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In October 2007 I attended the four-day program Leadership, Innovation, and Growth (LIG) at General Electric’s famed management development center in Crotonville, New York. LIG was the first effort in the center’s 51-year history to bring all the senior members of a business’s management team together for training. Launched in 2006, the program had a specific purpose: to support CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt’s priority of growing GE by focusing more on expanding businesses and creating new ones than on making acquisitions.
Idea in Brief; • Management development programs that focus on teaching and inspiring individuals to apply new approaches have a fundamental flaw: If other members of an individual’s team have not taken the course, they may resist efforts to change.
• The antidote to this problem is training intact management teams.
• When managers go through a program together, they emerge with a consensus view of the opportunities and problems and how best to attack them. The result: faster and more effective change.
As a senior editor at HBR, I was invited to go through LIG with 19 senior managers of GE Power Generation, one of the company’s oldest businesses. (It dates back to the days of Thomas Edison.) About a year later I revisited the “turbine heads,” as Immelt affectionately calls them, to see how much impact the program had made. The answer was plenty: The business had accelerated its push into emerging markets, launched initiatives to revamp product development, and stepped up efforts to create new businesses. Managers seemed to be genuinely trying to alter their roles and behavior in order to foster growth. Why was LIG so effective in helping to bring about these changes? There were five main reasons:
1] Team training accelerated the pace of change by giving managers an opportunity to reach consensus on the barriers to change and how best to attack them.
2] Participants were encouraged to consider both the hard barriers to change (organizational structure, capabilities, and resources) and the soft (how the members of the leadership team individually and collectively behave and spend their time).
3] The eternal management challenge of balancing the short term and the long term—or simultaneously managing the present and creating the future—was explicitly addressed.
4] Beyond providing new concepts that would make people look at their businesses and themselves differently, the course created a common vocabulary of change—literally words that became part of daily communications inside and across GE’s businesses.
5] The program was not an academic exercise; it was structured so that a team would emerge with the first draft of an action plan for instituting change in its business and would feel obligated to deliver on it.
These principles—which can be applied to the design of any change-management program, not just one concerning growth—are the focus of this article.
Continue…..
CAPRIVI CONSULTANCY 
THE HARD SIDE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT
http://hbr.org/2005/10/the-hard-side-of-change-management/ar/1
When French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” he could have been penning an epigram about change management. For over three decades, academics, managers, and consultants, realizing that transforming organizations is difficult, have dissected the subject. They’ve sung the praises of leaders who communicate vision and walk the talk in order to make change efforts succeed. They’ve sanctified the importance of changing organizational culture and employees’ attitudes. They’ve teased out the tensions between top-down transformation efforts and participatory approaches to change. And they’ve exhorted companies to launch campaigns that appeal to people’s hearts and minds. Still, studies show that in most organizations, two out of three transformation initiatives fail. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Managing change is tough, but part of the problem is that there is little agreement on what factors most influence transformation initiatives. Ask five executives to name the one factor critical for the success of these programs, and you’ll probably get five different answers. That’s because each manager looks at an initiative from his or her viewpoint and, based on personal experience, focuses on different success factors. The experts, too, offer different perspectives. A recent search on Amazon.com for books on “change and management” turned up 6,153 titles, each with a distinct take on the topic. Those ideas have a lot to offer, but taken together, they force companies to tackle many priorities simultaneously, which spreads resources and skills thin. Moreover, executives use different approaches in different parts of the organization, which compounds the turmoil that usually accompanies change.
In recent years, many change management gurus have focused on soft issues, such as culture, leadership, and motivation. Such elements are important for success, but managing these aspects alone isn’t sufficient to implement transformation projects. Soft factors don’t directly influence the outcomes of many change programs. For instance, visionary leadership is often vital for transformation projects, but not always. The same can be said about communication with employees. Moreover, it isn’t easy to change attitudes or relationships; they’re deeply ingrained in organizations and people. And although changes in, say, culture or motivation levels can be indirectly gauged through surveys and interviews, it’s tough to get reliable data on soft factors.
