Innovation On a Shoe String Budget
April 5, 2006
Last month I read an amazing article published in CSOonline entitled "Sharp Object Lessons". It was an informative story about how Boston’s Logan International Airport has been transformed in just three years from one of the most unsafe airports in America, serving as a staging point for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, into the epitome of safety and efficiency. The article is centered on George Naccara, head of Logan Airport’s security for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). There is an uncanny overlap between the real life challenges he faced in making this transformation, and the topics discussed in the white paper. The most interesting part of the article is how he has managed to bring creativity and innovation into an infrastructure with limited resources and support. I want to highlight three examples from the article.
Much like the change agents discuss in the white paper, a major hurdle that airport security faces is cross agency communication. The article describes the airport security environment as, "working within a fragile ecosystem comprising scads of interdependent stakeholders, agendas and jurisdictions (one security incident at Logan could involve 20 agencies)". Naccara’s bargain-basement solution? Morning meetings. These last ten to thirty minutes and may have as many as seventy five people in attendance to discuss ideas, share news, and simply communicate with each other. In another example, Naccara wanted to upgrade the airport’s security technology. To accomplish this with minimal cost, he decided to make Logan International the guinea pig for every possible new prototype in technology, and allow the airport to become, "a successful and creative security innovator and an incubator for new security technology".
My favorite example talks about the change in treatment of the actual security employees, who are now given free reign to come up with new practices, ideas, and invent new ways of doing business. One employee realized that he could use the same analysis that supermarkets use in check out lanes- to speed up security check points. The employee approached Naccara about implementing his idea, and received the following, open-minded response. "Go for it. I can't really give you any money or people, but give it a shot". The result of one employee’s creative idea, and the permission to test it, was a homegrown software application that is currently used by the airport to help predict passenger volume.
The story of George Naccara is a great micro level glimpse into how a change agent can produce innovative and inspiring results with nothing more than creative thinking, an attitude of spontaneous flexibility, and continuous persistence.
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