Proceed Until Apprehended

Invitations are exciting things. We’re so pleased when we get them. Someone thought of us, someone cares.

Not all invitations are good for you. For some, we need to be wary. These invitations ask you to solve problems, provide answers, make decisions and define the course. It actually presents itself like any other invitation. People are deferring to your wisdom. They value your input. They want you to join the party.

That feels nice, and it feels nice to accept the invite, swoop in and make stuff happen… except this invitation has strings. Accepting this invitation establishes that the inviter doesn’t do the heavy lifting, the invitee does. The inviter doesn’t need to think through the issue, make a plan or take responsibility for the breakdown. They just have to flag you down and point to the flat tire.

Accepting this invitation creates a relationship where you take on responsibility for the outcome. That’s all well and good if it’s your role, but if you’re trying to get others to engage in the work, this invitation creates a sustainability problem. The responsibility you’ve just taken with such mastery and confidence was taken from someone who was gingerly holding it, hoping they wouldn’t have to do it themselves. You just took them off the hook. They learned they don’t have to take the risk. You will.

Here’s the counter-intuitive punch line: Establishing yourself as a person that eats problems for breakfast is exactly why you got promoted in the first place, and now it’s exactly what you do not want to do when you’re coaching others.

Spotting and skillfully redirecting unhealthy invitations is one of the key distinctions between good workers and good leaders.

A recent post of mine was about the library, of which I’m a huge fan and user. I’m passionate about the museum, too, but it’s a different kind of love. I don’t particularly like going there, I just like what it represents and what it could be.

I work directly across from our Provincial museum, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM), and right next door to their annex. They house three collections, a biological collection, a paleontological collection and an Aboriginal artifacts collection. I’ve had the opportunity to tour through the annex, which is not open to the public. It’s more interesting than the museum itself by a factor of ten.

I think this goes for many museums, but I’m picking on the RSM. The museum is, unfortunately, much too static. This is because of money, of course, but it also seems to be because they’re presenting a history of Saskatchewan through mostly physical artifacts, and those don’t change over time. Once you’ve tweaked your presentation, you’re largely into preservation, right?

As you might guess, I don’t agree. I think the RSM should be all about the interpretation. This shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. The tour guides are called interpreters, after all.

Right now, the museum presents the facts, and just the facts. By “interpretation,” I mean that the museum should be in the business of helping me understand what all the history and the worldview they present means for me right now.

The museum offers a picture of reality that is not warped or diluted by other noise. It’s a view of our world that hasn’t been overly polished, manufactured or “defined” by someone else. It’s contact with a reality you can really trust, and that’s exceeding rare in our lives… check that… the lives of people like me, living in the city and going to work each day.

The museum says: These are the environmental regions of our province. This is the bedrock beneath our feet. These creatures once roamed our land. These creatures now roam our land. These people and these cultures defined this province. This vegetation naturally covers our landscape… When I spend all my time outside on paved roads and my indoor time in the air-conditioned comfort in front of a screen, these things can be forgotten.

Somewhere along the way, museums defined their role as protectors of history. They are preservationists to the point that most of the collections are hidden away from public view. The mandate of a museum ends up being, “We protect things that are irreplaceable.”

I think there’s a relevance problem here. Museums need to be challenged to make these collections and this ”real” look at our world relevant to the public. The museum I dream of would be dedicated to helping others understand the world, past and present, so they can make better choices for their future.

Leadership is often understood to be “principle-centred.” You figure out what’s important to you and then you stick to that path. You establish the path that’s integral to you, and even when distractions try and pull you from it, you know what’s important. I see the museum offering a reality-centre. It can be trusted. It can help you buildi an understanding of yourself and your world, offering a solid foundation from which you can develop principles that govern your behaviour. The museum offers an excellent foundation for leadership.

The museum offers bedrock in more ways than one, but we need help using it. It’s not enough just to be there.

Museum, thank you for helping me understand the past, and thank you for helping me understand the present. Please help me plot a path for the future that is grounded in reality.

At the moment, there’s limited transition between “What we know to be true,” and “What we should do now.” I’m inspired by the Human Factors exhibit at the RSM, which connects our human influence to the world’s current state, but it only implicitly invites a tough self-examination. For most, the principles at the centre of their behaviour are  left untouched after a museum visit.