What’s missing, we believe, is a focus on the not-so-fashionable aspects of change management: the hard factors. These factors bear three distinct characteristics. First, companies are able to measure them in direct or indirect ways. Second, companies can easily communicate their importance, both within and outside organizations. Third, and perhaps most important, businesses are capable of influencing those elements quickly. Some of the hard factors that affect a transformation initiative are the time necessary to complete it, the number of people required to execute it, and the financial results that intended actions are expected to achieve. Our research shows that change projects fail to get off the ground when companies neglect the hard factors. That doesn’t mean that executives can ignore the soft elements; that would be a grave mistake. However, if companies don’t pay attention to the hard issues first, transformation programs will break down before the soft elements come into play.
That’s a lesson we learned when we identified the common denominators of change. In 1992, we started with the contrarian hypothesis that organizations handle transformations in remarkably similar ways. We researched projects in a number of industries and countries to identify those common elements. Our initial 225-company study revealed a consistent correlation between the outcomes (success or failure) of change programs and four hard factors: project duration, particularly the time between project reviews; performance integrity, or the capabilities of project teams; the commitment of both senior executives and the staff whom the change will affect the most; and the additional effort that employees must make to cope with the change. We called these variables the DICE factors because we could load them in favor of projects’ success.
We completed our study in 1994, and in the 11 years since then, the Boston Consulting Group has used those four factors to predict the outcomes, and guide the execution, of more than 1,000 change management initiatives worldwide. Not only has the correlation held, but no other factors (or combination of factors) have predicted outcomes as well.
The Four Key Factors
If you think about it, the different ways in which organizations combine the four factors create a continuum—from projects that are set up to succeed to those that are set up to fail. At one extreme, a short project led by a skilled, motivated, and cohesive team, championed by top management and implemented in a department that is receptive to the change and has to put in very little additional effort, is bound to succeed. At the other extreme, a long, drawn-out project executed by an inexpert, unenthusiastic, and disjointed team, without any top-level sponsors and targeted at a function that dislikes the change and has to do a lot of extra work, will fail. Businesses can easily identify change programs at either end of the spectrum, but most initiatives occupy the middle ground where the likelihood of success or failure is difficult to assess. Executives must study the four DICE factors carefully to figure out if their change programs will fly—or die.
The Four Factors;
These factors determine the outcome of any transformation initiative.
D. The duration of time until the change program is completed if it has a short life span; if not short, the amount of time between reviews of milestones.
I. The project team’s performance integrity; that is, its ability to complete the initiative on time. That depends on members’ skills and traits relative to the project’s requirements.
C. The commitment to change that top management (C1) and employees affected by the change (C2) display.
E. The effort over and above the usual work that the change initiative demands of employees.
Duration.
Companies make the mistake of worrying mostly about the time it will take to implement change programs. They assume that the longer an initiative carries on, the more likely it is to fail—the early impetus will peter out, windows of opportunity will close, objectives will be forgotten, key supporters will leave or lose their enthusiasm, and problems will accumulate. However, contrary to popular perception, our studies show that a long project that is reviewed frequently is more likely to succeed than a short project that isn’t reviewed frequently. Thus, the time between reviews is more critical for success than a project’s life span.
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Posted by Philworldwide | 15/10/2012, 10:32 amWHAT REALLY IS CHANGE MANAGEMENT?
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11747697/1/understand-change-management-for-effect.html?goback=%2Egde_63688_member_179375872
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Many companies are perpetually awash in improvement projects. Yet, all too often, projects succeed in producing committed deliverables, but fail to achieve performance goals. By the end, all that remains are project documents filed in electronic team rooms, like the final scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Why do so many big ideas achieve so little? Because most projects focus on deliverables rather than on behavior change. If improvement projects fail to create behavior change — if people do the same things this week as they did last week — the project adds no value at all.
For example, if you designed an outstanding employee selection protocol, but no one uses it, you failed. Changing behavior to align with business strategies is the objective of change management.
Many executives underestimate the importance of change management. They think that good people will readily adopt “good” thinking.
Not so. Even good people think about their own needs first. This makes leading change very complex. It not only requires excellent diagnostic and solution development skills, but also political insight and influence skills. These skills are difficult to teach in a classroom. They’re learned through the school of hard knocks.
Contrast the job of a physician with that of a change management professional. Physicians assess the patients’ symptoms, triangulate the symptoms in their head or with the aid of a computer, render a diagnosis and prescribe a treatment.
