October 18, 2024 • 43 mins
Blake Melnick is a seasoned leader and innovator in the fields of Knowledge Management and Workplace Innovation, with over two decades of experience as a Chief Knowledge Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer, transforming organizations through strategic initiatives and innovative practices. As the Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer of the Knowledge Management Institute of Canada, Blake has been instrumental in advancing the practice of knowledge management across diverse industries, helping organizations harness their collective intelligence to drive sustainable innovation, business excellence, and competitive advantage.
Blake’s leadership in knowledge management is built on a strong foundation of practical expertise and academic insight. His work focuses on creating knowledge-sharing cultures that enable organizations to evolve in response to rapidly changing environments. He has designed and delivered Canada’s first Knowledge Management and Workplace Innovation Graduate Certificate Program, collaborating with leading institutions to bring cutting-edge solutions to the forefront of organizational learning and development.
As the Co-Founders and Principal Catalyst at the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada (WINCan), Blake has spearheaded national initiatives aimed at fostering employee-led innovation. His efforts have helped bridge the gap between education and industry, promoting innovation ecosystems where employee-led innovation can thrive. Through partnerships with academic, government, and industry stakeholders, Blake has successfully implemented workplace innovation programs that align organizational goals with employee engagement and development.
Blake’s extensive experience includes senior roles in organizations such as Husky Energy, Atlantis Systems Corporation, and the Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology where he led strategic knowledge management initiatives that improved operational effectiveness, facilitated organizational change, and fostered cultures of learning and innovation. His ability to integrate technology, knowledge, and people into cohesive innovation ecosystems, has made him a sought-after advisor, speaker, and thought leader in the fields of Knowledge Management and Workplace Innovation.
Blake is also the Host and Executive Producer of “For What it’s Worth with Blake Melnick” podcast series.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:16):
Pioneer Knowledge Services welcomes you to the next
because you need to know. I'm your host,
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founder of this organization,
and we are thrilled to offer this educational
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of knowledge management, nonprofit work, and innovation.
(00:46):
Thank you for listening to Because You Need
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My name is Sony Tonebe. As an art
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Because You Need to Know has been my
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my management skills. Please consider sponsoring the podcast
with your business.
(01:11):
My name is Blake Melnick. I live in
the beautiful city of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada,
and recently voted the best small city in
the world to visit by Conde Nast. I'm
the chief knowledge officer for the Knowledge Management
Institute of Canada and co founder and principal
catalyst for workplace partnerships at Wincan,
the workplace innovation network for Canada, a not
for profit we created back in 2018,
(01:33):
which is dedicated to increasing Canada's capacity and
capability for innovation.
And I am also the host of the
podcast series For What It's Worth with Blake
Noemick. So I've been involved in the field
of knowledge management and the learning sciences pretty
much for my entire career,
And I love working at the intersection point
of Kilometers and workplace innovation,
especially employee led innovation.
(01:55):
So I help organizations
design and develop innovation ecosystems
to drive performance and build sustainable cultures of
innovation and excellence.
My most recent research
has been around identifying the attributes
of the innovation capable graduate
and the innovation enabled employee,
specifically the skills, knowledge, experience, and mindset
(02:16):
necessary for unlocking the innovation dynamic.
Our team has just completed a global knowledge
synthesis
of exemplary innovation practices largely from Europe because
they're much further ahead at this than we
are, in support of the idea
that an increase in employee innovation leads to
better work. So what do I mean by
better work? Well, better for the employees in
(02:36):
terms of the quality of their work life
and better for the organization in terms of
their performance. We've collected this research to see
whether we can adapt the findings and the
models from Europe and elsewhere to a Canadian
context.
And the results of this research are set
to be published by the Future Skills Centre
at the government of Canada shortly.
But if folks are interested in learning more
(02:57):
about this now, we have a number of
blog posts published at wincan.ca,
and they can listen to my interviews with
participants in the research on For What It's
Worth in our series, In Many Phases of
Innovation,
which is a series really designed to democratize
innovation, to make it understandable,
accessible, and actionable to us all through the
telling of personal stories from innovators
(03:17):
across multiple fields of endeavor who give us
a ringside seat on their innovation journeys.
So leveraging the knowledge, know how, and experience
of employees to build and sustain cultures of
innovation
is critical for enabling organizations
and individuals
to adapt to the changing landscape. We talk
about innovation,
and it's almost a catchphrase
in a lot of ways. But can you
(03:39):
define for me what innovation actually is? So
let's look at the difference between invention and
innovation because I think there's a misconception
that most people have. Innovation
is more incremental. So
something brand new to the world that world
has never seen before, that's an invention. Okay.
An improvement on an idea, whether it's yours
(04:00):
or somebody else's or another concept or or
even an invention, an improvement upon that is
an innovation.
For clarity, I pulled up the Merriam Webster
definition of innovation.
And it's funny you say the distinction between
because that's the first thing they bring up
is the distinction
between innovate and invent.
(04:20):
So invention, as far as Merriam goes, can
refer to a type of musical composition, a
falsehood,
a discovery, or any product of the imagination.
