Crazy, Curious…Creative?  You decide as we take this month to explore the skill of questioning as a means of interjecting innovation into your organization.  Ambassadors have been taking a deeper look into each of the innovation skills described in a recent 6-year study of 3,000 creative private sector executives and an additional 500 individual interviews by Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead.  

The study looked at how innovators in the private sector think, and concluded that there were 5 skills:  Associating, Questioning, Observing Details, Experimenting, and Networking with Smart People.   Peter Drucker describes the” power of provocative questions,” Frans Johansson writes about asking questions that challenge common assumptions, and as described in the Innovators’ DNA, questioning is asking the “why” and “what if” questions.  

Back to the questions posed on government services - are they difficult to answer?  Perhaps you are Allen, TX and you’ve figured out how to train firefighters through virtual gaming, or you’re Decatur, GA and have taken a holistic approach to provide leisure services by partnering to share community assets rather than build another swimming pool for public use.  

Drucker writes that it is essential for organization’s to pause and assess “what they should stop doing.”  Dan Pallotta, blogger for the Harvard Business Review, encourages individuals to fully engage in the present, observing the environment so that the questions asked eventually lead to game changing insight.  Regardless of where your organization is at, the goal is to ask the questions that challenge how it approaches the work of local government.

Honda embraces a particularly bold philosophy that creates a level of uncertainty for the organization – “Kick out the Ladder”.  The concept behind this phrase is that kicking the ladder creates an environment that removes the safety net from the organization – that safety being mediocrity.  It challenges Honda employees to step up and engage what seems to be impossible, but that pushes employees to dream alternative paths in creating real innovations.  It’s an incredible example of embracing constraints and turning strongly held assumptions upside down to truly innovate and accomplish what many in the organization thought was impossible.  

The private sector isn’t alone in this quest for provocative questions – from local government professionals to students studying local government, you most likely are or have begun to question the most basic assumptions upon which your department/organization operates and provides services.  

We asked the City Manager of Garden City, KS how he approached this idea of questioning in his organization.  His response was that he asks lots of questions of his staff simply because he has a lot of questions.  

“When discussing current events (national and regional recessions) at a local, state or national level, I often ask:  
What does this mean for our citizens?
How does that change what they expect from us?
What will we do to meet those expectations?  

When discussing programs and services, I like to ask:
Does it work?
How do we know?
Do we need it or can it be better?
What would that look like?
What would it take?”

Montgomery, Ohio was among many Midwest cities dealing with a shortage of de-icing rock salt and provides an inspiring example of how asking questions carved an alternative path to what might seem like the only paths available – additional funding for more rock salt or simply don’t prep the roads when the salt is gone.  Front line public works staff asked the questions that lead to $40,000 in savings and complimentary responses from citizens on snow removal.  

What is your role?

Practice Questioning.  Take time everyday to reflect and write down game-changing questions for your organization.  

Start with the questions below:
• Why?
• What if?
• What would that service/program look like if we reverse the assumptions upon which it operates?

References:
1. City of Allen, Texas:  Virtual Emergency Command Training for Operational Readiness Case Study.  January, 2010.  2010 Havlic and Muehlenbeck Innovation Awards Case Study Submittal.
2. City of Montgomery, OH:  De-Icing Rock Salt Case Study.  Alliance Knowledge Center, www.transformgov.org
3. Email exchange with Matt Allen, City Manager, Garden City, KS.  March, 29, 2010.
4. How Do Innovators Think? Harvard Business Review, HBR Editors’ Blog. Fryer, Bronwyn. September 28, 2009. http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org
5. Kick Out the Ladder – Honda.  YouTube, February 7, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2B8Z8RiKsI
6. See things as They Are – Then Change Them.  HBR Blog Post, March 26, 2010, Pallotta, Dan. http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2010/03/no-now-no-new.html
7. The Innovator’s DNA.  Harvard Business Review, Gregersen, Jeffrey and Clayton Christensen.  December, 2009.
8. The Medici Effect. 2006. Johansson, Frans.
9. What Would Peter Say?  Harvard Business Review, Kanter, Rosabeth.  November, 2009.