Now, consider the complexity of making large-scale organizational change. Is the diagnosis correct and solution sufficient to completely resolve the problem? How do the desired changes align with the organization’s history, culture, processes and IT and HR systems? How must past disputes between key stakeholders be considered during implementation?
Let’s look at change management through three high-level principles.
Principle No. 1: Stakeholders Must Believe They Own the Change
A well-known theory of behavioral science is Reactance Theory. The theory states that humans react negatively when their freedoms or choices are threatened. Reactance occurs when someone is heavily pressured to accept a certain view or attitude.
In the mid 1980’s the emerging management practice was Quality Circles — where teams were empowered to improve their work. In graduate school I interned for the QC program at Martin Marietta.
After decades of factory worker complaints that management did not listen, Martin Marietta created a QC program. Yet, surprisingly, the new program encountered tremendous resistance. Workers told us that they did not want to be accountable for quality improvements — that was a manager duty. Why the sudden reversal? Because employees saw their work environment changing without their consent and they reacted against the change.
Principle No. 2: Management Must Give Sufficient Support
It takes a certain amount of energy to send a rocket into orbit. Once in orbit, the rocket continues on forever. But if the rocket cannot escape the atmosphere, it falls back to earth and produces no value. With rockets, there is no such thing as a good try — it either breaks the atmosphere or falls to earth. There is no other outcome.
The same is true with the energy needed to create behavior change. Changing behavior for teams or organizations requires very large amounts of sustained energy through strong project management and simple and clear communication through determined leaders. Without sufficient energy and leadership backbone, good ideas will not become new behaviors.
Principle No. 3: Align the Environment to the Change
Often, new initiatives are designed by consultants who present to senior teams. As senior team members ask for more and more details, project documents become voluminous. These documents are cascaded down management levels in the hope that people who do the work will read and understand it and that work team members will change how they operate.
Successful organizations are not managed by hope.
In the best cases, workers are given training on the proposed changes. But training alone is rarely sufficient to change behavior. Making behavior change requires that:
1. Each individual knows precisely what is expected of him/her. Team members define how the team will operate and make reciprocal commitments — “I agree to give you a weekly Friday update by e-mail if you …”
2. HR systems are aligned to the new expectations. HR systems (e.g., pay, performance management, selection, and training) must be explicitly aligned to reinforce the change.
3. The role of the manager is very clear. Changing the daily behavior of managers is critical during times of transition. It is unreasonable to expect that one three-day training course will do the trick. Close attention through coaching will help institutionalize the change.
So much time and money is wasted on projects that succeed in producing committed deliverables, but fail to achieve performance goals.
If improvement projects fail to create behavior change — if people do the same things this week as they did last week — the project adds no value at all.
It is possible to make “change” a competitive advantage, but it requires an understanding of the value of behavioral change and the professional capabilities needed to deliver.
Posted by philworldwide | 07/11/2012, 10:04 pmHOW CHANGE FAILS: CEOs FOCUS ON SYMPTOMS NOT THE SYSTEM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2011/12/04/how-change-fails-ceos-focus-on-symptoms-not-the-system/
Want someone to change?
Want them to change faster?
Then have your company follow the same model used for effective personal change. The result will be faster and more effective change.
Change happens in levels. Einstein knew this, per his Unified Field theory. Gregory Bateson knew this, in his Logical Levels.
Building on Bateson’s model I’ve found that companies as well as individuals change in six concentric rings. These rings move from Environment (easy and less impactful change) to Core/Culture (more difficult, yet profound, life- or company-altering change). You can work your way inward and ultimately affect the Core/Culture, but if you start inward at the Core/Culture you’ll affect all of the outer rings.
Address the Symptom… or the System?
When a problem presents itself most executives look for point solutions such as “what problem/situation do I need to change?” This is tactical thinking. Maybe you want your people to be more accountable, your sales people to sell more, your engineers to innovate better or your client care to service accounts better.
Solving these problems is addressing the symptom, not the System. It is not looking at the situation systemically. Consider the difference between Western and Eastern medicine: Western is problem and point-solution oriented, and Eastern is preventive and systemic-solution oriented.