The sense of invention most likely to be
confused with innovation
is a device, contrivance,
or process originated after study and experiment,
(04:41):
usually something which was not previously been in
existence. Right. Innovation,
on the other hand,
can refer to something new or to a
change made to an existing product, idea, or
field. One might say that the first telephone
was an invention. Right. The first cellular telephone,
either an invention or innovation,
(05:02):
and the first smartphone
and innovation. Yeah. So it's kind of an
interesting walk through technology and how the differences
are. Part of the problem is is that
when we talk about invention,
I mean, people immediately jump to Elon Musk
or somebody that has deep pockets
or a well funded university lab, Stanford or
(05:23):
some other place like that Mhmm. Requires lots
of venture capitalists, fund and lots of people.
Yeah. And I think our goal really is
to say no. Innovation
is accessible to everyone. Because it's it's not
that mystique oriented, really. It's just Oh. It's
somebody with some intent
to either
perfect or add to something else,
and an idea can be created anywhere. That's
(05:45):
correct. That's correct. And it it really doesn't
matter what you do Yeah. For a living.
Well and you bring that up with the
the idea of this culture of innovation. How
do you bring a workforce
into play
to where innovation is second nature? Well, again,
you know, we're talking about culture, so that
is a long road. Here's my experience is
that people spend a lot of their lives
(06:06):
going to school, studying to become really good
at something. Mhmm. My experience shows that people
want to do great work. They've spent a
lot of time learning how to do great
work. Unfortunately,
a lot of organizational
structures prevent them from doing great work. So
cultures of innovation,
like cultures of knowledge and knowledge management, is
that part of the part of the challenge
(06:28):
is removing the barriers that prevent people from
doing their best work. Can you give a
listener an example of what that would look
like? Within an organization? Mhmm. You know, much
the same. Because, again, I think it's important
for me to to stress that I think
knowledge management and innovation
are opposite sides of the same coin. They're
part and parcel of the same thing. For
example, those organizations
(06:48):
with better knowledge processes and practices
tend to be more innovative. You know, designing
a culture of innovation
means ultimately
at at the core, it's all about behaviors.
It's about recognizing
the types of behaviors
associated
with a mindset for innovation.
And other guests in your show have said,
(07:09):
you know, you have to be able to
identify the behaviors
that you're looking for from people that join
your organization and people that work within your
organization.
You have to recognize them formally in terms
of how they're assessed through their performance appraisals.
That has to be part of it, and
it's going to look different
depending on which functional area you work in
(07:31):
within the organization.
You have to reward and recognize people for
innovative behaviors,
for constantly trying to evolve their best practices.
You know, we hear about best practice. I
actually hate that term because Yeah. Why would
you wanna stop there?
You know, people say, well, we want you
to adopt or implement best practices. Well,
(07:51):
so to what end? Yes. To what end?
Right? The best practice in my mind is
a step to the next thing. Right? It
Exactly. It levels up a little bit, and
then you get ready to do it again.
Right. It's an iterative learning process. Absolutely. But
I get what you're saying. The the use
of it is like a lessons learned kind
of thing. It just once it happens, okay,
we're done. Exactly. We're we're good. And so,
(08:12):
you know, it's that constant evolution beyond your
best practice. So it's fine to say, you
know, go outside and say, well, this is
a really good idea that's worked at Volvo.
We could adapt that for use in within
our own organization,
but we need to evolve it. Of course,
number 1, to fit the culture of our
organization and our workflow processes. Yeah. You know,
we have to continually evolve it. It's not
(08:33):
a once it's in and done, it's over.
Right? It's a continuous process.
So within organizations,
now we really need to create
the structures that allow people to be innovative.
So let me give you an example with
a company that I've been working with recently.
Okay. An engineering firm, which, you know, they
have innovation in their core values, very important
for the company,
(08:53):
and they want to get people engaged in
innovation. So what prevents people from being engaged
in innovation? Well Fear. Fear. It's culture. Fear.
Fear. Absolutely. Fear is probably number 1. Right?
Plus, you know, there's constraints of their own
job description and what they're being measured against
is often not what it's not that innovative
behavior that No. That they would like to
(09:14):
exhibit. So what this organization
did was they tried to define innovation
using an analogy of a t shirt.
To encourage people to engage in innovation, perhaps
outside their areas of expertise or the job
description.
They framed it this way.
An extra small t shirt is something, a
change that you can make
(09:35):
within
a week. That doesn't require a lot of
extra resources, but something that you see as
the employee doing the work that will make
things better.
We will give you the time to do
that. If the innovation is bigger, like a
large t shirt, for example,
that may require
resources. So that has to go through a
(09:57):
vetting process.
So they have employees contribute ideas into what
they call an idea hopper. Mhmm. And then
they vet these ideas. Okay. K. Well, what
can we do to test this idea on
a small scale first to deliver some sort
of metric that then we can build upon
and move beyond that? So they're actually creating
a mechanism for all employees
(10:19):
when they see something that they can make
better in the context of their day to
day work, they have permission to do it.
If it's not gonna cost a lot of
money, the firm will actually give them the
money and the time to do it. Well,
wait a minute. So that kinda goes against
the what most people would assume or have
experienced, I'll say, in my experience is that
I can remember many times where I'm like,
(10:40):
hey. You know, if you did this differently
or did you guys think of doing this,
the usual pushback is,
where do you work? Why why are you
talking to us? You know, those types of
this is not your job description. Go away.
Right. You're not an expert in this. Yeah.
