034. How to generate greater innovation capability in your nonprofit: observations of an innovation coach

Summary

NGOs are sometimes labeled fairly critically as 'dinosaurs' or 'legacy organizations'. How can they create a more innovation-ready or innovation-friendly culture? 

 What can  NGOs learn from other types of organizations when it comes to generating more innovation, either in the broader civil society sector or outside of it?

What stands in the way, in terms of organizational structures, processes, or ways of working when NGOs struggle? Leadership mindsets? 

 In this podcast episode, I interview Shervin Fekri at Board of Innovation. Board of Innovation (BoI) is a strategy and business design firm that coaches private and public sector organizations -- including INGOs and donor agencies -- on how to generate a healthy innovation pipeline. 

Shervin’s Bio

• Global Social Innovation Lead at Board of Innovation
• Co-founder of Board of Innovation, Netherlands
• Founder at Ministry for Change
• Innovation Strategy Consultant at UNHCR (via Board of Innovation)

 We discuss:  

• Some NGOs have sought help with innovation and design thinking-related coaching and have introduced innovation labs, teams, and sprints, but the mindset that needs to accompany design thinking can prove to be challenging 
• Organizational cultures that are quite hierarchical and not amenable to flat, lean, and agile decision making are problematic, as are leaders who do not feel they can trust their innovation teams to do their work in an uninterrupted manner until it is time to make a pitch
• Leaders who get engaged in micromanaging instead of setting strategic criteria for what innovations should respond to while otherwise getting out of the way are also problematic. 
• Some NGOs in the development sector have evolved into hybrids of nonprofit/for-profit forms, by integrating social enterprises or impact investing units into their organization or by setting them up 'adjacent' to their organization. 
• Organizations can show different archetypes: some seek innovation (incl innovation support) outside of their organization. Some prefer to experiment within. How they go about it can affect their innovation-capability.
• Common challenges in social sector organizations who are wanting to become more innovation-friendly:

o   The big social sector organizations tend to be complex in organization structure (sometimes too much so) with distributed country offices/affiliates. There is also variation in the extent to which decision making is centralized or decentralized

o   National cultures vary a lot, and NGOs sometimes have somewhat less of a ‘corporate’ culture

o   NGO cultures tend to be very process-oriented; they are not very user-focused, fairly siloed and have a hard time simplifying what the user needs/wants

o   Marketing/fundraising/comms people typically are more user-focused.

Quotes

“Some NGOs are good in starting innovation projects but bad in killing bad projects”

“It is best to use an innovation portfolio approach, where the organization and decision-makers have visibility into how many innovation projects they have going on at any one time, how long they have been going on, which ones are lagging and which ones have to be stopped. That oversight is sometimes missing”

Resources:

Shervin's LinkedIn profile

Board of Innovation Website

Tosca's Virtual Team Leadership Essentials Course

Joint MZN-Five Oaks