Look at the concentric circles above: Environment, Behavior, Capability, are where we see the Symptoms. Beliefs, Identity, Core/Culture are where we have the System.
What happens when you work at the symptom level? You’ll have to deal with the next symptom, and the next symptom, for frikking ever — because it’s the System that causes all the Symptoms.
To get out of this endless cycle we need to look at how our business is being impacted on multiple levels… then we can operate with far more impact once we treat the system—not just the next symptom.
Shift Happens
The first level of change is Environment. Think of the environment of your home as a child, as this is where your environment expectations were set on your Map (see Why People Do What They Do to understand how your Map was created). Today your workplace Environment is your physical space and emotional environment. The vibe in your office is part of your Environment. Is it positive, collaborative, got-your-back team oriented? Or is it negative, fearful, everyone-for-themselves silo oriented? Environment changes can be permanent or temporary: you can move to a new office or location, temporarily change rooms or just take a walk.
Environment is the outermost and simplest level of change—it doesn’t complete the story. It alone rarely affects profound change. Reorganizations are Environment changes, which is why they alone rarely, if ever, improve a company’s culture. A new job title and new responsibilities can help someone’s career and position and office location, but it won’t fundamentally change who they are.
The next level is Behavior. Suppose you make a New Year’s resolution to go to the gym. How long does that last? You want to lose five pounds, so you stop eating dessert for a few weeks. That’s a behavior change. A few weeks later that tiramisu or cheesecake looks really good…. and there you go. Behavior change can be woefully transitory. And even if you did stay on your diet, would it change who you are, how you see the world, your ability to interact with it with more choice, power, resources?
Moving inward we come to Capability. Let’s say you want to gain a new Capability. You want to learn French. So you take on the Behavior of going to French classes. Then you decide to go to France, and you change your Environment by going to Paris. As you make changes at deeper levels in the Logical Levels of Change, the outermost levels are impacted.
Environment, Behavior, Capability changes can be mundane. Yet this is where most CEOs spend their time and energy, which is why organizations struggle to cause true and lasting transformative and positive change.
They change outside in, instead of inside out.
Now we’re getting to the juicy stuff, friends…
Beliefs are rules, rights and wrongs, shoulds and shouldn’ts, goods and bads, cans and can’ts about the world or other people. Beliefs are more deeply seated in our subconscious, so they require more excavation to change, and the skillful use of neuroscience techniques you’ll learn from me in coming blog posts.
Identity is a collection of Beliefs about ourselves. Our initial identity was formed in early childhood, yet as long as we commit to personal growth it will continue to evolve. This is why we learn to edit our Maps—to expand our Identity and have more choice in our lives. Fill in the blank to learn what your beliefs about yourself are: “I AM _____________”. Powerful? Confident? Loved? Influential? Smart? For your company, your collective identity would be “WE ARE _____________.”
And now we come to the best part: Core/Culture. Core applies to an individual, and Culture applies to an organization. It’s who you are, what you stand for, what must last if all else is stripped away. It’s your purpose, your contribution to the greater good, your legacy, your relationship to power and possibility.
Per my blog Why We Do What We Do you’ll recall that a company too has a Map, which is primarily formed from the Maps of the CEO and key tribal leaders of the company. The Culture for a company is the combination of these individual executive Maps plus the company’s beliefs about its executives, what rituals the company has, what is rewarded, what behavior has consequences. The tribal customs are here, the function or dysfunction is here. It’s the real stuff.
In my next blog I’ll show exactly how Core/Culture changes can be made, as well as a fascinating before/after scenario where Crushed Culture was ended.
Are you focusing on the Symptoms or the System?
Posted by philworldwide | 07/11/2012, 10:07 pmLike Einstein, Bateson knew that Change happens in Logical Levels.
Bateson’s model found that companies as well as individuals change in six concentric rings.
These rings move from Environment (easy to change) to Core/Culture (more difficult to change). i.e.
Environment
Behaviour
Capability
Beliefs
Identity
Core/Culture
Change process works inward and ultimately affect the Core/Culture, but if change starts at the Core/Culture it will affect all of the outer rings.
