Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 02

March/April 2018 // Canadian Government Executive / 23 INNOVATION big and small – need to support and guide and not allow fear of failure to derail an in- novation. I believe this behavior is equally acute in large, medium and small local governments. The question many new executives ask is, “How did you have the courage to persevere with this innova- tion?” I offer that it is the executive who must stand and lead the team and believe in both their people and the innovation be- ing presented. An innovative solution is normally accompanied by false starts or an outright collapse from which a reborn initiative arises. The focus of the execu- tive must be – again, regardless of size of organization – a focus and support of the higher learning. An innovation that Bruce County had success with in 2017 had many false starts, and certain aspects were a complete fail- ure. Bruce County needed to rebrand itself. The County proper had a long his- tory of traditional government services. The tradition was not resonating with the new public management style of govern- ment, and stressors were being experi- enced across the organization. The idea of rebranding came from the larger Senior Management Team, and County Coun- cil supported it. The approach taken was innovative, and we experienced many hurdles and roadblocks to our ultimate success. The approach to branding was not just hiring a graphic design artist to create a new logo to be affixed to our marketing material. Our approach was unique. We held a series of focus groups; we researched across Canada to determine how we were viewed externally. We tested our brand and introduced a tag line that was beyond being a government but focused on our values as people. Our failure that we had to overcome was in supporting a “house of brands” versus a “branded house”. This subtlety risked the entire branding ini- tiative. Staff and community leaders in our cultural and library services area re- jected the idea of weaving the new brand into their particular brand. Their passion threatened the entire “Be an Explorer” brand. As CAO, in retrospect, I have be- come convinced that had I viewed suc- cess as only a “branded house”, the entire initiative would have failed. Instead, I embraced what I viewed as a failure to advance the greater good. In retrospect, it was not a failure at all. Recently Bruce County received awards from the Interna- tional Business Communicators, National Economic Development Association and the Economic Development Council of Ontario. Innovation never stops My closing comments are that innovation is not a flavour of the month – it is a value chain approach to solving real business is- sues. In 2018, Bruce County completed a ma- jor innovation in a project that we affec- tionately refer to as “Bruce WorX”. The in- novation comes from combining multiple evolving technologies into a suite of ser- vices. Simply stated, the initiative involves the installation of the following emerging technologies: Office 365, Skype for Busi- ness, and Outlook in the Cloud technolo- gies. The driving business solution is to streamline our processes to support the daily work of staff. Issues such as version control, travel time savings, and document storage will be resolved with this innova- tion. Our goal is to eliminate the opera- tional frustrations for all staff, supporting their professional evolution and freedom to innovate. In closing, I offer that innovation comes in all shapes and sizes. All executives in local government could benefit from look- ing to those communities who are differ- ent and determining if there is a lesson to be learned. I am exceedingly proud of the staff team at Bruce County who have been on a transformative path over the past five years. They are not afraid to take a risk. Now they often look at a problem as an opportunity to solve. They deeply value in- novation solutions. Together the team has introduced highly innovative business so- lutions which are easily scalable and have certainly transformed Bruce County. K elley C oulter , CAO, Bruce County sizes