Organizing for Innovation
What
formal and informal innovation processes exist?
I
have been retired now for over four years, but in in my thirty plus years in
the workforce, I do not recall a single conversation about innovation.
Really. In my time in the Air Force, people
were able to submit suggestions through the suggestion program. This name was changed to the Idea Program a
few years before I retired. Approved ideas
were eligible for cash awards based on how much the idea saved the Air
Force. Individuals could get up to $10,000
at the time. I believe this program has
changed since I retired. Another method
for making changes applied to technical orders (TOs). These are the books that Airmen use to do
their jobs. If a discrepancy was
discovered in the TO, the person that found it would write a detailed description
of the discrepancy and a detailed description of the replacement wording or drawing. Then the Airman would fill out an AFTO Form
22and submit to the responsible agency. For
a while a person could receive cash awards for TO changes but it was very
little cash and not very often. I
believe the cash incentive was discontinued.
How effective are they?
The
Air Force Idea program is (was) fairly successful. The cash awards were attractive to many Airmen
and drove submission rates.
The AFTO 22 process was very
difficult to complete and get submitted.
Simple typo corrections in procedures would come back for correction
three or four times. Technical
corrections that affected important content might go back and forth for a year
or more. In fact, people just quit
turning them in …yes, they really were that much trouble. The process was eventually included in Airmen
training records. Everyone had to do one
to upgrade to the next skill level. The
average number of AFTO22s an Airman will complete throughout a career…one. Other avenues were available to affect
change. They were all local and mostly
got very little usage.
What else can be done to leverage the
effectiveness of the innovation process?
I honestly do not know. The Air Force in this sense is a consumer. For the products it uses such as parts and
equipment, they are built to Mil-Spec. The Air Force endured the quality movement
many years ago and still has some of the remnants. Continuous Improvement Programs still exist
and they or some similar programs are used for processes and procedures under
local control. For processes and procedures
outside of local control there are specified methods to request changes. As I stated, I never heard a discussion about
innovation, but the Air Force was almost always undergoing some sort of change.
Why
is usefulness such an important part of innovation? Go to the Index of The
Innovation book and see all the pages where usefulness is discussed.
Usefulness
(of ideas) appears on 24 pages of the Innovation Book (if I counted correctly). During the creative phase, ideas are generated
without any constraints and the more the better. Ideas are saved and catalogued but have not
been made useful. Useful goes beyond feasible
(can it be done) and considers should we do it.
If we do it, how can it be used, who would use it, how much would it be
used, how long would it be used. No team
would want to drove forward with an idea that was evaluated and considered only
marginally useful. Innovations need to
be successful and are expected to generate a return (profit) on the innovation investment. The bottom line is usefulness is at the very
heart of what innovation is supposed to do (Mckeown, 2014).
List 3 examples of innovation that did not
work.
Technically these do not conform
to innovation definition.
Working on the AWACS (E-3) requires
a variety of stands. To gain access to
the rotodome for maintenance a B-6 stand is necessary. The bottom of the rotodome is about thirty-seven
off the ground. The B-6 stand is very
large, very tall, very heavy and very difficult to maneuver especially arMoving
the B-6 stand takes five people.and it simply does not go where the team
pushing it wants it to go. Because of this
many, many Aircraft have been damaged by coming into contact with the stand. After a whileThe Air Force generated a new
requirement to replace the B-6 stand. The new requirement called for a
motorized, and drivable stand. The contract awarded and development began. Two years later the first T-REX maintenance
stand delivered to the unit. It is
enormous. Easily four or five times
larger than the B6 stand, The driver
does not have visibility around the stand.
It required more spotters than towing the aircraft The contract
delivered as the contractors demonstrated it met all of the requirements. I met
all requirements, but it did not meet the expectations of anyoneThe contractors
demonstrated perfect control when they drove the stand near the arcraft. To my knowledge, no one else ever did. It was ours. One month later we got the
second and final standthe stand could not be used for its intended purpose.I do
not know what other uses the Air Force got out of the T-REX before they went to
the boneyard. This failure was caused by
the Air Force not keeping tight enough controls
When I learned of this trainer it
was already two years out of schedule and over one million dollars over
budget. The trainer was in place in the
schoolhouse and was capable of running a handful of very simple instructor
lessons. The contractors were nowhere
close to meeting the system requirements and had admitted they could not meet
the requirements. It was simply not
possible. Not much later the Air Force killed
the contract and took possession of a beautiful but useless 13-million-dollar
trainer. The end result found the Air
Force at fault for controlling the requirements too tightly. The requirements forced the contractor to
write code in a specific language using specific interface documents which created
a situation where placing two modules in the software routine at the same time caused
conflict and generated critical failures.
the Air Force requirements specified
how the contractor was to complete the software. The contractors followed our instructions and
created two modules that were mutually exclusive and could not operate together.
Other critical parts of the system used resources from the two errant modules which
prevented repackaging of the software to correct the problem. Attempting repair would have taken the
contract back to design and even then, they did not believe it could be corrected
fully. But they would try for another eight
million dollars. The contract was
done. The Air Force received materials
that had not been delivered and the contractor received the contract balance
for their trouble.
There is certainly room in the
Air Force to benefit from innovation, but they have other ways to make needed changes
satisfactorily. It is not likely that innovation
will reach or be applicable the lower levels of the organization.
~Pete
Reference:
Mckeown, M.
(2014). The innovation book: How to manage ideas and execution for outstanding
results. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, United Kingdom. Pearson Education Limited.
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