Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 04

July/August 2018 // Canadian Government Executive / 51 INNOVATION the capacity of staff to invent solutions for challenges in terms of innovation skills training, models, and tools. For the first, it is worth reflecting on dif- ferent “products” that public servants must invent, manage, or deliver. To start, we can simplify this to four core deliverables: • Innovating new services: the product is new or improved public services. • Innovating policy development: the product is policy reflective of where so- ciety is heading. • Innovating technical solutions: the prod- uct is highly technical solutions from Canada’s 16,000 scientists, engineers, ar- chitects, and researchers. • Innovating management programs to improve effectiveness: internal pro- grams to build the skills of staff to col- laborate and solve the challenges of their jobs, and to modernize manage- ment processes. Most of the focus today is on service and policy products. Personal observations suggest too little focus on innovating man- agement programs. No government seems to include scientists in their innovation strategies. For the second challenge of building skills and capacity, I see too little focus on establishing learning frameworks for in- novation skills across the public service. All departments should create a high- quality capacity to educate their own staff and managers. For example, I worked on an innovation team at New Zealand Post to improve in- ternal and external services. We saw that we could never create the volume of ideas needed to solve the diverse challenges of a big organization. Staff and manag- ers needed the skills to create their own solutions, and opportunities to use these skills. I wrote a guide for managers to under- stand our programs and how to engage their staff to improve services. For ex- ample, we suggested managers turn some meetings into “idea meetings.” These could be 30 minutes and focused on two issues: 1. “New ideas this week.” People intro- duce a problem they solved or an idea they implemented. Discussions can ex- tend to insights and lessons learned in the process. 2. “I face a problem; I need your ideas.” People could explain a problem they face. Others then offer ideas, insights or observations. Often this discussion leads to a stronger definition of the original problem. I was part of many idea meetings. With ex- perience, these meetings were a valuable source of ideas at the team level. Communication: what do staff need to know? A senior executive recently asked me, “How is being innovative different to what I am doing now?” This is a good question that must be answered by the internal communication strategies. I learned a useful insight in Singapore about the cliché “walking your talk.” A government minister said that innovation will fail if managers fail to “walk the inno- vation talk.” He then said before you can “walk the talk,” you must understand the “innovation talk” and how to “talk the talk.” At the most basic level, all staff should understand the “talk”: 1. What does it means to be innovative on the job? 2. How is this different to what I am do- ing now? 3. How can I make a difference? Internal staff communication is always a foundation for building culture for change and innovation. Key messages can start with “what are six things all staff need to know?” This gives content writers themes for articles, blogs, guides, team briefs, post- ers, and events. In Canada, there is simply not enough high quality content focused on staff at all levels of the public sector. Culture for innovation – or not Research on problem solving shows that we often ignore a problem until it becomes a crisis or it is “established” as a problem worth solving. The notion of “establishing” a problem recognizes that a problem is im- portant to solve. OECD OPSI research clearly shows that communication is poor. As a strategist, these two observations “establish” that a lack of communication is truly a problem worth solving: • There is no overall picture of the inno- vation system, what it includes, what it involves, what is happening, nor how it is performing. • The expected role to be played by indi- viduals and organisations is not clear. These statements provide the ideal starting place to shape solutions. New Zealand, South Africa and Singapore gave staff innovation guides and tool kits. Australian public servants can join a Com- munity of Practice and learn from a web- site. The innovation guide I wrote in Sin- gapore went to 20,000 staff. I later wrote innovation guides for Singapore Ministry of Defence, Bank of Canada Currency, and contributed to others in New Zealand. All governments face a growing num- ber of diverse challenges. The shift to digital services and the need to continu- ally improve internal services demand a growing capacity to solve these challeng- es. Digital change is not a single problem. A solution such as passport renewal re- sults from solutions to hundreds of prob- lems. Communication is a key to shape a culture based on trust that can harness the expertise of public servants to meet these challenges. E d B ernacki has lived and worked in various countries specializing in innovation programs and the communi- cation of innovation to staff, manag- ers and stakeholders. His focus is on the problem solvers and innovators in our organizations. He is a specialist in analogue innovation. He invented a new generation of idea journals to help staff be more innovative on the job. www.PSIdeaFactory.com Communication is a key to shape a culture based on trust that can harness the expertise of public servants to meet these challenges.