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Creating an Innovative Organization:
Ten
Hints for Involving Frontline Workers
Part 3 of 4
Necessary and Sufficient Hints
Are any of these 10 hints (listed in Table 1) sufficient to create an
innovative organization? Probably not. No one action--not even a few
select actions--will get people throughout the organization
experimenting with new ways to achieve its purposes. No one action will
convince frontline workers that the agency's leadership is on their
side. No one action will give them the big picture. Indeed, even this
list of hints may not be sufficient.
Which of these hints are essential? With the exception of Hint 3 about
mission and goals, I suspect that none are. It may well be possible to
create an innovative organization, for example, without being responsive
to requests for improved working conditions and without supporting
mistakes. I suspect that scholars and practitioners may offer such
examples. I doubt, however, that it is possible to create an innovative
organization without providing the mission and performance goals that
make it clear what the innovations should accomplish.
Table 1: Ten Hints for Involving Frontline Workers in Creating
Innovative Organizations
CONDITION 1: Frontline Workers Know That
Leadership Is on Their Side.
CONDITION 2: Frontline Workers Understand the Big Picture
Creating an innovative public agency is, itself, a task of innovation.
Each innovative organization will be different. It will be pursuing
different purposes. Or it will be pursuing them in a different
organizational context, within a different political environment, or
within different legal constraints. There is no recipe for replicating
an innovation. Similarly, there is no recipe for replicating the
innovative organizations mentioned here.
Moreover, there may be many different ways to convert a moribund
organization into an innovative one. There may well be another set of
hints (that includes the hint about creating mission and goals) that
may, in some contexts, prove equally effective. Leadership is not like
physics. In physics, the acceleration of an object is always equal to
the force on it divided by its mass. You cannot get different answers in
physics; you always get precisely the same one.
In contrast, there are many possible answers in biology. For example,
there is not just one kind of bird, but there are birds of many
different sizes and colors with quite different styles of flying. Yet
they are all quite successful; each has found an ecological niche in
which to thrive. In fact, to be a successful bird, you do not even have
to fly.
Leadership is more like biology than physics. Different leaders can
accomplish similar purposes with different strategies and styles. These
hints reflect one set of styles implemented by different leaders in
different settings. They are not necessarily the only hints that will
create an innovative public agency, but they certainly have done so in
the past.
Robert D. Behn is professor of public policy at the Terry Sanford
Institute of Public Policy at Duke University and director of its
Governors Center. He is the author of Leadership Counts: Lessons for
Public Managers and a fellow of the National Academy of Public
Administration. In an effort to help the Boston Red Sox become an
innovative organization and win their first World Series since 1918, he
has developed just one hint: "You can never have too much pitching."
The author thanks the following: the Ford Foundation for its support;
participants in the Duke Faculty Seminar on Innovative Organizations and
the Conference on Innovative Organizations held at Duke University,
September 9-11, 1994, for their insights; and Frederick Mayer and James
Miller for their helpful comments on an initial draft.
State and Local
Government Review
©1995.