Yeah. And and it is a challenge. And
even this firm has has found that to
be a challenge because, particularly with new employees
(11:02):
Yeah. They're afraid
to extend themselves too much. Stick their neck
out. Exactly.
And that's a change of behavior. That's a
change of culture. Once you start getting the
dinosaurs out the window
that enforce that type of Right.
And you get more of an innovative
open air kind of culture
(11:22):
to happen. In this case, you're speaking of,
I'm just curious. Who owns that piece of
it? Who owns the construct that that lives
in? Well, yes. I mean, they they have
an innovation team.
So not where they wanna end up, but
where they had to begin,
just to get the ball rolling. So they
have an innovation team of of people from
across the organization
(11:43):
that work together and try to figure out
ways to get people to engage
in innovation
outside their area of expertise.
Tough road. There's no doubt about it. But
they have strong corporate support.
They have identified
sort of buckets
that employees can look at and say one
of them is efficiency and effectiveness.
Another one is revenue generation.
(12:05):
And a third bucket is culture. Wow. If
the innovation is gonna positively impact the culture
of the organization,
then that fits within sort of the stated
strategy of the company. Wow. I would say
that's brave.
That's a brave thing to do.
Right. Right. Because I could see it making
a division in camps, so to speak, of
(12:26):
people
that are gonna be like, oh my god.
Make this thing go away. You know? Right.
Sure. Sure. And on the other side of
it, it's like, oh, I've been sitting on
this idea since I got here. Thank you.
Well, you know, what I found in most
organizations I've worked with, and and you probably
experienced this as well, is that the things
that keep the executives up at night, those
big problems, why does this thing keep happening?
(12:47):
Why are we losing money in this area?
Why are we not meeting our production schedules?
And so on and so forth. The answers
usually lie within the heads of people within
the organization. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't provide
a mechanism
for those people
to actually get the answers up to the
decision makers
or to do
to fix the problem as they see it
(13:10):
happen. So as you know, like the roots
of knowledge management, part of it is the
TQM movement, total quality movement, which was largely
driven by the automotive industry in Japan, in
the late sixties and early seventies,
where they recognize that the employees on the
line, if they see a problem in the
manufacturing process of the vehicle, they could stop
Yeah. And say, there's a problem here. We
(13:32):
need to address this. So it's empowering
those people with the ability to say, hey.
We can do it better.
We need to stop the process and look
at this and stop continuing to make the
same mistake over and over again. So it's
the same kind of principle around innovation.
I mean, it's creating those things. But unfortunately,
like knowledge management and innovation, they appear on
(13:52):
placards of most corporations.
But it's not really actionable because they haven't
aligned their structures to drive the outcomes they're
looking for. So, you know, I think it
was Peter Senge that said, your structures are
perfectly designed to give you the outcomes you're
currently experiencing. If you don't like those outcomes,
you must change your structures. And that means
alignment.
(14:13):
Alignment of people, process, technology,
everything in your organization
has to align to drive the outcomes you're
looking for. And that includes the onboarding process,
mentoring, professional development, all of those types of
things have to be aligned.
But it really does. The organizations that I've
seen do it very well, both in terms
of knowledge, management and innovation are those that
(14:35):
can take it to the behavioral level. Well,
let's talk about that. How would you recommend
to a organization
that wants to get there? Would love to
try this. What are the first three things
you're gonna tell them that they need to
do? The way my process has always started
is that I start with a meeting with
the executives and try to figure out what
their corporate priorities are.
(14:58):
What their strategy is. What is it they
hope to achieve?
Then I like to get a benchmark
of where the organization
is against those priorities.
If I was doing it in in the
space of knowledge management or innovation, because we
use diagnostics for both. Mhmm. You know, a
knowledge audit that actually
lets the executives know
(15:18):
where the employees are at, where their organization
is at, with respect to being able to
achieve those corporate objectives.
Same with innovation. So we have a workplace
innovation diagnostic, which kind of sets a baseline
for the organization
of how innovative it is actually.
How whether there are opportunities
involved that allow people to to bring innovation
(15:40):
to their work Mhmm. Job, or what are
the barriers that are preventing this from happening?
So I think that's the critical piece is
to get that benchmark, then you can start
to establish your metrics. Do you see any
industry that does it better over others? Is
there an industry that's just really good at
this Well by nature? Here would be from
my experience.
(16:00):
I mean, and and it really depends on
what you mean by better. There's certainly software
industries, Google, and so forth does a really
good job with this, of course. I would
also say, though, that public companies,
and I don't mean publicly traded companies, although
they they tend to be better too. I
think when I say public companies and government
organizations, for example.
(16:21):
Universities
are particularly good with this. And there's a
reason for it because they don't really have
to worry about
their performance and whether Oh, yeah. Their jobs.
Right? So
best example I've seen in terms of the
behavioral level has been the Bank of Canada.
They did what I would consider an exceptional
job
(16:41):
at this. Right? By by identifying what are
the behaviors that we want from our people,
and then actually rolling those into the hiring
process,
rolling them into performances,
appraisals,
and then from the knowledge piece. In other
words, in order to make knowledge flows better
within the organization.
And they use a lot of technology for
(17:02):
this, but they created an environment
that said, okay. If you've got a great
idea,
you can bring it to this innovation
space. You can book time
in this innovation space to flesh out this
idea, to work with this idea.