I’d like to see the museum:

• provide examples of leaders who stuck to reality, even when it made them appear unreasonable
• ask me to make a personal commitment to respond to something I learned today
• organize our community to take action on important issues that are largely ignored
• reach out and engage the community in interpreting current events through a scientific and historical lense
• offer orientation for public servants and any organization that’s committed to Saskatchewan
• lead a movement of choice and change based on a trusted understanding of the world
• when I’m physically in the building, engage me in a dialogue. Pull scientists from the back room and focus on engaging with the public.

I’m sure this is easier said than done. There’s undoubtedly a laundry list of items and infrastructure that just need maintenance. Here’s my tradeoff: I’m OK with seeing historical artifacts suffer damage if it means people’s future decisions are more thoughtful, deliberate and grounded in reality. I say that, but I don’t think it would get that far. In truth, becoming more relevant is the first and most important step in getting more funding.

I love books and I love quiet places. By extension, I love the library. I could spend hours in the library just reading near-random books off the shelves. In reality, though, my relationship with the library is somewhat transactional. Primarily, the library serves as an exchange, a place where I check in (online), request pre-identified books, physically go in to drop off and pick up books and pay the occasional fine. I think I’m only using about ten percent of my library. The rest, at least to me, is irrelevant.

Aside from access to printed paper, the library is a quiet refuge, a place to focus a little more internally and find some organized information in a steady stream rather than the firehose of the internet. In truth, there’s lots of places to do that. Any number of coffee shops are happy to have you do that for the price of a cup of coffee. Is the physical space and the money devoted to a library worth it?

To be fair, I can think of a few other things the library offers. It’s a place of “trusted” information with professionals that can help you find data and knowledge that’s vetted, tested and approved. There’s also education programs and lots of obscure books that can introduce you to new worlds. There is support for businesses and access to databases.

The fundamental contract we have with the library – we’ll pay tax dollars so you can make information available – is a deal whose death knell is fast approaching. It’s not that libraries haven’t kept their end of the bargain, it’s just that the internet makes it faster, cheaper and infinitely more efficient to stay home and get the same. I certainly love the focus on ideas that comes with reading a printed book, and I want that from the library. I could do without the big, air-conditioned building and all the administration. I suspect that there’s an Amazon-style model of book exchange that could lower our taxes by a good touch.

I don’t think the library is going to go anywhere anytime soon, though, and its disappearance would not be my first choice.  My first choice would be to rethink libraries and shift them from a role of providing information access to leading us in learning how to manage our information. We’re experiencing an epidemic in our society right now. We’re losing ourselves, our purpose and our intentions to a glut of information. Libraries can be a big part of the solution.

Many of us don’t know how to manage all of the information that’s now so easily accessible. Heads bent down in the Blackberry prayer, texting at inappropriate times, the interruption of important conversations for the randomness of a ringing telephone, pulling an all-nighter in Second Life, watching another episode of Deadliest Catch instead of going to bed at a decent hour, mindlessley surfing Fail Blog… all this media can easily sidetrack us. Often, we don’t choose to apply our attention, our attention is simply stolen by whatever is in front of us. The library is the antithesis of “unplanned” attention, and building our capacity to be deliberate with our attention could be their cause.

If the library’s mission were to be, “We help people control the information,” they could:

• Help their users develop strategies to sort their daily stream of information
• Provide classes on keeping a clean email in-box
• Help users prioritize their information needs
• Communicate the importance of being deliberate with one’s attention
• Provide coaching on how to find and establish information feeds that are meaningful (I’d go to a course called ‘Getting Value from Twitter’)
• Help their users make personal learning plans to pursue their interests
• Research 101: Provide formal instruction on how to find information (and determine its credibility)
• Developing simple, flexible guides/frameworks for individuals to undertake self-directed study

I see this as being more valuable than a university education in many ways. Who needs university when the information on any topic is at your fingertips?

If you can find it when you need it.

Information and learning is now DIY. With information’s ubiquity, the barriers to knowledge are now our ability to search, sift and absorb. We would thrive with teaching focused on how to do this well. The library is in a pretty ideal position to take on the role.

Some of you reading this know that I have Multiple Sclerosis. I’m pretty lucky with it, and after 10 years since my diagnosis I’m hardly any worse for wear.

I’ve been watching with a great personal interest, of course, the development/discovery of a “liberation procedure” to address Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency (CCSVI). It’s posited that people with MS may have restricted veins slowing the flow of blood out of the brain. In theory this could cause problems with increased cranial pressure and iron deposits in the brain. This is pretty exciting news and has offered more hope for MS sufferers than other potential treatments in the last few years. It’s also a completely different paradigm than what has conventionally defined MS.