Posted by philworldwide | 07/11/2012, 10:20 pmCHANGE MANAGEMENT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE AN EXERCISE IN FRUSTRATION
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/10/31/change-management-doesnt-have-to-be-an-exercise-in-frustration/?goback=%2Egde_80342_member_184104084&__lsa=92d0e3a9
While 70% of change management initiatives fail, managers can induce change in the workplace through nine simple steps.
Changing the behavior of staff and partners is critical to business success; yet as much as 70% of change management initiatives fail. It would not be an understatement to say that poor change competencies have ominous consequences for a firm’s ability to remain competitive and financially strong. Failure need not be a forgone conclusion. Managers can improve their chances of success by heeding the latest research in behavioral psychology and emerging best practices.
Below are nine proven change management guidelines, based on our 20+ years of consulting plus thought leadership by Morten Hansen, a management professor at Berkeley, INSEAD:
1] Keep things simple
Focus on changing one behavior at a time. When a company or individual has 10 priorities, it might as well have none. Research on multi-tasking indicates that people are more productive when they focus on one task at a time. Moreover, when you want to modify more than one behavior, sequence the changes.
2] Make goals actionable
Demanding vague or unrealistic change is ineffective and often de-motivating. According to research on goal setting, targets need to be concrete and measurable to be attainable. The same goes with behavior. For example, “listen actively” is vague and not measurable. On the other hand, “paraphrase what others said and check for accuracy” is concrete and measurable. To ensure compliance, we ask employees to document the desired behavior and sign it as a pledge.
3] Tell a compelling story, repeatedly
Regularly communicate a single, inspiring story across the organization. This “narrative” should resonate with a person’s brain (i.e. what’s good for them and the company) and their heart (i.e. its emotional or spiritual appeal). Use stories, metaphors, pictures, and physical objects to paint a challenging image of “where we are now” and a better vision of “where we want to be.”
4] Be practical
According to Diffusion theory, embracing a new behavior typically follows a diffusion curve — early adopters, safe followers, latecomers and malcontents. Managers need not try to change everyone all at once, just the key adopters/influencers who will prod cautious employees towards compliance. To begin, leaders should enlist a few early adopters to embrace the change. Then, managers should find and convince the influencers, who will do their magic within their organizational networks. These influencers are often not senior managers but people with many informal connections and lots of sway and credibility.
5] Activate the peers
According to Social Comparison theory, people look to those in their immediate circle for guidance for what are acceptable behaviors. Peers can set expectations, shame us or provide positive role models. We typically recommend companies establish change agents throughout the organization and encourage them to set expectations and respectfully put pressure on their co-workers. Companies can also utilize Gamification, an innovative and fun way to drive change compliance through employee game playing.
6] Leverage leadership
All too often, change initiatives come up short when employees disengage after not seeing their managers “walk the walk.” In our change management efforts, we recommend that all leaders be consistently engaged through narrative development and implementation as well as modelling good behavior. Of course, the leadership must proactively support the change effort by rewarding good behavior and censuring non-compliance.
7] Tweak the management system
In many cases, organizational policies (e.g., performance measures, compensation schemes, etc.) are barriers to change. Managers should identify and remove these potential roadblocks in advance of launching any change initiatives. As well, managers should promote good behavior by changing the hiring, promotion and firing criteria. Be mindful, says Dan Pink in his book Drive, that extrinsic rewards (e.g., pay increases) only work when you try to change non-creative behaviors.
8] Change the situation
Behavioral Decision theory says that adjusting the situation around a person can trigger change. As an example, Google’s aim was to promote healthier eating among their employees. Using the cue that people tend to grab what they see first, the company stationed the salad bar in front of the room. Google promotes behavioral change, not by telling them directly (eat salad!), but indirectly, by shaping their choices.
9] Don’t neglect coaching
Many change initiatives require the individual to take on new skills or behaviors that are alien to them. Especially difficult are behaviors with a high tacit component (e.g., listening better). In these cases, using sticks and carrots will not always work or be appropriate. To ensure sufficient change momentum, firms should provide teaching and coaching facilitation as needed.
