Third, the innovators must report directly to the top of the organization. Reports filtered to the top through intermediate levels are “dumbed down” to the lowest common denominator by the time they reach it. There will be institutional resistance to doing this. I can’t count the number of times my front office team came to me with proposals to downsize, eliminate, or reassign the people and resources devoted to the innovation cells. This also means the organization’s leader must find the time to take the innovation briefs, evaluate them and decide where to put emphasis, and then move the idea into the mainstream—where it will again encounter resistance because it was “not invented by the main staff.” The imprimatur of the leader is crucial to keeping innovation alive in an organization.
Fourth, resource the innovators! This means carving out sufficient amounts of money, people, and time to allow your innovation cell to flourish. It does not mean huge levels of resources; for even very large organizations, a relatively small number of people (say a dozen) can achieve big throw weight. Deep Blue in the Navy, Checkmate in the Air Force, the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, and Google Ideas within Google are all examples of this. In terms of money, the best approach is to encourage (and sometimes require) the innovation cell to reach out in entrepreneurial fashion and find “other people’s money” to fund their ideas.
Fifth, reward them appropriately. This can range from cash and bonus awards for civilians to better evaluations and medals for military personnel. And again, this kind of message moves through the organization, and people begin to know that the leadership and the organization itself reward those who take the risks of innovation—despite their frequent failures.
And speaking of frequent failures, sixth, accept that many ideas will fail. Not every well you drill will be a gusher—but a handful of successful wildcat wells can make you rich. Encourage recognition of failure early in the process—the so-called fail fast approach that many corporations take today. Don’t keep hammering away when something isn’t working—move on to the next good idea.
Seventh, publicize successes in real time. This means up, out, and down: talking about the wins within your organization, as we did frequently at NATO; telling your bosses (in my case both the NATO secretary general and the U.S. secretary of defense) about them in weekly/monthly “innovation alerts”; and briefing subordinate commands about the good ideas (and encouraging them to use them) at command conferences, semiannual gatherings, and in annual reports such as the posture statement required to be submitted to Congress. The occasional blog post, social network tweet or post, and even articles in traditional journals all help.
Finally, recognize that there will be doubters, skeptics, naysayers, and the occasional ad hominem attack associated with trying to change things. For instance, I gave a talk at the 2012 TED Global Conference. TED—Technology, Entertainment, and Design—is an annual gathering of innovators who give eighteen-minute talks on “the idea of their life.” My subject was open source security: trying to create security in the turbulent twenty-first century through a fusion of international, interagency, private-public, and strategic communications in a “smart power” approach. I’ve received plenty of positive feedback, but the hundreds of thousands of hits have also included lots of “this will never work” and “who the hell is this guy and why is he so foolish and naïve.”
Jonathan Swift, the great satirist, lampooned those who sail against the wind by depicting them as believing that “so shall ye know a genius is among you: there will be a confederacy of dunces allied against him.” I am far from a genius, and those disagreeing with me are seldom dunces, but I am willing to suffer the slings and arrows of public criticism to champion the occasional disruptive innovation or technology.
In the end, much of human progress comes because of people who could never quite stay in their lane, as annoying as they can be. The trick, as always, is balance: find the way to maintain the value of current innovations and technologies, resource the disruptive possibilities, understand how the value proposition changes, analyze the market, and then bring the new online while gracefully removing the old. Of course it doesn’t always go smoothly. As in mountain climbing, it is good to have a firm grip on the next rock before you completely let go of the one you have. But to get up the mountain you have to climb, not just cling to a couple of rocks. And remember that the top of the mountain is where the strongest winds blow.
2 “A TIME TO INNOVATE, A TIME TO STEAL”
LT Scott Cheney-Peters, USNR
Lieutenant Cheney-Peters is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve. In this article, he advocates that leaders should be willing to ignore the “not-invented-here syndrome” and willingly borrow (or steal) ideas that have worked elsewhere. He believes that, without shame or regret, they should avoid “re-inventing the wheel” and capitalize on the innovations of others.
“A TIME TO INNOVATE, A TIME TO STEAL”
By LT Scott Cheney-Peters, USNR, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (July 2014): 78–80.
At a meeting of the Disruptive Thinkers group in the summer of 2013, attendees were asked to name the most innovative military leader they knew. I have to admit, I was stumped. Others produced tales of front-line leaders developing creative solutions to near-insurmountable obstacles. The only answer I could immediately conjure was Lieutenant Commander Thomas Dodge, Kelsey Grammar’s submarine commander in the movie Down Periscope, who, among other exploits, disguised his World War II–era diesel electric boat as a fishing vessel—complete with drunken strains of “Louie, Louie”—to avoid detection by a Navy patrol.
My inability to name a real-life Lieutenant Commander Dodge wasn’t because I have known no great leaders. In my naval service I have encountered outstanding leaders—male and female, officer and enlisted—but no particularly innovative ones. This apparent disconnect is all the more perplexing given the recent emphasis on developing a culture of innovation in the Navy. The truth is a good leader does not need to be innovative, and an innovative leader is not necessarily a good one.
It is important to define “innovative” as a leadership trait. An innovative leader develops new methods and solutions to tasks and problems. This is an admirable characteristic, and one the Navy needs within its ranks. However, the Navy is best served when the burden of innovation does not fall to the leaders of its front-line operational units. Quite simply, the time and energy they spend developing original solutions to problems would be wasted if an effective answer already exists. Instead, the Navy should encourage these leaders to “steal” what works best until something better—and proven—comes along.
Good Leaders Innovate; Great Leaders Steal
A leader adept at stealing requires an awareness of existing solutions, receptiveness to others’ ideas, and the humility to adopt methods that are not one’s own. The aim is to reduce duplication and extra work—not only for leaders, but also for those they lead. From shipboard instructions to training-team scenarios, great leaders know how to copy what works and are willing to do so, liberally dispensing credit as they go. They also require keen judgment: to determine the methods worth taking, to identify those most applicable to the situation at hand, and to know when to ditch the stolen goods for something better.
At the same time, no two situations, and therefore no two problem sets, are identical. Nor can any method or solution, such as a ship’s force protection plan, hope to cover every conceivable scenario. To deal with a steady stream of new situations, it would appear at first glance that good leaders must be innovative. For example, a unique pier set-up might prevent the deployment of jersey