And then they had a knowledge lab that
had a completely different function. And the knowledge
lab was to disseminate
(17:24):
the work that was going on within this
innovation space
to everybody in the company. And how did
they do that? You know, they have a
very robust technology infrastructure, so they have screens
everywhere.
Cafeteria all through the building.
All of the stuff that was going on
in the innovation space was being projected out
throughout the entire building,
(17:45):
to every
person that wanted to watch. The idea behind
it was then to get people who said,
hey. You know what? I really like what
they're doing over in this area, in research,
for example,
or in economics.
I have something to add to that. So
then they created a very a hoteling like
structure within the organization where
you didn't have a defined office space. You
(18:08):
could book
space in any area of the company. So
if you saw an idea or a group
working an idea
that you thought was particularly interesting or something
that you could bring value to or something
that somebody was doing that there may have
already been a lot of work done that
they were not aware of, you can simply
book a space within that group and begin
(18:29):
to work with that group real time. That's
absolutely phenomenal. Yeah. I the closest thing I
can even put into that was I saw
it when I was deployed to Iraq.
We had one command structure
that would take people and push them out
the different commands and different levels of
the war front
to give them a boots and ground,
(18:50):
kind of internship at that level so they
would have a a better and thicker understanding
of
everything that's out there. And, so that's what
it sounds like, but you're given free agency.
It sounds like they've got free agency to
say, you know, I think I'm gonna go
hang out with these dudes for a week
or 2 just to see Yeah. Yeah. I
could spend as much time as I want.
(19:12):
Holy cow. Wow.
Well, while you were talking about this, I
looked at Bank of America yeah. Bank Bank
of Canada. Excuse me. I looked at Bank
of Canada and did a quick search on
innovation,
and this is what I found. How do
we evolve and advance our work to prepare
for the future?
Harnessing the power of innovation.
(19:34):
And so they are taking this at a
very high priority
of of
not just existence
or thriving, but
preparing to Right. Absolutely. Evolve. Yeah. So a
lot of these, what we call crown corporations
like the Bank of Canada, and, we have
a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. I, you
know, I did some work with them. What
(19:54):
they did, which I also thought was extremely
interesting,
was they wanted help solving affordable housing, you
know, a problem that we're all experiencing in
the United States and Canada and elsewhere. Big
problem. Yeah. What we were able to do
with them was we were able to create
a prototype program called knowledge management and workplace
innovation
using the challenge, the innovation challenge of advancing
(20:18):
solutions to the affordable housing crisis in Canada.
So a real world problem.
We brought students in from around the world,
not just
virtually,
to advance
ideas for solving the problem. And what we
did, and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation was
particularly great about this, is they gave us
their expertise.
They gave us all the background documentation. So
(20:40):
we started with the research,
and then students were able to review that
research,
engage with experts at the Canada Mortgage and
Housing Corporation, and then start to advance
potential ideas for addressing this problem. It's a
fairly acute problem, and there was a time
frame attached to it. So I think it's
2030 or 20 I think it's 2030
(21:00):
we were supposed to have affordable housing for
all Canadians, which represents 30%
of a person's income towards housing, which we're
not even close to being at the moment.
But it had a strong, strong mandate, and
these students started
advancing
ideas in a real world context, dealing with
a real innovation challenge. At the end of
(21:21):
it, they presented their findings to the board
of directors,
and we were very happy that the Canada
Mortgage Housing Corporation
recognized
that this was a sort of a micro
credential. But they actually went one step further
and said, we recognize
this credential, and it was theirs as well.
They helped us build it. They recognize this
credential
(21:42):
and will recognize it in their hiring practices.
That's a great thing to have it actually
materialized
as a valuable item. Right? I mean, that's
helped to build a benefit
other than the knowledge. I mean, it's a
benefit to the workers. So
what is the future of Wincan?
Well And tell me what Wincan is for.
(22:02):
Sure. What's the aim? Sure. I let me
start where it where it all began. So
it began with a conversation in 2015
by between myself and and doctor Tom Carey,
who we've known. We've known each other a
long time.
And we looked at Canada's track record around
innovation,
in terms of impact to GDP.
And it's not good.
(22:22):
We
it's not good. We ranked one of the
lowest of similar countries in the world,
because there's all kinds of reasons, geography, population,
market size.
But fundamentally,
we're good innovators. They're good innovators in Canada.
We're just not really good at commercializing our
innovation or taking it that final step. I
(22:42):
guess, you know, there's a lot of structures
in our society, both at the education side
and the, employment side, where we we haven't
created structures
to support sustainable innovation.
In schools, we learn things in silos. We
don't encourage students to see the connections between
domains of knowledge. You know, we we think
that they're all separate.
We treat education and work as 2 separate
(23:05):
worlds. Right? As opposed to an integrated world.
So Tom and I talked about this, and
and Tom said, well, do you think
that knowledge management
could be a conduit or a bridge between
the world of work and the world of
academia?
And I said, yes. I do think it
could be. So that's how it began.
So we looked at how do we make
(23:26):
innovation systemic? There's lots of great innovation that
goes on,
but it's either not sustainable and certainly not
systemic. So how do we make it systemic?
Well, we have to we have to ensure
in order to make it systemic, we have
to ensure that every
graduate
is innovation capable,
and every employee is innovation enabled.
