Month: March 2007

2%– For Milk Only

Last night a colleague sent me a link to the article “Managing to the 2%.” I read–and re-read–this article knowing exactly where to find the 2% in my own life. Who are the 2%? They are the ones who provide the need to create rules, policies and guidelines that keep us from new practices and keep us focused on the–you guessed it–the rules, policies and guidelines. While the other 98% are pushing it forward, rolling with the idea of change and how to make our services or programs deeper, richer or more meaningful, the 2% provides the convenient stumbling block often disguised as the “grounding perspective” or the “voice of reason” that is ultimately a thinly veiled fear of change or innovation. But, alas, this thin veil is so seldom questioned, much less torn down. And in this, the 2% appear to rule. They stay in their bubbles of good intentions (“we don’t want to shake people up”) and sensibilities (“what implications could this have on our core services?”). And we ultimately spend our time bowing to this 2% solid void. In the meantime, the 98% who are attemping to reconstruct, dig deeper, create use and meaning are left dragging their feet until they finally pick them up and walk out our doors.

Let’s keep 2% on the milk label only and out of our meeting rooms. Whatchathinkbouthat?

Innovating innovation–and when to let go

First, innovation may likely not just come from a good idea you had on your drive into work. It may involve part of that thought that gets plugged into a need you encounter later on that day. A conversation ensues and before you know it you have written up a proposal and you’ve got an innovative little project on your hands. Let’s say you’ve defined what success looks like (always do this–have many examples) and things are humming along well for a while. Everybody’s getting their needs met. Then something changes…something isn’t working the same. Users aren’t expressing interest, some staff have lost drive for it…what do you do? How do you let something that meant so much and likely provided so much meaning, impact, use at one time drift away? Well, sometimes you have to do just that. Even with innovation we must know when to say yes and when to say no; when to hang on and when to let go.
How do we learn to let go of what is not working. What was innovative at one time–will it always be…we must keep our fingers on the pulse, knowing that unless we can let go we’ll likely cause another kind of brickwall effect.

Innovation–The Hard Way

I’ve been thinking much about the idea of INNOVATION lately. You hear it used so much. It gets thrown around in board rooms and program rooms, on product packages and TV shows. But how do we get to innovation? Two thoughts have come to me about how we often get there. You could call it innovation-by-demand, or innovation-by-command…what I’m thinking about is the idea that often innovation happens either when we hit the proverbial brick wall and have no other option than to innovate, try “something new,” go in a different direction. Or innovation happens in the “back room.” This is when one or more individuals get together from one or more organizations or agencies and dream up an idea that is just–well, dreamy. To them. And then the worker bees (and perhaps a grant administrator) are pulled out to do the work. Reports are written, justifications are given…and we all live happily ever after. Right? But neither of these is true innovation. These are about handshakes or hardships. Neither of these modes allow an organization to be poised for innovation. These modes of “innovating” (which I believe happen more often than we’d care to admit) cheat us from the opportunities to create needs-based, natural innovative programs and services because we’re too busy jumping through the hoops of our dreamed-up innovative(well, really, “unnovative”) ideas. What would happen if we just let things happen naturally? Trees might grow, real relationships might emerge, brick walls might begin to crumble.