This makes for a fascinating study in how different people react to the introduction of a fundamentally different paradigm. I would assume this idea will eventually be proven or disproven, but for now it offers a potential new way of thinking about Multiple Sclerosis and a different approach to treating, or even curing, this chronic illness. It is a game-changer or a significant derailment of the “real” efforts. How are people reacting? How should they react?

There are plenty of MS sufferers who want to start doing treatments immediately. I can’t say that I blame them. While some are actually advocating for the complete and unqualified acceptance of the theory and treatment, I think they’re in the minority. Most advocates for “rushing” the procedure simply want to act now and measure as we go. They argue for a “learn by doing” approach. As their quality of life is slipping away with every day and this relatively safe procedure may offer stark, life-changing results, they don’t have the patience for the studies that would 100% confirm or refute this theory.

There are also individuals and organizations that are calling for research and confirmation of this theory before the procedure is offered to the general population of sufferers. This would be the position of our federal government and the MS Society. This one doesn’t make quite as much sense to me, and I would like to understand it. What are the possible reasons to advocate restraint?

It draws attention from our long-term efforts

There are a lot of thoughtful people working on solving the MS riddle. They’re organized, they’re relatively well funded and they are seeing results. The availability of drugs that offer real improvements have proliferated in recent years. Having MS has a different, much better prognosis than it did when I got diagnosed. We seem well on our way to killing this thing by a thousand cuts. In fact, it seems to be just a matter of time.

Time. That’s a bit of a problem for many sufferers. Rarely – if ever – does this illness get better with age. While I’m all for researching the illness and improving our understanding, this argument doesn’t hold water for me when there’s a very promising theory that isn’t getting enough of the pie. Perhaps we can call this reluctance a “fixed cost affinity.” If you’re a bureaucrat or a politician, I think it’s a lot safer and blameless to say, “We devoted our resources to the 10 year-project that’s got millions sunk in to it. The investment ultimately didn’t pay out, but it was a smart investment” than to say, “We went with the unfounded vein theory from left field.”

It costs money and creates risk for what may turn out to be nothing.

My guess is that this argument is at the foundation of most efforts to minimize the wide-spread application of the CCSVI liberation procedure. It’s an argument that says we shouldn’t put people through this when we’re not sure it will work. Let’s spare them the hassle until we can assure them it’s good for them. I appreciate the inherent protectiveness of the position, but what if it turns out to do something profound? Was the caution and delay worth the additional suffering? If you look at the “costs” of this diagnosis and procedure, you’re looking at a set of imaging scans and a procedure similar to an angioplasty. Let’s say it’s as risky as liposuction. How much study went into that? Now factor in the fact that as we delay, people are losing their ability to walk. The math doesn’t seem to add up.

Besides, because it`s surgical, isn’t the line between trial and delivery a bit more blurred? I can see that we need to use caution when we`re experimenting with a drug with unknown side-effects, but with this procedure the surgical risk is clear, and it`s really minimal.

The science doesn’t make any sense

This is the weakest of arguments. History is filled with paradigm-shifting discoveries that didn’t make any sense. Just because it wasn’t thought of before has no bearing on it’s applicability. There seems to be some ongoing presumption that if it isn’t the model you discuss with your colleagues or the one your professor told you about, it can’t be right.  That’s not how it works. Challenges to the status quo, be it the shape of the earth or the science of multiple sclerosis, should be met with opennes and humility. We’d grow more. To say we should proceed with caution because this isn’t how we were thinking is ludicrous. That’s dragging your feet because it makes you uncomfortable. If there’s an off chance this works for MS sufferers, I`d rather take care of their discomfort and let the discomfort of admitting you didn’t see it sit for a bit.

I don’t think I’m hiding the conclusion I’ve drawn so far. I think the people that fight change or even the spectre of change are keeping us from being effective on this one. New factors are now present in this environment. Trying to sustain the old environment is entirely unhelpful.

I’ve spent the last two weeks shuffling around my house in a fog suffering from an MS relapse myself. I am so fortunate to have a case of MS that has proven to be very mild compared to so many of my contemporaries. I sometimes find it hard to want more and better for myself when I’m doing comparatively well. Nevertheless, my quality of life diminishes when this illness gets a grip, and when I beat it back, life gets much better (and I start blogging again). If I get the opportunity, I’ll take the liberation treatment.