(23:47):
So we started to look at, well, what
is innovation? Right? Really. Because everybody uses the
word. Not many people really know how to
define it very effectively or action it. So
we started to do a lot of research
around the mindsets,
the skills,
the experience, and the knowledge of innovators. And
mindset is really kind of where we zeroed
in. Is there a mindset for innovation? And,
(24:08):
yes, there is a mindset for innovation. So
that's how we started. Okay. As As we
build out, we we really are driving a
research
supported
solutions
to innovation challenges. So what we're doing with
WindCann, we're a catalyst organization.
We know that there's lots of money in
government going out to innovation. There's lots of
people that are trying to get engaged in
(24:29):
it. What we're trying to do is be
the catalyst for it. So we're asking, bring
us your problems. Bring us the things that
are keeping you up at night, and we
will help you to solve those. And we'll
do that through our research because we do
a global reach in terms of our research.
Then, you know, the best and the brightest
people that have been very successful at it,
we're adopting adapting models. So we'll bring that
(24:50):
to workplace organizations,
and we'll help them implement some of the
best practices. Everything seems to be around the
workplace
or, I'll say, adult learning. Right. When do
you bring innovation into grade school? And I
agree with you. It needs to be at
that k to 12 level. I'm looking at
the wipodotintwebsite,
(25:10):
which is the, Global Innovation Index.
And they've just released a 2023
report, so I was just taking a look
at some figures here. Mhmm. So I just
wanted to bring this into the conversation
Sure. Just so everybody knows what country is
the absolute top ranked innovation country,
and it's Switzerland.
Yep. Underneath that's US,
(25:32):
Sweden,
Singapore,
United Kingdom,
Finland,
Netherlands.
So those are like the top cluster. They've
got a beautiful chart here.
And so there is a lot of people
apparently putting money into the idea that innovation
matters. Absolutely.
Again, you have to the rankings, it depends
(25:52):
on who you go to for the ranking.
Okay. I've seen different rankings, but, you know,
a country like Switzerland. Right? I think of
Switzerland. They don't really have any natural resources.
They've relied largely
historically on the banking system. Right? Innovation
tends to happen most when there are constraints.
Israel is also an extraordinarily
(26:13):
innovative
country.
Denmark Mhmm. Is incredibly innovative.
But there's a lot of constraints. They don't
have, I guess, the abundance of natural resources
that we have in the United States and
Canada.
They have a different approach to supporting innovation.
So let me give you an example of
Israel. Israel uses, at least in the funding
area so Canada puts a lot of money
(26:34):
into innovation. We're just not getting a lot
out of it. But Israel does it differently.
So Israel provides direct funding for innovation.
We tend to provide indirect funding. In other
words, we give money to the universities
who then in turn partner with the innovator.
What tends to happen is a bun fight
(26:55):
over IP.
We take a very safe approach in Canada
where it's easier to fund our own. So
we're already obligated to fund our universities.
We tend to put money into the crown
corporations, which are part of the government. So
it's a safer approach where Israel
says no, we'll fund the innovator.
The innovator will then create partnerships with universities,
(27:15):
but based on the need of the innovator
and not on the need of the university,
needs of the innovator. And if the product
passes a few number of gates to be
viable,
the government
becomes the first customer. In other words, they
agree to buy the innovation
and developing the business
within
(27:35):
the country. In Canada, we tend to stop
short of that. You know, and you can
listen to some of the interviews on my
podcast about this, where we recognize something being
a value. We put money into it at
the front end of the prototype stage, but
then we provide no money to take it
to market, and we don't buy it. And
then the innovator takes their innovation
to the United States.
(27:57):
Yeah. It's just it's a risk at first.
Oh my. See, this is the problem. Right?
Is innovation
requires
taking a risk. So that's the challenge. Yeah.
You're you're taking innovation
to an entrepreneurial
level.
There's a bridge there. You're going from innovation
that in organization is
within an organization, but you're talking about innovating
(28:18):
in order to bring something
to market to have an economy behind it.
So now you're talking about not all innovators
are good entrepreneurs.
I'm sure. Well, that's true. So there's a
piece missing there. And can it be approached?
Well, let me do also differentiate between
an entrepreneur and an intrepreneur.
(28:40):
Okay. Right? Because I think this is another
important distinction. So we're talking about organizations and
innovation within organizations.
We're talking about entrepreneurialism,
right, or entrepreneurs
rather than entrepreneurs.
So they are innovating within the constructs
or the confines of the organization for which
they work. Okay. In certain cases, I mean,
(29:00):
we're not typically funding. I mean, government is
in Canada, not typically funding, you know, intrepreneurs.
They're funding more the entrepreneurial innovator. It doesn't
necessarily
mean, for example, that again, it's an invention
never seen before in the world. It could
be an adaptation of something that already exists
in a different context for a different purpose,
(29:21):
driving a different outcome. I think it's an
important distinction to make is that, you know,
within organizations, we're really talking about entrepreneurialism.
Right? The people are able to innovate within
the construct or within the confines of organizational
structure. So they're 2 different things. But really,
Wingman's objective
is to become that catalyst
(29:41):
in in a sense to become a knowledge
hub. Because what we find is that a
lot of times great ideas start, they become
funded,
or the funding ends and then the idea
kind of just goes away.
