Innovate like Bloomberg
12/8/2014
One of the chapters in my book covers the challenge of promoting innovation in the public sector. There are plenty of examples of phenomenal innovation coming from within the public sector. But it can be hard to encourage innovation within an environment in which the rewards for success are typically low and the penalties for failure are typically high. Organisations need precisely the opposite conditions for innovation to thrive.
The chapter contains advice on how to stimulate innovation within such an environment as well as examples of how people have done it. One of the more striking examples came from Michael Bloomberg. In general he extols the virtues of bringing in outsiders to look at things in fresh ways. But, as he describes below, this needn't always involve looking outside the organisation:
‘One day when I was running my business [Bloomberg] I called my senior managers to a surprise meeting and said, “Each of you is going to spend the next six weeks studying another department. You are not going back to your desks. I have somebody right now, cleaning them out and they will deliver the stuff in boxes to your new desk. For the next six weeks I want you to sit there and watch that agency and then tell me what they could do better. Who’s going to run your department in the mean time? Your number two. And if you are going to sit here and tell me your number two can’t do it, I’m going to dismiss you right now, because I’ve told you all along you have to have a number two who can fill in. I am going to find out whether they can.” Everybody was shocked initially but after six weeks they came back and said it was the most wonderful thing they had ever done and they were all ready to go back. And then the surprise was they all went back to jobs, but not in their original departments and not necessarily at the department they studied. Nobody quit and the company still does phenomenal business. That is harder to do in government because there are union rules and there are bigger differences between agencies but the concept of changing people around is a good one.’
The chapter contains advice on how to stimulate innovation within such an environment as well as examples of how people have done it. One of the more striking examples came from Michael Bloomberg. In general he extols the virtues of bringing in outsiders to look at things in fresh ways. But, as he describes below, this needn't always involve looking outside the organisation:
‘One day when I was running my business [Bloomberg] I called my senior managers to a surprise meeting and said, “Each of you is going to spend the next six weeks studying another department. You are not going back to your desks. I have somebody right now, cleaning them out and they will deliver the stuff in boxes to your new desk. For the next six weeks I want you to sit there and watch that agency and then tell me what they could do better. Who’s going to run your department in the mean time? Your number two. And if you are going to sit here and tell me your number two can’t do it, I’m going to dismiss you right now, because I’ve told you all along you have to have a number two who can fill in. I am going to find out whether they can.” Everybody was shocked initially but after six weeks they came back and said it was the most wonderful thing they had ever done and they were all ready to go back. And then the surprise was they all went back to jobs, but not in their original departments and not necessarily at the department they studied. Nobody quit and the company still does phenomenal business. That is harder to do in government because there are union rules and there are bigger differences between agencies but the concept of changing people around is a good one.’
