (which primarily concern themselves with traditional website production and content management).
The creation of these social media roles recognises there is a difference in the skillsets needed to manage one or more static and internally owned websites, compared with curating and co-ordinating a range of fast-changing external and internal engagement channels.
However alongside this needed job specialisation is another disturbing trend which causes me significant concern.
A number of those being employed in these new social media advisor roles don't have the mix of skills required to hit the ground running. I've heard of people with little or no experience with professional use of social media being employed as social media advisors simply on the basis of their personal use of these channel and therefore presumed competence.
I don't blame the people who take on these jobs and then work hard to learn the skills they need, it is a great opportunity working in a leading edge field. However the approach raises issues for me as to whether those hiring social media advisors are as yet clear on the skills needed to perform the role - or are clear on what their organisations need to fulfil these roles most effectively.
While agencies are generally sincerely committed to the integration of social media into their engagement mix, there are few employment consultants who can help them quantify their needs, identify suitable candidates and assist them in hiring the most effective people for these jobs.
My concern is that agencies, despite the best of intentions, may end up taking more significant risks, may lose internal momentum or even face social media stumbles - as has been the case in the private sector when social media roles first began to appear.
So how do we as public servants help address potential skills gaps and the resulting risks?
I would recommend that agencies talk to each other, share their goals and discuss the skillsets they need for these roles, they should bring in appropriate interviewers to help screen applicants and begin developing a career path for social media practitioners - with roles for rookies and experienced people.
They should also directly and indirectly lobby employment agencies to upskill to understand their social media needs and build their ability to identify appropriately skilled people for social media roles.
Most of all, they should get their new social media staff across all the great work done in other agencies and in the private sector, across all the governance and advice now available and encourage them to network with their peers across government (including attending the various community events such as Gov 2.0 lunches and BarCamps).
Hopefully what I am seeing is simply part of the growth pains for social media as agencies integrate it into their DNA.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Don't forget to register for the Gov 2.0 lunch in Canberra on Friday | Tweet |
The event will feature a presentation from Dominic Campbell, a leading UK digital government specialist and social innovator with a background in government policy, communications and technology-led change.
Learn more and register here.
Should Australia's political parties have open government and Gov 2.0 policies? (NZ Labour does) | Tweet |
The policy focuses on transparency of political offices as the core principle, but also commits the party to producing a comprehensive "Open Government Charter‟, based on a set of principles developed by NZ Labour MPs in consultation with members of the public.
- Online engagement by public servants should be enabled and encouraged. Robust professional engagement with the public benefits government agencies, public servants’ own professional development, and the New Zealand public.
- Public servants should be able to use social media in their professional role, and the government should provide protection and guidance/advice around how to do so effectively.
- Explore ways to expand the use that government makes of the Internet in engaging the public to feed into policy discussion and government direction.
- Develop a trial of online voting in local government and general elections.
- Publish the Hansard in a standard, open, parsable, format, so that it can easily be re-used and republished by anybody for any purpose
Monday, November 21, 2011
Brisbane City Council launches open data datastore | Tweet |
While not the first council in Australia to do this (with Mosman City Council leading the pack), Brisbane is the first large metropolitan council in Australia to do so to my knowledge, joining a range of cities across North America and Europe.
Brisbane has launched the datastore with the Hack:Brisbane competition and is hosting an upcoming Hackfest next Saturday to stimulate usage of their information.
Hopefully other major cities across Australia will look at what Brisbane is doing and consider its value in their own jurisdictions.
