Our Experts are Dead, Long Live Innovation
We are experimenting with how we perceive our value and capabilities. When does being an ‘expert’ limit the ability to innovate?
By Katie Drew, Innovation Officer and Agnes Schneidt, Innovation Officer
Last year we killed our Innovation Labs. This year can be remembered as the year we bumped-off our ‘experts’. Cut-throat, but necessary…Fortunately, no blood was actually spilled and we’ve all made it to the end of the year in one piece. However, some of us struggled more with this latest culling than others — namely those with perhaps a more pronounced ‘inner expert syndrome’. Enter stage left Agnes and Katie — former energy ‘expert’ and communicating with communities ‘expert’. This is the story of our grief, how we mourned our ‘experts’, how we have worked through it, and how we are now starting 2019 from a place of hope.
RIP Experts
The Marquis de Sade once stated that ‘murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror’. For the Innovation Service this was definitely the case. The ‘experts’ had to go — their ‘I’ve got the solution’ and ‘I have an idea’ attitudes were incongruous with our innovation approach. We believe that by adopting an innovation approach, UNHCR can be more agile and adaptable. This approach allows us better to define challenges, test our assumptions, collaboratively design solutions, and crucially provides space for experimentation, failure, and learning.
As the Innovation Service, we’ve developed a range of resources on the approach. We’ve also invested in supporting our Innovation Fellows, through the Fellowship, to follow this approach to address challenges in their operations or divisions. But some of us ‘self-declared experts’ in the Innovation Service had to admit we weren’t always practicing what we preached. We’d jump steps, in the process — speeding through moments for collaboration and criticality. Our ‘expert’ lenses shaped the way we approached challenges. To paraphrase Maslow: when all you have is a ‘communications expert’ every challenge looks like a communications gap.
Denial or ‘No change needed here, thanks’
Killing our ‘inner experts’ and dropping our ‘but I’m a specialist’ approach was no easy process. It started when our boss sent us a podcast on Captain Sully (our boss is prone to this). A line within this podcast hit home: ‘Often we feel like the expert, and we think that we know better, even when we hear information or when we see evidence that speaks to the fact that we’re wrong. And so having that learning mindset as we’re gaining experience is so, so important’.
Being told you’re wrong is difficult to hear — and clearly, the only reaction is denial! We immediately began to retro-fit our work, validating it against the innovation approach. We found ourselves justifying projects: No, we definitely followed the process for Boda Boda Talk Talk, we definitely challenged our assumptions in Nigeria, of course, we sought inputs from others in Uganda! We’re fine, we don’t need to change.
Guilt or ‘Why weren’t we more innovative’
As we stared at a list of challenges we’d scoped from a recent mission to Nigeria, a growing realization that we hadn’t consciously — or mindfully — followed the innovation approach crept in. Within the team, other people asked questions about the challenge that we hadn’t explored — we hadn’t thought to ask them. We’d asked our ‘expert’ questions: question A follows question B because that’s the way we’ve always asked questions, and defined ‘needs and gaps’. We’d not necessarily applied a learning mindset, and only had a myopic understanding of the challenge. We were dripping equal parts guilt and dismay.
Anger or ‘I’ve got a (fish)bone to pick with this innovation toolkit’
There are a wealth of resources on humanitarian innovation — from guidance and good practice, to toolkits and techniques. On first read, many of these resources seem very accessible — with diagrams, templates and tips for following an innovation approach. Simple instructions, providing advice on how to run a challenge definition session, or how to ideate are beautifully illustrated and make a compelling read. We wanted to (re)turn to these tools to help with the re-set: Katie and Agnes v. 2.0. What we didn’t realise would follow was a stage of rebellion and anger.
On further examination of the toolkits, our reactionary response was: ‘these tools are designed for white men in white men spaces’. We were infuriated by the proposition that Silicon-Valley brainstorming techniques — conducted in well equipped, air-conditioned meeting rooms plastered with sticky notes — had any place in the contexts where UNHCR worked. The sleek images and colourful designs became increasingly alienating as our frustration with their ‘impracticality’ developed. None of the tools seemed applicable and the ‘innovation speak’ really began to grate. We felt marginalized, frustrated and quickly dismissed any value the tools could have. How were we meant to conduct a fishbone challenge definition exercise in the back of a 4x4 in Diffa? Exercises involving comic book heros, or a visit to Starbucks, seemed hegemonic and our now-cynical ‘inner experts’ definitely had multiple moments of resurrection.