And then the next round of funding starts
and they start right from the beginning. And
we think there's a much greater value, much
(30:02):
greater chance of creating an innovative country
if we build on
the work that's come before Yeah. Rather than
reinventing the wheel over and over and over
again. You think about most large things that
have hit the human framework in the era
of innovation,
which goes back to, I'm sure,
(30:24):
the wheel.
The idea that it's just a one and
done kind of thing, I wanna hit again
because
if you look at research
around certain things,
there are, like, a little steps made here,
and then somebody takes it over here. Right.
And then somebody else takes it over this
way. And then, so it is a matter
(30:44):
of years and maybe decades
before
something actually clicks.
But it had to happen in order for
somebody else to say,
you know, to spur another idea, to spur
another innovation. Right. You know? So there are
certain things that are destined to fail just
because they had to happen in order for
(31:05):
something else to spin out of that. Right.
Another industry that I think is good in
this idea of parallel thinking here with the
length of time it took to get to
something to market
was the idea
of mechanical type.
So if you look at the documentary called
California
typewriter,
it talks about all the failed inventors
(31:27):
that had tried making a typewriter
in all these different iterations and all these
different styles, and it took decades
Sure. Of people just keep plugging away to
get something that would work. Right. And I
think a lot of people don't realize
that just because it failed on paper at
this juncture
(31:48):
doesn't mean anything in the grand scope of
things. Exactly. You know, I I'd say something
about failure. I've never liked that term
failure, you know, fail fast and all this.
It's
only a failure
if you don't learn anything or if you
stop. Right? So to your point, every invention,
every great innovation in human history has been
(32:08):
the result of people building on the work
of their predecessors. They don't just start from
the scratch.
They they go, okay, that didn't work. And
why didn't it work? And so, okay, so
this is why it didn't work. But the
premise might have been sound, and they build
on top of that and take it in
a different direction. We see the same in
the software world. Agile development, the gaming industry
(32:29):
does this all the time. Software companies do
it all the time. You know, they build
off ramps in case it needs to go
in a different direction that they hadn't anticipated.
So the the notion of failure to me
is really a
mental model. It's not a failure. I would
say it's more you didn't get the outcomes
you were expecting.
So if you stop there and say, well,
(32:49):
I I it failed. I'm I'm it's abandoned.
Done. Or if you say, well, what did
work here? Or what can we build upon
or at least to capture that instance in
such a way that other people can go
back? This is the scientific method. I mean,
sort of understands this, I think. Right? But
see, the thing is is that most corporations
I'm gonna say this in a generalization,
(33:10):
see if you agree.
Most corporations
will let something
hang out there and dry. And if it
didn't work, they're just like, move on. Yeah.
You know? Either they fire somebody or there's
some kind of punitive something going on. Right.
Because they don't look at it as a
learning cycle.
Hey. We've spent money on this. You know,
just like you said, what what could we
(33:31):
gain from this for the organization out of
this experience? And maybe there is a to
do out of this in 10 years. Nobody
knows this yet. Right. If we don't ever
do anything with that knowledge in a proactive
way in order to
revive it again,
then it is money out the window for
sure. What's the biggest problem in most organization?
Well, there's probably 2. 1 is redundancy, and
(33:52):
the other is repetition of past mistakes.
Because we don't we haven't
we haven't retained the knowledge of the people
that have tried it before.
Right? And so we just keep doing the
same thing over and over. It's like a
oh, it's a new day. Start over. You
know? Heard a story about this at a
very large university,
(34:14):
and she said that they were assembled in
this team for this thing that happens every
4 years, some evaluation.
And it was like nobody knew what they
were doing. They grabbed these people up, and
they spent all this time trying to figure
out what was done before
to in order to help them figure out
what to do now because there was nobody
on this assembled team Right. That had any
(34:36):
prior knowledge. Right. They had to start from
scratch,
and they build all this. They met they
checked the block, whatever the requirement was. Zip.
Done. And then poof. Yeah. All gone. You
know, it was like there was not even
a recovery of any kind of
live
connection with anybody that was part of this
team. Because, you know, the bad thing is
(34:57):
it's predictable. It's gonna happen again in 4
years. Wouldn't you think they would put some
assets towards trying to make it easy on
the next time? Nope. You've you've spent some
time in the military, so you know this.
I mean, this is what the military is
particularly
adept at is the after action review.
And we use technology to fly missions ahead
of time to see what might happen. But
(35:19):
every time a mission is completed, there's a
formal after action view. What went well? What
didn't go well? What do we need to
fix in the future? How do we need
to address this to keep our soldiers safe?
Another thing that's well established in the military
is rehearsal. Yes.
We rehearse. We rehearse. We do sand tables.
We rehearse. We go over things, phase lines,
(35:42):
and then this is gonna happen, and then
that's gonna happen. We orient everybody to the
mission.
I have never seen that in any civilian
structure. No. I think of the cohesiveness
that could really build if we just did
some rehearsals
of whatever the mission is. What are you
know? And maybe it's not the same bucket.
I get that. It's not the same,
you know, execute. Go do this.
(36:04):
But it kinda is on a project level.
And why don't we put those efforts in?
Well and and we certainly have the technology
to do that. I mean, I've spent time
in aerospace as you know, and I was
the COO of a simulation based engineering firm.
So we
built simulators and simulations to do just that.
Yeah. Pre mission simulations. Right?