Posted by philworldwide | 13/11/2012, 10:57 pmCHANGE MANAGEMENT; A NEW MODEL FOR ORGANIZATIONS IMPLEMENTING CHANGE
http://www.emergencymgmt.com/training/Change-Management-Model-Organizations-Implementing-Change.html?goback=%2Egde_80342_member_168302082
The one thing that dominates our modern lives is change. Nothing is static anymore and change is constant. To keep up with the pace of change, governments and businesses are implementing new processes, procedures, equipment, software and more. It’s reported that nearly 70 percent of change efforts fail.
Victory Grady is a change expert and the co-author of The Pivot Point: Success in Organizational Change. Grady completed her doctoral studies at George Washington University in May 2005. Her dissertation focused on the inherent loss of stability suffered by organizations introducing and implementing organizational change initiatives. The research resulted in a validated model explaining the tendency of individuals, often subconsciously, to struggle, resist and potentially disrupt the organizational change initiative. She responded below to a series of questions posed to her about change management.
Question: Are human beings naturally resistant to change?
Answer: Maybe. We certainly tend to relax and get comfortable once we learn a certain formula for success or a behavior that works for us.
But we also are part of a dynamic environment that requires us to adapt and change to stay competitive in the global marketplace. Times and people do change, and we know deep inside that sometimes, we have to get with the program too.
Do individuals deal with change differently? How does this impact organizational change?
Yes, at least in some ways. Each and every one of us deals with change in a special way.
Organizational change is particularly challenging because some people learn and adapt quickly, while others take more time, and may require help from management, leadership and other employees. Special awareness and actions are needed to make sure no one gets left behind.
Is there a standard process or way to effect change in an organization?
No. The best process is tailored to the company or organization. Each organization, whether small or large, is unique. The individuals are also unique, and the changes they are being asked to make are unique. So the best process will be one that takes their special needs into account and is carefully designed to help them in the ways that will maximize success.
What is the most crucial issue you see that organizations fail to address?
Change initiatives can fail for many reasons. But one of the most common causes of failure is that they do not adequately address the role and the needs of individuals who are going through the change and the objects they are attached to.
What is the Pivot Point? Why is it important?
The Pivot Point is that place in time and space when individuals (the employees) successfully abandon the old and adjust to the new.
If you look at The Pivot Point you see that each person is attached or linked to “objects” in the workplace that they lean on or attach to for support to complete the task, work or the project before them.
An object can be a person, a technology, a system, a location, a process, familiar equipment, even an abstract concept or idea — anything that serves to provide an individual employee with a sense of consistency and stability.
How does understanding the pivot point help organizations go through change?
People do what they are familiar and comfortable with. To make change successfully each person must be trained to do new things in new ways. People struggle with changes until they become comfortable and confident with the new methods, systems or changing circumstances.
It’s not just the addition of new, but it is also the loss of the old.
To achieve change in an organization, employees must leave those familiar things behind, and at the same time learn how to act and function in a new way.
What does this mean for organizations?
Management and leadership must realize that the individual employees are the most important element. The employees are the organization. That is the bottom line.
Change that is simply imposed will not be effective without the individuals being able to succeed with the change in place.
Can you measure how people adapt to change?
Yes. It is best to first assess how an organization performs. Here’s a simple example: Look at one organization. First identify how long it takes to get certain piece of work done? What does it cost to do the work? How much money does the organization make?
Now implement a new technology (give everyone a smartphone) and train them how to use it.
Now how long does it take to get the same work done? Did you save any money? Did you make more money or less money?
Is everyone using the smartphones well enough? Are they trained to communicate and make use of all the time-saving features?
This is a simple example. The changes that organizations make are usually more complicated than this.
You can analyze organizational effectiveness gains or losses from changes that managers and leaders make, and it can make a tremendous difference in how change is achieved.
What is the key to success in effecting organizational change?
The key to the success is identifying metrics that matter so that the organization can monitor and see exactly where people are adapting and where they need help.
These metrics allow management to figure out what needs to be done to ensure that individuals get the help, the training or the support they need to make it through the pivot points each person encounters. These measurements can be real time and adjusted to meet each organization’s needs.
Posted by Phil Alberts | 20/02/2013, 11:44 amSEVEN THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT LEADING CHANGE
As the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) first dedicated chief scientist in two decades, my office helped lead efforts to transform development through science, technology, and innovation. This meant transforming the Agency itself. In the past four years, these are seven key lessons I learned about leading change within a large institution.
