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The federal government is often perceived as being overly bureaucratic and stagnant, lacking the capacity for true innovation. However, in our work with the Department of State, and in other ongoing efforts across the federal government, we see substantial evidence of Agencies striving to drive, and driving, meaningful innovation across their Enterprise, Programs and Initiatives. Not just because of a desire, but a mandate too. Key examples in the past few years include work being done within Departments and Agencies to meet the requirements of President Biden’s Executive Order 14057 and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), including increased climate impact readiness and sustainability, the rebuilding of bridges and roads, and universal access to clean drinking water and high-speed internet. We know that the federal government is dreaming bigger and bolder than ever before. However, succeeding or failing in those efforts will depend on whether government executives leading Enterprise- (e.g., an Administration), Initiative-, or Program-level innovation are equipped to move down a systematic, progressive, and proven path to scope, plot and operationalize change. With seamless transitions across key phases:
Phase 1: Sparking Innovation by Crystallizing Not Just Strategy, But Also the Capabilities Needed to Sustain that Innovation
First, big, bold ideas that drive innovation must be fully fleshed out. That requires the creation of not only a Policy and Strategy Framework that defines the goals, mission and vision needed to guide Enterprise, Program, and Initiative innovation, but also the identification of capabilities that represent the full spectrum of workflow required to enable that desired future-state, resulting in a Capabilities Map. Doing something truly innovative is inherently new, and while the old playbook and capabilities can help support innovation, they, in and of themselves, will not work. This is often the most challenging part – understanding the nature of capability-building required to accomplish something the organization doesn’t do today, conducting an objective self-assessment of how shallow or non-existent those new capabilities may be in the current organization, and gaining consensus around which ones to focus on building. Most organizations are too quick to jump into tactical implementation of specific ideas they come up with, and do not take the effort to step back and conduct this initial strategic and operational planning effectively. Yet, if this phase of the process receives short shrift, the remaining phases are unlikely to deliver on the goals and objectives of an innovation effort.
Phase 2: Setting Priorities to Make the Innovation Plan Achievable
Well thought out and detailed innovation and transformation plans tend to have a large, and often, overwhelming list of change initiatives attached to them. It is impossible to do everything at once in a relatively steady-state environment, much less in one focused on standing up innovative new capabilities. And yet, that's exactly the trap most organizations fall into, trying to do too much at once, spreading themselves too thin, and, as a result, getting a lot of things partially done but very few things truly done. That’s where prioritization comes in, setting the base for implementation by creating a clear roadmap for which capabilities required to operationalize innovation are implemented when. In setting priorities, we believe organizations should always begin with the things that are both the most critical or impactful AND the least well developed, cascading down to the things that were maybe good ideas, but actually don’t drive as much impact and are already fairly well developed. Said differently, delivering breakthrough innovation is less about fine-tuning what you already do well and more about developing, deploying, and sustaining new, game-changing capabilities.
Phase 3: Defining What’s Needed to Operationalize the Change Program
With the underlying transformation framework in place, consideration must turn to the scope and scale of change required to make the steps in that roadmap real. The challenge here is that meaningful change is seldom about one thing (e.g., process improvement or changing incentives systems); it typically requires systems thinking (e.g., how people are motivated to transition to and perform within revamped or new processes). Consider how the human body responds to high altitude. Almost immediately, breathing and heart rate increase to supply more oxygen to the cells. Over time, hemoglobin (the protein in blood that carries oxygen) levels increase, as does the ratio of blood vessels to muscle mass. In some high-altitude populations, lung size is increased, as is the width of arteries and capillaries. No single change is enough to adapt to a change in conditions, but a more systemic change is required to survive and thrive in a new environment. To think from this perspective, high performing organizations wishing to deliver on innovation must be able to address 5 key pre-conditions when plotting the change needed to achieve their future-state vision:
• Ensuring they have the right people in the right roles in the right numbers to meet the capacity requirements needed to operationalize and sustain the desired innovation
• Shaping the organizational structure those people are housed within to reduce bureaucracy, enable scale effects from their work, and ensure resilience
• Defining how to deploy and motivate those individuals and their teams in a way that allows them to maximize their talent and contributions
• Adapting enterprise culture and governance / performance management systems to allow individuals and teams to work independently and collaboratively towards a common set of top-line goals
• Reconfiguring, adding and streamlining tools and processes to reduce friction in day-to-day work and ensuring the new work that’s naturally required for innovation is able to take root
The lens across the above: future-state, not current-state. A well-reasoned and structured Change Management Plan accounts for that concept, serving as the implementation guide for a revamped Policy and Strategy Framework by converting a 40,000 ft view of what your organization could become to a specific set of implementation activities necessary to achieve that desired future-state.
Phase 4: Enabling Change
Strategy and Policy Frameworks and Change Management Plans are just plans. It’s impossible to succeed without well thought out ones. But, well thought out plans hardly guarantee success. A substantial number of attempts targeted at generating and institutionalizing Enterprise, Initiative, and Program innovation fail because the transition from planning to enabling change leaves a lot to be desired. Succeeding requires organizations solve for challenges that inevitably arise time and again in implementation mode. And solving for those challenges encompasses a wide variety of actions:
• Deploying people against the right implementation activities, based on their skills, interest and aptitude
• Knowing when to seek outside help because your legacy organization likely lacks the capacity needed to independently stand up and scale brand new capabilities
• Engaging stakeholders at the right time (no more, no less) to ensure their voices are heard, they’re brought along in the process and that they aren’t burned out through overcommunication
• Keeping the process moving and getting people unstuck because they’ll inevitably hit roadblocks that require senior focus and intervention
• Not losing focus because organizations tend to drift back towards trying to take on too much at once and treating everything as equal rather than staying laser-focused on set priorities
The above do not represent one-time activities but are areas that must be addressed and revisited across the duration of an implementation to be successful.
Phase 5: Governing / Tracking Change and Maintaining Political Will
To sustain change and deliver meaningful impact from innovation activities, both the change process, as well as the end result, must be tracked and governed, with the sponsors of an innovation agenda able to answer the below sets of questions.
Managing tactical, day-to-day governance:
• What implementation activities are on track? • Which ones are off track? • For the things that are off track, why? • And for the things that are off track, when and how do you get them back on track? While staying grounded against long-term outcomes: • What results / outcomes do we need to deliver on to satisfy the goals set forth in the Policy & Strategy Framework? • How are we tracking against those goals (overachieving, meeting, falling short)? • Where we’re falling short, why? • And for the goals we’re falling short on, how do we get back on track?
Well thought out and detailed innovation and transformation plans tend to have a large, and often, overwhelming list of change initiatives attached to them. It is impossible to do everything at once in a relatively steady-state environment, much less in one focused on standing up innovative new capabilities.
Over the past 14 years, we’ve developed deep expertise in scoping, plotting, and operationalizing innovation efforts across both leading Private and Public sector institutions. Those services are delivered via our proprietary toolkit, fu.sion ACCELERATOR, and its supporting cloud-based and AI-enabled, patent pending application. If you’re a federal executive who is leading and sponsoring large scale change, we’d welcome the opportunity to speak with you further about how we can help accelerate your work, help your organization avoid the key pitfalls that cause innovation efforts to collapse, and help build the capacity needed to sustain major innovation at the Enterprise, Initiative or Program levels.
Contact us to learn more about operationalizing innovation in the federal space.