Sometimes we can’t solve a problem because we’re too close to it. We work it so much that the prescribed boundaries of the problem become untouchable. What was originally established as an assumption becomes a given.

That’s dangerous thinking that we can all get caught in. Creating a deliberate practice of stepping out of that “can’t see the forest for the trees” mindset is important for our success.

You can do it in a number of ways. The list I come up with is by no means exhaustive:

• Invite in some fresh perspective. Someone who is not familiar with the problem won’t have accepted the same restrictions as you.
• Take a break and do something else. Take a walk, do a puzzle or listen to some music. Give you brain a breather, and a broader perspective.
• Engage in something completely unrelated and connect it back to the problem.  How are the essential factors in growing a good wheat crop similar to your challenge? Name ten things that are green and describe how they relate to the challenge.
• Picture your problem from above. Review it from a helicopter. Look different?
• Redefine the timeline. What does it look like five years out? Changing the timeline can remove some barriers.

There’s another practice that I wanted to explore a little more. That’s a technique I sort of intuitively do that I’m calling the 90 degree rotation, though it’s probably more appropriately entitled “Turn it upside down.” It goes like this: take your problem and any sort of organization, hierarchies or linear processes that are part of it. Try and describe your challenge from a direction different than how you’ve been thinking about it.

Trying to complete a work process through a traditional hierarchy? What if the responsibility was given to a cross-functional team?

Trying to spread a message? What if it wasn’t through mass media, but spread through individual followers?

Coordinating a large group through rules and expectations? What happens if they’re given the outcomes they have to achieve and left to their own leadership and organization?

I don’t think my effort to name and systematize this concept has worked, but I needed to share it anyway. It’s the incorporation of a foreign (near opposite) perspective so that the givens can be laid bare. Should they really be off the table, or are they just off YOUR table?

Thinking strategically vs. being strategic. There’s a difference. In fact, the more you delve into it, the more they look like they might be opposites.

As a strategic thinker, you’re pretty good at nuances, reading the tea leaves and coming up with solutions that negotiate all the pitfalls. You can see what needs to happen to get things done and dispatch problems with efficiency. Strategic thinkers are intelligent, perhaps even crafty. They can think a move ahead of their opposition. I like strategic thinkers. They see issues with clarity and get closer to root causes. They think up solutions that are more sustainable and more effective. Not every strategic thinker, however, uses their knowledge for the best possible results.

Strategic thinkers don’t necessarily take the steps required to move the intiative towards the best solution. That’s not the assignment. Strategic thinkers can guarantee you efficiency and smart maneuvering within the prescribed rules of the game. It seems that sometimes strategic thinkers see what doesn’t work, but they determine that the cost of change is too great compared to the benefit of the improvement. If it’s the wrong game or if the process doesn’t create the results it used to, a strategic thinker that doesn’t want to bear the possible pain that comes with change might be the one thing holding a flawed structure together. That is short-sighted and unhelpful. 

There’s a different level to strategy, the level where you know the rules of the game are wrong and profound results will only be achieved only if the rules are broken. If you see those deeper problems, congratulations. You’ve done an exceptional job of thinking strategically. As a next step, if you act on your knowledge to improve the game, the rules or the system, in my books you’ve moved from thinking strategically to being strategic.

If you want action outside the prescribed rules, you should seek out someone who is willing to be strategic. More important than knowing some crafty next steps, you need the person who will combine altruism with a sense of the long-term to deliver action that serves best interests, not assignments.

Are they opposites? Maybe the strategic thinker and the strategic doer, but a strategic thinker that doesn’t want to take pursue change is a dangerous enemy. They can be a formidable opponent of your efforts to change. If it weren’t for change-averse smart people, I think we’d move a lot more quickly.

The myth of epiphanies is that they strike you when you’re not expecting it.  You’re sitting in your bathtub and suddenly you shout “Eureka!” because you’ve realized that water displacement can measure volume.

Well, OK. I think that one actually did happen.

I don’t think that’s always the case.

Often, epiphanies come from a systematic effort to think about a problem differently. I propose that the key is actually that you open your mind to approach the problem from different angles. You have to deliberately steer your mind to make wander or make connections between seemingly unrelated concepts.

The reason epiphanies sometimes happen when you’re not trying to solve the problem is that we allow our minds out of the restrictions we were imposing on it. That doesn’t have to be by accident.

In 1990, Frank Lynn Meshberger, M.D., saw that Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” on the Sistine Chapel was actually a side profile of the human brain. The fact had been overlooked for centuries. I remeber hearing this back in the day, and it has always stuck with me. I find it pretty cool, not because of what Michelangelo did (it’s debated), but that Dr. Meshberger saw what so many others had not.

