Desire but also urgency? Driving organizational innovation in NGOs: learn from two innovation masters
Organizational innovation strategies – everybody in ‘NGO land’ is on the lookout for them. But how do you drive innovation, as NGO leaders and managers? Listen to these two innovation masters: Aleem Walji of Aga Khan Foundation USA, and Chris Proulx of Humentum. I recently interviewed them on Facebook Live as part of my series ‘Leading with Meaning’.
Here are highlights:
Chris on the role of urgency: NGOs may lack the urgency that spurs innovation in the private sector. The changeable wishes of private sector customers as well as shareholder needs for return on investment create this urgency. NGOs, on the other hand, tend to to be long term focused because of their mission. Moreover, the people paying for NGO services or outputs are not the NGO’s clients which means that the feedback loops are indirect.
Solution: bring in talent who are as such perhaps less committed to the mission (this can be culturally difficult to accept for NGOs). Build diverse and agile teams. And use lean project management methods.
Aleem on ‘connecting the dots’: Have people in your teams from across diverse sectors. Be able to ‘connect the dots’ by exposing a problem or asset to people from different backgrounds, people who normally don’t talk with each other – ‘unlike-minded characters’.
Have translators and bridge builders to help these people connect.
It is important that people across these different sectors respect and appreciate each others’ skills and worldviews, and are willing to listen and learn from people who are nothing like themselves. Over time, they develop a new shared vocabulary.
Second: Think big but test small: develop small scale prototypes with hypotheses you will test, disciplined data collection, failing forward and iterating as you go.
My reflection after listening to these two leaders: It strikes me that some of the advice of Aleem and Chris is not necessarily immediately palatable to the mindset of our sector. Clearly, however, NGOs need to integrate organizational innovation capacity if they are to remain relevant. So how does your NGO go about spurring innovation?