March 12, 1998 | Read Time: 5 minutes
For most non-profit organizations, innovation is a disruptive act that challenges the prevailing wisdom about the way the world should work. An act of innovation might save money, might generate good media coverage, and might even win a foundation grant, but it is first and foremost about solving problems.
Some non-profit groups innovate by changing what they produce, others by how they operate, still others by inventing entirely from scratch. But they all innovate for the same reason: to make the world at least a tiny bit better.
Unfortunately, many non-profit organizations see innovation as an unnatural act. They erect needless barriers to new ideas, frustrate collaboration, deny employees permission to make mistakes, withhold the resources needed to experiment, and create a climate of fear that silences all but the most courageous. In short, they make innovation as difficult as possible, often merely by blocking the flow of ideas up, down, and across the organization. Slowly, but surely, they become towering monuments to the status quo they once sought to challenge, drifting from year to year with no real sense of purpose or commitment.
Even a moribund organization can innovate once, however. Just find a heroic leader willing to try a new approach in spite of bureaucratic nitpicking, impatient clients, scarce resources, sometimes-hostile coverage in the press, and antiquated management systems. Once the heroes are worn out or leave, however, the innovations quickly perish. Having been more at the organization than of it — more the product of extraordinary effort than ordinary good practice — the innovations are often suffocated by the sheer apathy that surrounds them. They suffer death by a thousand paper cuts.
The real challenge is to make innovation natural and, therefore, more frequent. That means removing the barriers to common sense and creativity that weaken so many organizations as they age. By opening themselves to new ideas, organizations increase the odds that innovation will occur and endure. In doing so, they make innovation an act of ordinary good practice, not one of dire necessity or accident.
Luckily, the lessons for building such “innovation friendly” organizations are surprisingly simple.
First, such organizations view innovation as a means to achieving their mission, not an end in itself. Focusing on mission reduces the temptation to innovate for innovation’s sake — that is, to win an award or secure a grant. That is why innovating organizations spend so much time asking themselves why they exist and how they will know when they succeed. By reminding themselves why they exist, they can weather the inevitable setbacks that beset any effort to challenge the prevailing wisdom. By setting reasonable expectations for success before they start innovating, they can stop themselves from abandoning a good idea too early or pursuing a bad idea too long.
Second, innovating organizations structure themselves to invite new ideas from every corner. They flatten their hierarchies so that good ideas can rise faster, push authority downward so that employees can solve their own problems creatively, create the innovation investment funds that put real dollars at risk, and keep a watchful eye out for the needless red tape that raises the cost of new ideas. Any organization can issue a call to innovation. An innovating organization structures itself to make sure the call is both heard and answered.
Third, innovating organizations recruit leaders who are committed to creating the conditions for others to succeed. The leader’s job is not to be the inventor, but to encourage risk taking. Central to that task is giving permission to make mistakes. After all, human beings learn through trial and error, not trial and success. Once the permission is given, the leader’s job is to honor it. It is one thing to whisper the permission at a board retreat, and quite another to call together the entire staff to celebrate a good-faith mistake. But the commitment to innovation is tested in the wake of just such mistakes.
Much as we can admire those all-too-rare leaders who are willing to bring forth change against the odds, we can aspire to an organizational future in which innovation is less dependent on such acts of heroism. Perhaps it is time, therefore, to start a new leadership award for the grunt work that opens organizations to new ideas. Recognizing the process by which leaders create innovation-inducing organizations may be just as important as celebrating the actual innovations themselves. Unless innovation gets easier, it will never become more frequent.
Finally, innovating organizations pay attention to day-to-day management. They measure outcomes, maintain tight fiscal controls, pay their bills on time, and limit their financial exposure. Those that can’t track their dollars don’t remain innovative — let alone alive — for long. Although every innovation involves a leap of faith of some kind, that leap is grounded in a rigor that permits an organization to survive. Strong financial management systems are no substitute for the courage to leap, but they can increase the odds that the leap will succeed.
Becoming an innovating organization requires committed boards, patient financial supporters, and a bit of luck. It also requires leaders who believe that innovation is less the gift of the special few and much more the product of strengthening an organization as a whole.
What it does not require is either perfection or super-human staffs.
Innovating organizations can tolerate a remarkable level of trial and error if they keep good books and don’t make the same mistakes twice. Innovating organizations actually do quite well with ordinary people. The only criterion is that they be extraordinarily clear about why their organization exists, whom they serve, and how they will know if they are successful.
There will always be jobs for heroes, of course. No matter how hard we work to change non-profit organizations from the bottom up, some innovation will still take place from the top down. But it is far better to use some of that heroic energy to build innovating organizations than to watch good ideas decay with the passage of time. Absent that effort, innovation is destined to remain an essentially random event, more an accident than an expression of everyday practice.
Paul C. Light is director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia. His latest book, Sustaining Innovation: Creating Nonprofit and Government Organizations That Innovate Naturally, was recently published by Jossey-Bass Publishers.