(36:25):
Flying a helicopter,
landing on an oil rig in the North
Sea during inclement weather, and what could go
wrong? We have that same capability in in
for businesses as well. So let me give
you a really good example. Okay. Engineering firm
is they decided
that, you know, they they were looking at
how can we attract better talent to our
organization.
All applicants come through engineering schools. They all
(36:47):
have the same background. They all have the
same degree. How do we get to the
best ones? Right. So what they did was
they employed a simulation and they said, okay,
so do you want to find out what
it's like to work for our firm? What
we want you to do is we're going
to take you through a virtual walkthrough of
a project that we're working on a building.
We want you to advance solution to some
(37:08):
of the problems that our own engineers are
experiencing
on the job site.
Students walking through. So students are saying, well,
you know, you could do this to fix
that support beam and so on and so
forth.
But the intangible piece of it is they
got to see how people communicated with one
another, how they were willing to put their
ideas out into a public space. It also
(37:29):
gave the potential
of hiree
the ability to feel what it would be
like working this job Yeah. With this company.
Right? So it was a win win on
both sides,
but it was brilliant because they captured all
of this. They captured all the knowledge, all
the suggestions,
all the possibilities that were being advanced by
prospective hires.
So that became part of the knowledge base
(37:51):
of the organization.
That's pretty cool. We can be doing this
all the time. There's a lot of people
that now are advocating a pre mortem, which
is essentially what you're saying. What could go
let's play this out, and this is to
be on pen and paper and on whiteboard.
Yep. Doesn't require advanced simulation based technology,
but let's do a pre mortem. Let's see
what could happen here. Imagine the worst and
(38:12):
the best and and, you know, so that
we can anticipate.
Something in the middle. Yeah.
I like that. I'm gonna take that one.
I I like that very much. I think
that's a very useful tool, and it kinda
gets it can get you to a mind
space
with the folks around the table to at
least start engaging the future.
And that's a big piece of this. Right.
(38:33):
Right. And it is you're right. And I
love your point about mindset because it is
all about mindset.
I mean, everything we've talked about is about
having the right mindset for this.
There are skills associated with innovation, and there's
experience and knowledge to drop on and all
of those types of things. But it really
is a mindset
saying that, you know, we can make this
better. I've seen what I would call serial
(38:56):
innovators, and they're not people that you would
necessarily know, but they walk into a situation,
they look at something, and they go, hey.
This is great, but wonder
what if what if right? Yeah.
In most organizations,
that's where you get the people throwing spitballs
at that person. Hey. Who are what what
who are you? What what are you doing?
What are you talking about? Right. It comes
(39:17):
down to identifying behaviors
in such a way that,
let's call it mid management, can't prevent
or more incentivize
to encourage their people
to take
risks,
calculated risks, obviously Mhmm. To improve something. Understanding
that that person who is working that job
on a day to day
(39:38):
understands
that better than everybody else,
because they're doing it. So they're seeing the
problem.
They're saying, look, we keep making the same
mistake. A quick fix, so we just change
this and let them do it. I'd like
to hear your definition of knowledge manager.
Okay. Well, there's a good one. To me,
knowledge management is not about well, let me
(40:01):
say what it isn't. It's you're not managing
knowledge.
Knowledge construction is a social process.
So what you're really doing
is
managing the culture
to ensure that knowledge flows effectively
across the organization
from those who know to those who need
to know.
It's about
(40:23):
a number of things. But the one piece
that most people miss,
it's about
knowledge creation.
It's about knowledge capture. It's about knowledge
retention. It's about knowledge
sharing.
It's about
knowledge translation.
The creation piece is the piece that most
organizations
miss.
(40:44):
So it's really about managing the culture
to create
something or to create an environment where knowledge
flows across the organization,
where everybody knows what's going on in the
organization
that understands the key
strategic objectives
for the corporation. And as an aside, here's
something a little interesting. So for about 15
(41:04):
years, I've been doing this little survey with
every company and group I've worked with. So
across all sectors. And I ask employees,
how important is it for you to know
the strategic
direction of the organization you work for? On
a Likert scale of 1 to 10, I've
never had anybody
say less than 10. What? Employees
(41:27):
need to know
where the organization
is going so they know
how to contribute
to that strategic vision.
And it's super, super important. So that level
of transparency,
knowing where the company is going,
says to me as the individual worker, I
know now how I can contribute
(41:47):
to that.
Yeah. And I think that's the most important
thing. I love this conversation.
I think the pieces of the puzzle,
are all, like you said, around mindset, culture,
and innovation. As far as I can see,
innovation and knowledge management are hand in hand
walking down the path trying to get the
culture to go forward.
Yeah. And I think innovation has just replaced
(42:08):
knowledge management on a lot of the placards
out there. I mean, it it is on
virtually every
corporate value statement I've looked at the last
5 years.
But until we start to define what that
looks like at the workflow level, at the
behavioral level,
it's just another buzzword. Well, if we can
see it instituted
at the grade school and middle school level,
(42:29):
then Yeah. That that's a great point. Then
it'll we'll have a shift. Alright, my friend.
Yep. Thank you so much.
My pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you for joining this extraordinary journey, and
we hope the experiences gained add value to
you and yours.
See you next time at because you need
(42:50):
to know.
If your company or organization would like to
help us continue this mission and sponsor one
(43:11):
of our shows,
email byntk
atpioneerdashks.org.
