Confirmed: govn’t has a lot of untapped innovation potential

This spring, inspired by a presentation at #GovMaker III from the Government of Nova Scotia, the Government of New Brunswick launches an inititave called the Policy Innovation Challenge; a public policy case competition.

The initiative sought to connect teams of cross-departmental, multi-disciplinary public servants from the Government of New Brunswick to address policy challenges put forward by senior civil servants. The challenge was designed to reduce personal risk and create opportunity for experimentation with new policy approaches. After 12 weeks, approximately three hours/week, seven teams presented their research and recommendations to a panel of judges consisting of the Clerk, President of TBS, and the Chief Entrepreneur in Residence, in front of an audience of their peers.

As the new guy in the organization it felt personally risky trying this out, but not only did my new colleagues show up, they took it seriously and went above and beyond in their delivery.

In the public sector we hear a lot about the need for culture change and about the scourge of ‘risk-aversion’ but not a lot about what it takes to change culture or create space for risk-taking. The Policy Innovation Challenge is an attempt to kick start this change.

What did we do?

The challenge consisted of three key ingredients:

1. Intentional networking to broaden perspectives, ideas, and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions. To provide a supportive community of practice, learning, and reflection.
2. ‘Space’ and Time to learn about and experiment with tools and approaches we might not attempt in a business-as-usual situation.
3. Leadership signalling “go”! on innovation and the requisite failure. This initiative had the support of the Clerk, executive champions who submitted challenges, and the supervisors who approved the participation of staff.

What was the result?

For a first effort there are some promising results that, with the right effort, will cascade to larger changes.

1. Team work — early indicators of the value of diverse, collaborative, and agile teams in efficiency gains, job satisfaction, quality of work, novelty of outcome, and capacity building through osmosis.
2. Seven really impressive ideas, research, and recommendations shared with executive sponsors and peers.
3. A growing network of public innovators that will develop into a community of practice.
4. A cohort of GNB staff with renewed motivation for their work and new tools in their tool kits.

A Case competition might seem like a trivial thing but it is where culture change can start and accelerate over time by modelling and rewarding the behaviours we want to see more of.