Our Secret to Launching Innovation
From Kenya to Concord, introducing new tools requires one key thing.
I love tech. Always have. My first “computer” was built from styrofoam blocks and construction paper after watching War Games in the theater. Don’t mock, that computer crashed less than Windows. Today, I’m still easily enamored with the “next thing”, but as I’ve grown into leadership I’ve also discovered a rather low tech key to high tech success.
In our work at The Water Project, I happen to be “IT” guy, in addition to being the Founder/CEO. That means if it beeps, lights up, crashes regularly or requires opening and closing brackets to function, I lead the use and abuse of it. This has always been a huge advantage for us frankly. Being able to write bespoke web-based solutions quickly, iterating over ideas and improvements means we move fast. We built crowd-funding before Kickstarter, we were in the cloud before it was the cloud, and we’ve done far more with far less thanks to machine automation. We’ve tested IOT devices in Western Kenya and have come to rely on smart phones to know if water is flowing from the projects we’ve installed. Our hidden and tireless employee named “RAE” — Relationship Automation Engine — keeps us on all the ball from donations to water projects and everything in between. Heck, we accepted Bitcoin before it was cool, and then not cool, and then hot, and then….
What I love most though, is how our teams have come to embrace all these tools.
We’ve worked through local partnerships for a long time from the US, to Sierra Leone to Kenya. Over the years, we’ve made a ton of mistakes together and we’ve also celebrated a lot of wins. When things get hard, or tech gets fuzzy, our instinct is to immediately reinvest in relationship first. If it seems like we’re out of alignment and messages aren’t being received — it’s usually a symptom of a relationship slipping.
Important problems are rarely tool problems.
Whether in our home office or deep in the forest of Kakamega, folks get frustrated with tech they don’t understand. But that frustration is most often borne from missing the “why”, not the “how”. The problem is that for many of these tech experiments, it can be hard to demonstrate clear value to the end-user on the front-end. And sometimes that value simply never materializes, in the case of failed pilots. That’s why trust plays the pivotal role.
Trust enables tech
In our relationships with partners, failure is expected. Trial and error is the heart of building good tech, and we work to create environments where that becomes our team’s reflex response as they tackle challenges. They learn quickly that we always have their ultimate success in view. That way, bumps along the way become an investment, not a burden. The freedom to stumble makes learning curves approachable. Too often, we have seen partners fail to change, simply due to a fear of getting something wrong as they transition to a new tool. Launching new tech requires we offer a healthy space for error.
It also demands that we hold each individual’s personal success in view. We’re building teams and creating leaders. The freedom to fail only makes sense in proximity to the possibility of personal growth. So, we work hard to maintain a humility of margin for local leadership to thrive. Truly successful initiative’s must be championed by these local leaders, not us. Tech can promote unhelpful imbalances of power in the absence of this humble relationship. Reminding our teams that their goals and growth lie at the foundation of innovation establishes a powerful “why” that leaps past the user manual.
The rhythm of failure and success, based in relationship, builds deep trust over time. And trust enables tech. It’s the bit that releases the bytes, so to speak.
We’re also careful to build and deploy solutions to our shared problems, not simply a one-sided need of ours. Making sure everyone can see the outcomes of innovation is crucial. Translating data into actionable fixes and calling-out the tech that got us there is rewarding for everyone. Hours learning how to use a new tool on a smart phone, leading to the eventual discovery of a particularly unreliable component of a well, recovering days of wasted travel each month, is an investment everyone can celebrate.
Data and dashboards, mixed with our team’s learned gut instinct keeps us nimble. Informed decisions and implementation sprints, even if not fully tested, allow for quick failures that push us toward novel solutions. The foundation of relational trust provides a firm base from which everyone can leap.