Reflection or ‘Om, we’ve found innovation mindfulness’
Overheard complaining about the tools and mourning the good-old days of being ‘specialists’, others in the team rallied to be our support network. They too spoke of their challenges and the weirdness they felt when using Silicon-tech speak in real-world settings. We realised that the tools didn’t have to be used all the time, or indeed at all. What is important, is the process that each tool compels you to follow and for us to remember how it feels to occupy and operate in that part of the innovation process. If all the ‘ideation’ tools seem Western-centric, too-resource intensive and full of jargon, it’s ok. The important thing is to focus on the purpose of the tool and what it is trying to achieve — the tools aren’t innovative, the approach is. So, while you might not have six or seven different coloured hats in your backpack, nor a technicoloured range of large post-it notes and Sharpies on-hand, what is the purpose of the exercise and how can you recreate the ‘conditions’ with what you do have? Taking this mindfulness approach, and by fully attending to each part of the innovation process, we were finally starting to exorcise the ghosts of our ‘expert’ past. We were surprised when an ‘ideation session’ in Rwanda, with a group of refugee students, actually worked (although we still hated the terminology).
Upward Turn or ‘Let’s innovate on the process’
Even if we will never word bank (?) or brain net (?) with refugees, we need ways of practically working through the various elements of the innovation approach. If the tools we currently have aren’t fit for purpose, let’s change them, or develop new ones. Back in Nigeria, we experimented around this. We knew we wanted to generate solutions to a community connectivity challenge in Cross River State. The question was: how? How could we support a diverse group of stakeholders to come up with creative ideas to address a complex set of challenges related to security, sustainability, ownership and access? Were our ‘experts’ truly dead-enough to avoid facipulating (the delicate blend of facilitating and manipulating) the discussion? Were we able to listen without our ‘specialist’ hats on? If you’re looking for the answer, sorry, we don’t have it — yet! The method we tested with this community wasn’t successful at all. We struggled with gatekeepers, and translation, and ‘mission creep’. We’d imagined we’d brainstorm solutions related to connectivity, but often found the ideas generated were more related to yam production and the establishment of a local market. We walked away with yams(!), but few concrete ideas from the community and no prioritization or possible next steps. We did learn many things from this failure — including the importance of storytelling and analogy in this community. (Don’t go ‘chop’ a male goat if you wan de female goat to breed = pidgin for sustainability, or thereabouts).
Another experiment we conducted in Nigeria, was to take a user-journey approach to our market-scoping; this was a tool we’d initially been cynical of but wanted to test its application. Rather than taking a traditional assessment approach to the market (as we had previously conducted), we followed the ‘journey’ of a few market ‘users’. This included tracing the steps of a market-trader and refugee market customers to a main supply market, exploring options to set-up our own stall, and questioning the lack of solar items on sale. As ‘experts’ we’d conducted market assessments before, but this time was very different. Focusing on individuals — rather than the market writ-large — enabled us to dig deeper into challenges. We were asking questions our ‘experts’ would never had thought to ask — we were learning.
Acceptance or ‘Let’s try dem new tings’
This brings us to a place of acceptance and excitement as we start the new year. Rather than being led blindly by our headstrong ‘inner experts’ we have the compass of the innovation approach to guide us. We’ve already experienced some of the benefits of adopting this approach, opening the conversation up to a diversity of perspectives and creative ideas. An example includes the ideas we ‘would never have thought of’ generated through an idea-sharing exercise with colleagues, mobile network operators and representatives from the government in Nigeria.
It’s no easy task ‘interpreting’ hegemonic tools for real-world spaces — but, again, we don’t need to be the experts here. This interpretation is best led with communities in the driving seat. Let’s experiment in this space — or as our Nigerian community members told us ‘try dem new tings’. We’re committed to strengthening innovation with communities, and hope to co-develop practical, accessible, and effective tools to support us to do so. Some will be similar to concepts already well documented in various innovation toolkits, and some will undoubtedly be very different. Who knew that killing our ‘experts’ would have opened up so many opportunities to strengthen the inclusivity and diversity of our work, and also create some exciting new challenges?
Disproving Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde claimed that murder is always a mistake and that ‘one should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner’. We’ve proved him wrong. Our execution of ‘experts’ has definitely generated interesting discussions in our team, and more broadly as we encourage others to ‘bump-of’ their inner specialists. We’re optimistic that removing our ‘expertise’ will open the door for new possibilities, new ideas, and better and more humble collaboration. For those who feel that their ‘inner experts’ are monopolizing their way-of working, and crowding-out diversity of thought, we’d encourage you to pull the trigger. Afterwards, join us for brandy and cigars — let’s have this after dinner conversation with a wide audience and share our learning.
Our experts are dead, long live innovation.
