Twitter account for the weekly professional conversation between military leaders in the United States and faculty and students at Kings College in London.

Oct 11, 2016

Innovation at a Glance 2016

CCLKOW is a weekly conversation on military affairs jointly hosted by the Center for Company-Level Leaders (CCL) at the US Military Academy at West Point and the Kings of War (KOW), a blog of the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. The views expressed here are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the US Army or the Department of Defense. Read the post and join the discussion on Twitter #CCLKOW

This week’s #CCLKOW is written by CPT Micah Klein, a Logistics Officer and the voice of team CCL.

CPT Micah Klein from Team CCL presents at this year’s Defense Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF)

This weekend I spent my second consecutive year at the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum conference in Chicago, Illinois. In between the array of Chicago Cubs fans and Chicago marathon runners was a group of just over 100 members from across the Department of Defense that gathered to share lessons learned, ideas, and current problems related to innovation in their own organizations. After listening in on many examples of innovation across the DoD from a “fix” to the all dreaded Defense Travel System (DTS) website to new tools to address talent management issues within the Army Cyber realm, I put together my top five reflection points from this weekend’s event. This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, but rather a catalyst for discussing how well your formation is approaching innovation as well as my own lessons learned from the event.

1) There are plenty of officers serving as “innovators” within their formations, but there is a dearth of enlisted innovators across the services. This session was definitely the most dynamic for me. A Marine in the Marine Corps discussed how the millennial generation is one of the most educated and unique that the services have ever known. With them they bring a wide array of personal experiences and skills. Terms such as “boot” and “cherry” existed as a way to get young Marines and Soldiers to “shut up and follow orders.” The conversation got me thinking about the importance of encouraging my Soldiers to be point men/women in innovation within my unit.

2) Talent management concerns are at an all-time high within the force. One exercise that we did on the first day of the conference was the rose and thorn exercise that’s unique to a design thinking methodology. We were challenged to think about things that the DoD is currently doing well and things that they aren’t doing well. The most popular concern about what the DoD wasn’t doing well among the attendees was the topic of talent management. At a design thinking breakout session, three groups of attendees came up with potential solutions to the problem of talent management within the Cyber branch. The exercise was challenging and enlightening at the same time and we generated three distinct course of action for the Army’s Cyber Institute at West Point.

3) Last year during the DEF pitch competition, a Naval officer presented his scheduling program which he was using at the Naval Academy to streamline flight scheduling for Midshipmen. Since he presented last year, he estimates a cost savings of over $900,000. This brings up a very interesting point. The enduring lesson from his presentation was that the process is just as important sometimes as the people performing the process. A tenant of the Lean Six Sigma principles that I’ve written on before, this was an enduring message at the conference.

4) Getting the right people on your team was mentioned more than once. The first time it was mentioned was during the opening address with Mr. Steven Koltai; an author and employee at the Brookings Institute. In my years in the Army, I’ve heard this before multiple times and always found it to be cliché. After all, the Army is an organization that rarely allows leaders to form their own teams in the first place. While this is true, today’s fight in the Army is often fought at the squad and team level. Forming your platoons and squads around individual strengths is an important tenant of leadership and why the Army values adaptability and flexibility.

5) Synonymous with innovation is the word “change.” I chose to attend a session on change management based on the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. The session talked about the importance of the “Rider, elephant, and path” during change initiatives. Without spoiling the book for you, the breakout session on why change management efforts fail and the role of change in innovation products was profound. In so many words, innovation at all levels are change efforts. How successful innovation is ends up being related to how successful we are as professionals to inspire change in our formations.

This week’s discussion question is also related to innovation and change. My question for you is this: How successful have you been over the past year at inspiring innovation in your own formation? What could you do better?