Obstacles to Innovation
July 17, 2006
By the early fall of 1989, Mother Theresa had had enough.
Seeking to convert two burned-out buildings into temporary housing for 64 homeless men, she had come to New York two years earlier armed only with a plan, the blessing of the Mayor, and an abiding faith in Divine Providence. After shepherding her proposal through the application process for nearly two years, in the end her vision succumbed to the bureaucracy. Prevented by her vow of poverty from using modern conveniences, the provision of the city building code requiring the installation of an elevator in all newly renovated buildings brought the project to an abrupt end. Divine Providence, it seems, is no match for the New York City Housing Authority.
The moral: in government, a good idea is never enough.
Then, as today, the unfortunate fact is that government all too often stumbles over its own bureaucracy in the pursuit of progress. But the emergence of global terrorism as the preeminent threat of the 21st Century - as the Change Agents White Paper highlights - has compelled us to reexamine this shortcoming of government with a new sense of urgency. In the face of this threat, we simply cannot afford to have good ideas fall victim to what Chad Vander Veen, in a recent article in Public CIO, calls the "obstacles to innovation."
In an organizational culture that doesn’t "focus on innovation, recognizing mistakes and trying again," Vander Veen argues, government programs and organizations can spiral into a cycle in which they "serve only to provide reasons that [they] mustn’t be eliminated." In a world of diminishing resources and increasing threats, the focus must be on achieving a culture in which novel ideas are brought forth to shake organizations out of the stagnant status quo.
Leaders in government, asserts Vander Veen, "must step up and take the reins." They must set real goals and demand results, create a sense of mission within the agency that is current and compelling, and think about solutions outside the limitations of their own organizational stovepipe. In short, government agencies must "adapt the vision of a private-sector business model to a public-sector mission."
Unlike the private sector, there is no alternative to bad government. "In private industry," Vander Veen concludes, "there’s always a new company to replace the failing one... but a failing public-sector enterprise - one that can’t or won’t innovate - is reduced to justifying its existence at the expense of everyone involved."
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