'Innovationish' training: Australian government spends $230,000 on latest management fad
Australian government agencies have spent more than $230,000 on “innovationish” training – the latest management fad promising to improve work mindsets – and linked the programs to the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spent $180,000 with the US company People Rocket LLC, which suggests it can replace traditional management consultancy by developing “cultures that champion innovation through cross-functional collaboration”.
People Rocket is led by a Stanford graduate school of business lecturer, Richard Cox Braden, who the company describes as its “chief innovation evangelist”, a Harvard lecturer and “maverick scientist” Tessa Forshaw, and Meredith Caldwell, a “strategic vision clairvoyant” who opts for the plainer title of “head of engagement” on her LinkedIn profile.
The foreign affairs department is hosting two sessions delivered by People Rocket, titled “Innovative resilience: thriving in systemic failure” on 17 July and “Innovation-ish tools for leading through ambiguity” on 24 July, an “executive masterclass” for senior executive service and “ambitious” executive level two public servants.
“Innovationish” describes the desirability of developing a creative mindset directed towards innovation but attenuates it, suggesting even efforts that fall short of true innovation are worthwhile.
According to the foreign affairs department event description, People Rocket’s approach “recognises that innovation is a scale and not a destination; and that small shifts along the scale can have a huge impact”.
The three-hour session promises public servants they will experience “innovation-ish mindsets and moves to deliver differently in your systems”.
“Mindsets focus on how you think about the work you need to do. Moves are the actions you take to move the work forward.”
The masterclass suggests it can help executive leaders deal with scenarios such as: “Tomorrow, from home, you need to handle a global pandemic and a critical lack of supplies as millions of people get sick or lose their jobs. No playbook. No checklist. No precedent.
The solution – analogical reasoning.”
The masterclass was also linked to Australia’s pandemic response by the industry department’s public sector innovation network and the Institute of Public Administration Australia. Both explained that the masterclass formed part of “innovation month” which was themed “‘delivering differently’, reflecting the public sector’s outcomes-focused response to the Covid-19 pandemic”.
In June foreign affairs awarded a 12-month $130,776 contract to People Rocket for education and training services, through limited tender, “due to an absence of competition for technical reasons”.
In June Asic awarded People Rocket a 12-month $50,000 contract and has a separate $58,656 contract with Gilimbaa
Pty Ltd, both for “innovationish training” and awarded by limited tender because of a “need for specialised or professional skills”.
Braden and Forshaw also “flew from the US to help a room full of Australian public servants” with training involving the “innovation(ish)” method in August 2019, the industry department reported.
The industry department statement about the training explained that the six innovation(ish) mindsets are: interaction, insight, ideation, iteration, inspiration and implementation.
Each mindset is described with a parenthetical phrase giving examples common to the policymaking process such as “discover real human needs” and “[consider] the feasibility of deploying ideas in the real world”.
“Tessa and Rich’s innovation(ish) approach lowers the barrier to entry and expands access to useful, helpful, design tools,” the department’s website said, preventing innovation from becoming “something that only people with designer glasses and hipster shoes were allowed to do”.
“As Rich said ‘you do the innovation things, but you don’t say you’re doing the innovation things’.”
An industry department spokesperson said it had “no commercial contract” with Braden and Forshaw, who were already in Australia, and received domestic travel, one night of accommodation and lunch but were not paid to deliver the workshop.
The workshop, attended by about 80 people from 16 public service agencies, taught “leading-edge innovation techniques and tools”.
A spokesman for Asic directed questions to foreign affairs, explaining that Asic was “one of a group of agencies, [which] decided to leverage off Dfat’s procurement process to establish its component of the contract with People Rocket”.
He did not cite specific outcomes for the 12-month training contract because “the program has only just commenced”.
Asked to define innovationish, the spokesman replied: “A mindsets-first approach (to innovation): to gain access to, and continued use of, a learning and experiential engagement pedagogy for developing and/or accelerating innovative mindsets, and strategic innovation change management.”
Guardian Australia has contacted the foreign affairs department for comment.