1. Dare Mighty Things. A shared and inspirational vision is necessary to generate excitement, and create the momentum needed to overcome institutional inertia. The vision has to appeal to both the rational and the emotional sides of individuals. Our goal was to make USAID the unquestioned technical leader among development agencies globally by harnessing the power of science, technology, and engineering, creativity and design, and data and analytics. Our vision also needed to represent a clear end state – elevating science or innovation for its own sake was not enough. Although we recognized that the path to a transformative breakthrough could be murky, chaotic, and serendipitous, the end goal of what we were trying to achieve and how we would measure it had to be clear. At USAID, our initiatives were measured against a single standard: How did the technology or innovation improve the speed, efficacy, cost, scale and/or sustainability of our development efforts? This gave us metrics that were measurable and clear across a diversity of different areas from global health to food security. Our vision allowed us to do big things.
2. Consistency is Important. In an institution like USAID, changes brought by each successive administration may be viewed with skepticism, as ephemeral fads, by both the professional staff and the larger development community. Consistency of language and approach are very important signals to those constituencies, while a multitude of changing priorities may undermine all new programs. We saw the benefits of consistency in the Grand Challenges for Development (GCD) – a 20-50 million dollar open innovation competition to address the critical constraints of the world’s biggest challenges. The GCDs were initially brilliant at sourcing existing innovations, but not necessarily great at generating new breakthroughs. Although the first round of each Grand Challenge provided an insightful catalog of the state of the art, exposing the Agency to new innovations of which it was unaware, the innovations from that initial round didn’t change the reality of what was possible. It was only when we held second and third rounds of our first Grand Challenge for Development, Saving Lives at Birth, that we increasingly saw the development of new breakthroughs. The reliability of our funding streams for the GCDs and open innovation encouraged investments into the development of new solutions. This suggested that larger, consistent, multi-year efforts, like the Grand Challenges or the X-prizes, were better than infrequent or one-off prizes at galvanizing global action, creating transformative innovations or technologies, and changing the landscape of solutions and approaches.
3. The Power of Architects. Although my role was to serve as the Agency’s first dedicated Chief Scientist in two decades, my actual job description was much closer to that of an architect. We built the architecture for a robust science and innovation ecosystem in the Agency, reversing the trend of the previous two decades that de-emphasized the technical strengths of the Agency. This included creating the institutions and programs, as well as cultivating the culture that opened the space for science and innovation both within the Agency and outside (including the developing world). We sought to expand the boundaries of the Agency’s procurement limits through the use of prizes and challenges, crowd-sourcing the world, and by using external peer review in the selection process (the latter seems obvious, but was very difficult). We expanded the use of data and technology in development. We supercharged bureaus and missions with talented scientists and engineers. We championed scientific and technical excellence in the Agency, creating and implementing the Agency’s first scientific integrity & research policies (the latter underway), pushing for new or broadened authorities for science, technology, and innovation, expanding access to scientific and technical literature, and pushing for new advancement opportunities based on technical ability, for Agency professionals. Finally, we sought to change how USAID engages universities, creating platforms for students and faculty to co-design, and co-solve problems with the Agency. In the end, building the ecosystem for science, technology, and innovation had much greater impact than any individual action or initiative we could take. We noticed an indirect effect resulting from our actions: we opened space for others through example. There is no shortage of great ideas in the Agency. USAID is filled with extraordinary, committed, and bright professionals, who want to end hunger, save lives, and stop suffering. However, over time, and perhaps defensively against the detractors of foreign aid, the Agency bureaucracy had grown increasingly immutable to new approaches. This became a critical role for our team – to change the idea of what was permissible, or even possible, for the Agency.
