5 Ways Extension Can Act Differently to Nurture a Culture of Innovation

​This is the third blog post where I share my contributions to the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP) Innovation Task Force's writing assignments. In this writing assignment I try to answer the question: 

 What would encourage the process or willingness of an organization to embrace change—change that would create a culture of innovation?

Please read over my response and leave a comment below with your thoughts, critiques and insights. I believe in working out loud, if you read this post please let me know what you think.

A culture is a living thing, powered by and kept up to date by the people who are encouraged to be, in a meaningful way, part of it. - Micah Solomon

John Kotter provides terrific insight into how culture changes:
How does culture change? A powerful person at the top, or a large enough group from anywhere in the organization, decides the old ways are not working, figures out a change vision, starts acting differently, and enlists others to act differently. If the new actions produce better results (if not, keep iterating & trying new actions), if the results are communicated and celebrated, and if they are not killed off by the old culture fighting its rear-guard action, new norms will form and new shared values will grow.

What does NOT work in changing a culture? Some group decides what the new culture should be. It turns a list of values over to the communications or HR departments with the order that they tell people what the new culture is. They cascade the message down the hierarchy, and little to nothing changes.

Ways Extension can act differently to nurture a culture of innovation:

1. Innovation competitions like Jamie shared with OSU's Innovate Extension event.  I also agree with:
2. 20 percent time i.e. Google's innovative policy: "We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google...This empowers them to be more creative and innovative."
3. Exchanges, shadowing experiences like Brian explained. I also agree with:
4. Intensive mentoring programs lead by mentees
5. Internal funding opportunities for innovative projects

Ways Extension can enlist others to act differently:

1. Write a culture manifesto on where leadership expects the organization's culture to be in a set period of time. It must specifically outline how the organization will support employees. Making a decision to create a culture of innovation is not enough, leaders need a clear way to refer back to it. Standards must be written down. Every standard needs a reason for the standard so that employees know when it makes sense to deviate from it to accomplish it.
2. Improve onboarding by going overboard. Leadership must stress the purpose of employment in Extension vs. the normal stuff stressed in a typical orientation i.e. how to complete a request for annual leave vs. what it means to be innovative, to experiment, to take calculated risks, try new delivery approaches that might not work.
3. Develop a plan for sustainable reinforcement of cultural change. While hiring the right people and onboarding them is important, ongoing reinforcement is crucial. Regular reiteration (via an Intranet messaging system...not email) of cultural values, innovation standards, sharing/highlighting stories of innovative employees adds up to a lot of reinforcement over the years. Humans need to be reminded, often.
4. Focus on the metrics that matter and get rid of the wrong ones. Which metrics matter? Impact statements, external grant funding, program adoption, publications etc. Which metrics don’t? Number of people reached, emails sent, calls made, workshop attendance, workshops delivered...what else are we measuring/tracking because we've always done it that way? What can we stop measuring in our digital measures?
5. Encourage relentless experimentation. People who innovate must experiment. Experimenting requires risk taking. Google X – The Moonshot Factory actually rewards failure. They try to kill their projects quickly so they don’t waste time. Their culture makes employees feel safe to fail. They promote and bonus employees who take big risks, fail and kill projects. This is the kind of culture we need to strive for. Learn more about the unexpected benefit of celebrating failure. 
6. Praise and reward employees who take risks. Employees that make things happen (or kill programs, move on, and stop wasting resources) need to be praised and rewarded. People who are not failing, not quitting, not innovating, and not taking risks (holding onto traditional "safe" programs that are not making an impact) should be coached to change, or weeded out. Failure cannot be unduly punished. Unless employees feel free to make mistakes, they will not feel free to try things that might not work.

Thoughts on Change 
On the subject of change, here are some helpful insights from the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.

People with the large buckets ate 53 percent more popcorn than people with the medium size. Bigger container = more eating.
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If you want people to eat less popcorn, the solution is pretty simple: Give them smaller buckets. How can we apply this concept in Extension?

You don’t have to worry about their knowledge or their attitudes. You can see how easy it would be to turn an easy change problem (shrinking people’s buckets) into a hard change problem (convincing people to think differently). And that’s the first surprise about change:

What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

The Elephant & Rider Metaphor
If you’re contemplating a change, the Elephant is the one who gets things done. To make progress toward a goal, whether it’s noble or crass, requires the energy and drive of the Elephant. And this strength is the mirror image of the Rider’s great weakness: spinning his wheels. The Rider tends to overanalyze and overthink things.

The Rider provides the planning and direction, and the Elephant provides the energy.

When the Elephant really wants something, the Rider can be trusted to find rationalizations for it.

The Rider has his own issues. He’s a navel-gazer, an analyzer, a wheel-spinner. If the Rider isn’t sure exactly what direction to go, he tends to lead the Elephant in circles.

To change behavior, you’ve got to direct the Rider (middle management) (employees), motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path (vision & mission of the organization). If you can do all three at once, dramatic change can happen.
 
Note: Knowledge does not change behavior. In Extension we know this all too well...we have horticulture agents with terrible gardens teaching master gardener workshops, overweight 4-H agents teaching healthy living programs, divorced FCS agents teaching marriage classes and the list goes on. More book notes can be read at: sivers.org/book/Switch