He had been in medical school at the time and happened to look at picture of the fresco shortly after dissecting and drawing a human brain – here’s the story.

That discovery, I would suggest, was a very happy coincidence (if you indeed believe Michelangelo was drawing a human brain). Regardless, this kind of a discovery offers a glimpse, into how we can synthesize and find solutions.  Sometimes, problem-solving comes when we add in lots of influences, not when we buckle down and “work the problem.”

If you’re stuck or things aren’t coming together, it might be time to pick up a book, look through the funny pages or listen to a symphony. You might need to invite in some other opinions, or draw the problem as a picture, or write a short story about it.

Putting in some extra hours at the office is likely counter-productive.

In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey illustrates the role of a leader with the Jungle Analogy.  He talks about a group, an organization, committed to swathing a path through the jungle.  In this organization, he identifies three roles – the machete-wielding worker, the manager and the leader.

While the worker is cutting down the undergrowth, the manager is behind the action making sure the worker is well supported – sharpening machetes, providing training, nutrition, strength building, you could even imagine this manager providing supportive words of encouragement… “Great slash! A couple more like that and you’ll be up for hacker of the year!”

The leader is perched atop a tall tree ensuring direction, and if necessary, yelling “Wrong jungle!”

The lesson Dr. Covey is conveying is about the importance of having someone that is at the highest of high levels thinking about purpose and direction. Another great example he uses is talking about climbing a ladder and the importance of having the ladder up against the correct wall. I’m in wholehearted agreement with the sentiment.

I really like this jungle analogy. When I talk about it, I always attribute more lessons to it than Dr. Covey did. I think this analogy is fantastic for helping us understand our organizations. It simplifies the playing field and allows for a very direct examination and discussion about roles in the workplace.

Here’s my addition to the analogy. I think the Manager feels tremendously inadequate in their role. They’re on the field. They’re in a position to assess and actually provide criticism on the actions of others, however they don’t cut. They don’t participate in the direct purpose of the organization. Seen from the perspective of a hotshot machete worker, they’re a gofer. A waterboy.

For managers, that can weigh heavy, especially since most of them used to be hotshot machete workers. I think these managers have a tremendous internal pressure to pick up a machete and impressively lead the way. Especially consider when one of their machete workers pleadingly looks back at them. “This is a very difficult patch,” they say. What manager could resist the opportunity to show their skill at getting the job done? It’s a moment that allows them to be a hero, is it not?

The moment a manager puts down their clipboard and starts hacking, the organization is gravely injured. When a manager takes on that role on the front lines, all other machete workers are without support. It’s so simple to see in the analogy, so seemingly difficult to see in the office. In the manager’s (selfish) effort to show their ability and see immediate progress, they reduce the capability of everyone else. I’m not sure that’s even the worse part, though. They also teach one machete wielder a very unhelpful lesson – if you find yourself in a challenging spot, look backwards. Rather than taking the time to figure it out, you can count on someone else to do the really hard stuff.

If a manager does their very difficult, emotionally demanding job of not jumping in, they build capability of staff.  They build a more sustainable and healthy organization.

Here’s the assignment. Don’t look for validation through the social mirror, look for it in your own principles. The majority of your colleagues likely won’t be with you, but that’s not the objective. You’re looking for personal satisfaction for a job effectively done. For what it’s worth, I will also be celebrating your courageous choice.

I’ve been a sellout many times in my life. For definition, let’s say that sellouts are when you apply your ability and talent to something that isn’t for your purpose in life, it’s for somebody else’s. The theory of the sellout is that they happen because selling out is practical, it’s prudent and it seems like a good, secure, long-term choice. However, they’re called sellouts because they go against your very fibre. You give up (sell) a piece of your soul for comfort. You pursue someone else’s interest in return for compensation.

I’d like to take a look at some of my sellouts, in the order that they have happened:

* I trusted the educational system with too much of my maturation and development of knowledge and pursued all manner of academic success in highschool. I devoted excessive time that could have been spent pursuing my own interests to learning how to differentiate between chemical oxidation and reduction, a sonnet and iambic pentameter and a circle’s radius versus its diameter.
* I chose to take Commerce (business school) in University, not because of some overwhelming passion for business, but because it was the path to secure, well-paid employment.
* I accepted positions of employment because of title and pay, not because of my personal affinity for the topic.
* I engaged, interacted and gave respect to undeserving individuals who held influence. I shared ideas not for innovation and effectiveness, but to impress.