4. Find the Bright Spots. Elevate and Champion. Repeat. Chip and Dan Heath have written extensively about the importance of “bright spots” in their book Switch. We saw three primary roles for the Office of Science and Technology: First, we were catalysts to help bring change to the Agency. Second, we were a customer service office for those who wanted to take on new approaches, but needed support. Third, we elevated and championed those who were willing to take the risks. These were our bright spots – the individuals who were willing to raise their hand when others were not. Saving Lives at Birth, the first GCD, involved a significant risk because our approach to the Grand Challenges was novel (we focused on sourcing and creating innovations from multiple sectors from energy to corruption, rather than on research advances in global health). Moreover, open innovation was also largely new and untested within the Agency. There was a another problem: Saving Lives at Birth involved not only significant investments from USAID, but also from the other development agencies and foundations that had partnered with us: Norway, the Gates Foundation, and Grand Challenges Canada. Millions of dollars were at stake. The potential consequences of reputational loss to the Agency were as great as any financial loss. So when a member of the leadership from the Global Health Bureau stood up and said that the bureau would take the risk, and lead our first GCD, my team put forth our fullest efforts to make them successful. The early adopters are already the iconoclasts, the inventors, the ones who believed in the vision, and our job was to support them behind the scenes, elevate their profile, bear the consequences if Saving Lives at Birth failed, and ensure they got the credit if we succeeded.
5. Innovation is Not Only About New Ideas. The Grand Challenges for Development, our prizes, and our science programs encouraged thousands of new innovators, scientists, and engineers to approach the Agency for the first time. Our programs generated many brilliant new ideas and innovations (see a small representation here). Although we were initially focused on creating new innovations, we recognized we needed to do more to support the innovators after they received funding. Over time, we also saw the innovation of new business models and financing as important as the technological innovations. The truth was that we would only be successful if the technology developed through our programs could be transitioned to scale through partnerships with USAID’s missions and bureaus, by investments of other foundations and development agencies, and through the power of the free market and social entrepreneurship. This is where we saw our role as differing from institutions like DARPA –scale had to be considered from the beginning, and the transition to scale had to be as important as the generation of new breakthroughs.
6. Learn by Doing, Including by Failing. In Washington, failure is deemed unacceptable and can be fodder for cutting budgets and ending careers. After my office created and hosted a science fair focused on design for the other 90%, which became one of the Agency’s most well-received events at the UN General Assembly annual meetings, we were greeted with a cavernous silence the following year when we proposed holding a “failure fair for development”. Taking risks is never acceptable when taxpayer’s funding and people’s lives are at stake, but paradoxically risk, failure, and experimentation are necessary parts of advancing both the science and innovation necessary to turn the grand challenges into opportunities (see my post on failure and risk). We found ways to mitigate risk. Collaborating with other parts of the Agency allowed us to bear the impact of the failure on behalf of others and thereby encourage them to try new approaches. Alliances with other development agencies and foundations allowed us to distribute risk among multiple institutions. External expertise through peer review provided us a double check against our own biases, and increased the rigor of our review. In the end, we recognized our role was to take risks, disregard naysayers, and push the limits.
7. Be Fearless. There was constant pressure for us to normalize our activities, to be cautious and work within the system, and to water down the language and ambitions of our programs and procurements. As a new office with an uncertain future, institutionalization was seductive. However, this was not our purpose. Given that the Agency had moved away from the technical side of development over the last two decades, we had a narrow window to bring about change and restore science and technology to its rightful place. Accordingly, we needed to be fearless, pushing the Agency as far and as hard as possible to embrace risks, to challenge orthodoxy and fundamental assumptions, and to rethink the traditional development model. We had to act as if it was impossible to fail, and to change the reality of what was possible. Disruption wasn’t our mission, but it was part of our culture and identity. Our office was a small part of the Agency, so we needed to be focused on the truly transformative ideas and approaches because the core work of the Agency was already well covered by other Bureaus – we had to focus on our comparative advantage within the institution. When we didn’t push back hard enough, our programs were less successful because they signaled business as normal. We couldn’t attract revolutionary ideas when we asked for the mundane. In the end, the ultimate success of these efforts will depend on whether the institution becomes more like the startup, rather than if the startup becomes more like the institution.
*****
Alex Dehgan served as the Agency’s first dedicated chief scientist in two decades, and created and led the Agency’s Office of Science and Technology. As the Agency’s chief scientist, Alex sought to ensure that USAID was the global leader in employing science, technology, and innovation to solve global development challenges. Follow him on twitter @lemurwrangler. All views expressed here belong solely to him and are not attributable to USAID.
Posted by philworldwide | 05/01/2014, 11:15 pm