Counterpoint - Taking FedPitch From American Idle to American Idol
In an effort to spice up Inflexion Point, Shannon Flumerfelt and I will occasionally post a point/counterpoint on a particular topic. This is an experiment so feel free to let us know if this is entertaining or useful. Here are Shannon’s thoughts about my prior post FedPitch - How Would You Improve Federal Workforce Management. Take it away Shannon.
Thanks Mark. As FedPitch gets underway and ideas from the creative platform of the public square are assessed by a panel of experts, I am not sure the best “contestant” will win. The reason for my apprehension is that while the FedPitch venue may be useful for idea generation, a “winner” has no possible way to operationalize itself.
In looking back two decades or so, corporate America went through this type of FedPitch approach when the conceptualization of learning organizations was first understood and generally accepted via Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. During this time, organizations began to understand that by creating cultures where ideas flowed vertically and horizontally, worthwhile innovations might be discovered. In turn, it became common practice for executives to flock to retreats, for consultants to facilitate brainstorming sessions and for employees to engage in participatory processes. Peter Drucker helped leaders to understand the value in socialization and interactions that promoted the sharing of tacit information, for example.
The problem with many of these strategies is that fundamentally organizations do not naturally have the capacity to take a good idea from thought to action, from organizational intelligence to improved performance management. For to do so requires organizations to the following work:
- Develop shared understandings of the essential ideas embedded in the innovation,
- Take commonly accepted actions on behalf of the innovation,
- Reengineer current systems and processes to accommodate the innovation,
- Develop new standards of performance based on the innovation,
- Evaluate continuously the quality of the innovation, and
- Improve the final deliverables of the organization based on the innovation.
I do acknowledge that events such as attending retreats, corporate brainstorming and participatory processes are valuable as cultural tinkering initiatives. But, to create something that is truly improved, more than events are required. Engagement in a process of improvement is required. And that work, including the six elements listed above, are much deeper and broader than orchestrating events that remain isolated from the daily work of the organization.
FedPitch, in essence, is nothing more than a singular event. What is needed for change is an emphasis on process improvement instead. If the federal government is just now getting to this point of hosting a brainstorming event, my eyeballs do roll back in my head thinking of the developmental work left to do in order to bring actual value added practices forth and eliminate waste by effective employee recruiting, induction, development and retention approaches. Fundamentally, the problem with strategies such as FedPitch, are that any new ideas, even though they may be stellar, have no chance of being integrated into the current system. With the fanfare of great performance, such ideas, unfortunately, will be left to die in a silo, just as the audience files out and the stage lights dim.
Organizations such as Toyota, Danaher, and many others have deliberately used a different system for innovation. This system, known as lean, allows for idea generation from stakeholders, not unlike FedPitch. The difference in lean applications is that new ideas are deliberately placed into an organizational learning system that can work towards performance management improvement. Lean process and production improvement systems eliminates the problematic dynamic of brainstorming as an event and makes it a part of the culture of the organization—a process.
I fear that the current realities of the federal workforce management system are aligned with the tenets of “American Idle” and that the scattershot approach to process improvement in the FedPitch initiative will ring true to that standard. Instead, I offer the following idea. Require the government to engage in deliberate and systemic process improvement based on lean thinking and applications and then filter the ideas of the public square from FedPitch into a continuous improvement effort for workforce management. It is possible for federal workforce management to sing a different tune and become an “American Idol.”
Let’s keep the conversation going.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Thank you for the honest and straightforward dialog about the upcoming FedPitch competition. As the architect of FedPitch, let me offer some comments about the competition.
FedPitch is just one of many ways that individuals, both inside and outside of the federal government, can offer suggestions for improvement. FedPitch isn’t the first and only method for this exchange of ideas.
FedPitch is not simply “a singular event.” The process doesn’t end when the winner is announced on May 7. The sponsors of the competition have committed in the effort to try to implement the winning idea. For example, the FedPitch winner will be invited to a dinner event to discuss the idea in further detail with the judges and others and to explore more specific ways to implement the idea. In addition, if FedPitch 2008 is successful in generating innovative ideas and seeing movement toward improvement of federal workforce management, we hope that FedPitch will be an annual event.
The “counterpoint” states, “If the federal government is just now getting to this point of hosting a brainstorming event, my eyeballs do roll back in my head…” To clarify, FedPitch is receiving no funding or formal support from any agency of the U.S. government. FedPitch is being initiated by members of 13L, all of whom are unpaid volunteers.
I generally agree with the point that fundamentally organizations do not naturally have the capacity to take a good idea from thought to action and that brainstorming and idea generation should be part of the culture of the organization—a process. Although I must caveat that I am not a judge for the upcoming FedPitch competition, I would guess that the judges might indeed look favorably upon a pitch that actually proposes to make changes to structures and/or processes so that such ideas will not remain isolated from the daily work of the organization and leadership of the federal workforce. There is nothing in the official rules for the FedPitch competition that would directly prohibit such a pitch. The deadline to submit a proposal for this year’s competition is April 18!