A couple of weak defenses of my actions might help me feel better here. First is the fact that this is what I was advised to do. I followed the path that was laid out for me. That’s weak, because I was sentient when all these sellouts took place. I always had a choice… I just didn’t acknowledge it. My second defense – I could have done more selling out, or I could have done it for an entire career. I think it could easily be argued that I continue to sell out, but I’m happy to say I’ve recognized it and am taking steps to repair the damage.

The damage, however, is quite interesting and hard to repair. To start with, sellouts aren’t exactly natural, so they’re hard to sustain. When we’re doing something contrary to our being routinely each day, we’re ultimately stealing days we won’t get back that could be happier. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

There’s the damage of how being a sellout seems to tie our hands, too. It comes in the shape of established levels of comfort and expectation that are extremely hard to dismiss. They come in the form of a mortgage that was accepted in headier times and a lifestyle best described as a hedonic treadmill.

The damage is a reluctance to try new things, to depart from this game’s “winning strategy” even as the rules of the game are changing.

The damage is a fear of the actions that could address our mistakes but haven’t received acceptance from family, parents, peers, friends, teachers or bosses.

The damage is the fear of ending up living in a van down by the river.

All that is strong, but it doesn’t quite overpower the knowledge that there are ways to add value and be true to your passion. Even when all the comforts of being a sellout are calling me to stop, relax and be enveloped in their charms, I can’t help but remember that those sellout actions aren’t my agenda. They’re just the choices I’ve made.

I guess I’m saying that the one thing more powerful than all the comforts of the life of the sellout is the peace that comes with pursuing my own agenda.

Where does innovation come from? I think we’ve all been in a few meetings where “youth” is the answer. If you’re like me, you’ve also heard “new employees,” regardless of age. I don’t think I’ve yet heard “those close to retirement,” but it wouldn’t surprise me.

To be honest, I always kind of dread these discussions. It’s not that I don’t want to be part of a discussion about innovation; it’s that the perception of where innovation comes from feels quite tired and unexamined.

I want to take a peek at the source of innovation, the person. I do think a lot of innovation can come from youth. A different education, a constant immersion in a media-rich environment and a fresh introduction to the workplace is bound to give this cohort a number of “why is it done this way?” kind of moments.

Likewise, new public service employees enter an organization either with the “youth” lens or with the lens of someone who has been working in a different kind of structure. They may simply bring different approaches, or they may have that same sort of questioning “why?” moment.

Both of these groups bring something valuable to the table – a different perspective. They offer a shock to our current thinking. They haven’t been indoctrinated into the rules, structures and dogma that govern the way we do our jobs.

I don’t think, however, that innovative ideas come from a certain age or a certain set of experiences. Primarily, I think new ideas come from your worldview. Worldview is a nice all-encompassing word to describe how you see the world. It’s your description of reality. Perhaps another way to say it is that our worldview is the collection of conclusions we bring with us based on what we’ve seen.

As you can imagine, everyone’s worldview is different. You can be trusting or less trusting, more open to risk or less. You can believe in the power of a god and you can believe in the power of the state. You can think that social media is the end of community or a new beginning. When somebody believes in grassroots organization and somebody else believes in corporate benevolence, those different worldviews bring different/new/innovative solutions to addressing public issues. These differences create distinct approaches and different solutions to challenges.

The nature of most organizations is to build consistency and uniformity into everything, including how we think. The organization works hard to keep everything static and in control. Maybe you’re still having innovative ideas, but the typical response and reaction within the walls of the organization to new thinking makes it difficult to express those ideas (and continue expressing them).

What youth and new employees can bring is a distinct worldview that hasn’t yet been critically transformed. Eventually, most employees resolve themselves to a worldview that includes something like, “At work, it’s easier to follow the rules than to examine them.” Until that defeatist language is added to the worldview, some profound things are liable to slip out.

Accessing individuals who see a different reality and believe that change is attainable are key elements of innovation for me. Right now, the “low hanging fruit” are the individuals that readily bring that kind of thinking. It’s a mistake, however, to attribute that kind of thinking to a demographic cohort or a certain experience. We’re missing all the worldviews that are quietly being suppressed.

I was talking to a friend the other day and she said, “I came to government with a set of skills, abilities and passions, and none of them get used.”

Innovative ideas are there. We’re just not asking for them.