Big idea: Forgetting the past
As we put together the initial lineup and program for FWD50, we’re working on a central theme for our November event. With the pace of innovation and technology change, it’s hard to choose just one.
We’ve narrowed it down to six big ideas that keep coming up in travels and discussions. So over the next six posts, we’re going to look at each in a bit more detail.
Steve Blank, Godfather of the Lean Startup movement, says that a startup is “an organization designed to search for a sustainable, repeatable business model in conditions of high uncertainty.” It follows, then, that an existing business is an organization designed to perpetuate a known business model in conditions of certainty.
And there’s no organization more focused on risk-avoidance and perpetuation than a government.
One of the things we heard over and over at FWD50 2017 was that it gave people a chance to step outside of their daily task list and reflect on why their job exists, and what it’s supposed to do. Looking with a child’s eyes at their job let them reconsider how they accomplished those tasks.
Much of the challenge of innovation is the ability to unlearn the current assumptions. Many processes persist because of an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” mentality. They’re inefficient and cumbersome by modern standards, opaque, and outmoded.
The problem is simple: “It works” doesn’t mean “it isn’t broken.”
Take the electric car, for example. Imagine that the tables were turned, and we all used electric vehicles, and someone was proposing an internal combustion engine. Imagine the furore: “They want to fill vehicles with an explosive, highly flammable liquid that produces toxic gasses when burned, then drive it at high speeds.” It’d never get past legislators.
And yet it is the norm.
In organizations of all shapes and sizes, the rate of change is staggering. But the biggest impediment to adoption is unlearning the old ways, and looking at the status quo with fresh eyes. Digital government is about reconsidering what’s possible given new tools.
So how do we unlearn bad culture?