Pioneer Knowledge Services welcomes you to the next
because you need to know. I'm your host,
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founder of this organization,
and we are thrilled to offer this educational
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bring you people's experiences
from all over the globe in the field
of knowledge management, nonprofit work, and innovation.
(00:46):
Thank you for listening to Because You Need
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My name is Sony Tonebe. As an art
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Because You Need to Know has been my
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my management skills. Please consider sponsoring the podcast
with your business.
(01:11):
My name is Blake Melnick. I live in
the beautiful city of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada,
and recently voted the best small city in
the world to visit by Conde Nast. I'm
the chief knowledge officer for the Knowledge Management
Institute of Canada and co founder and principal
catalyst for workplace partnerships at Wincan,
the workplace innovation network for Canada, a not
for profit we created back in 2018,
(01:33):
which is dedicated to increasing Canada's capacity and
capability for innovation.
And I am also the host of the
podcast series For What It's Worth with Blake
Noemick. So I've been involved in the field
of knowledge management and the learning sciences pretty
much for my entire career,
And I love working at the intersection point
of Kilometers and workplace innovation,
especially employee led innovation.
(01:55):
So I help organizations
design and develop innovation ecosystems
to drive performance and build sustainable cultures of
innovation and excellence.
My most recent research
has been around identifying the attributes
of the innovation capable graduate
and the innovation enabled employee,
specifically the skills, knowledge, experience, and mindset
(02:16):
necessary for unlocking the innovation dynamic.
Our team has just completed a global knowledge
synthesis
of exemplary innovation practices largely from Europe because
they're much further ahead at this than we
are, in support of the idea
that an increase in employee innovation leads to
better work. So what do I mean by
better work? Well, better for the employees in
(02:36):
terms of the quality of their work life
and better for the organization in terms of
their performance. We've collected this research to see
whether we can adapt the findings and the
models from Europe and elsewhere to a Canadian
context.
And the results of this research are set
to be published by the Future Skills Centre
at the government of Canada shortly.
But if folks are interested in learning more
(02:57):
about this now, we have a number of
blog posts published at wincan.ca,
and they can listen to my interviews with
participants in the research on For What It's
Worth in our series, In Many Phases of
Innovation,
which is a series really designed to democratize
innovation, to make it understandable,
accessible, and actionable to us all through the
telling of personal stories from innovators
(03:17):
across multiple fields of endeavor who give us
a ringside seat on their innovation journeys.
So leveraging the knowledge, know how, and experience
of employees to build and sustain cultures of
innovation
is critical for enabling organizations
and individuals
to adapt to the changing landscape. We talk
about innovation,
and it's almost a catchphrase
in a lot of ways. But can you
(03:39):
define for me what innovation actually is? So
let's look at the difference between invention and
innovation because I think there's a misconception
that most people have. Innovation
is more incremental. So
something brand new to the world that world
has never seen before, that's an invention. Okay.
An improvement on an idea, whether it's yours
(04:00):
or somebody else's or another concept or or
even an invention, an improvement upon that is
an innovation.
For clarity, I pulled up the Merriam Webster
definition of innovation.
And it's funny you say the distinction between
because that's the first thing they bring up
is the distinction
between innovate and invent.
(04:20):
So invention, as far as Merriam goes, can
refer to a type of musical composition, a
falsehood,
a discovery, or any product of the imagination.
The sense of invention most likely to be
confused with innovation
is a device, contrivance,
or process originated after study and experiment,
(04:41):
usually something which was not previously been in
existence. Right. Innovation,
on the other hand,
can refer to something new or to a
change made to an existing product, idea, or
field. One might say that the first telephone
was an invention. Right. The first cellular telephone,
either an invention or innovation,
(05:02):
and the first smartphone
and innovation. Yeah. So it's kind of an
interesting walk through technology and how the differences
are. Part of the problem is is that
when we talk about invention,
I mean, people immediately jump to Elon Musk
or somebody that has deep pockets
or a well funded university lab, Stanford or
(05:23):
some other place like that Mhmm. Requires lots
of venture capitalists, fund and lots of people.
Yeah. And I think our goal really is
to say no. Innovation
is accessible to everyone. Because it's it's not
that mystique oriented, really. It's just Oh. It's
somebody with some intent
to either
perfect or add to something else,
and an idea can be created anywhere. That's
(05:45):
correct. That's correct. And it it really doesn't
matter what you do Yeah. For a living.
Well and you bring that up with the
the idea of this culture of innovation. How
do you bring a workforce
into play
to where innovation is second nature? Well, again,
you know, we're talking about culture, so that
is a long road. Here's my experience is
that people spend a lot of their lives
(06:06):
going to school, studying to become really good
at something. Mhmm. My experience shows that people
want to do great work. They've spent a
lot of time learning how to do great
work. Unfortunately,
a lot of organizational
structures prevent them from doing great work. So
cultures of innovation,
like cultures of knowledge and knowledge management, is
that part of the part of the challenge
(06:28):
is removing the barriers that prevent people from
doing their best work. Can you give a
listener an example of what that would look
like? Within an organization? Mhmm. You know, much
the same. Because, again, I think it's important
for me to to stress that I think
knowledge management and innovation
are opposite sides of the same coin. They're
part and parcel of the same thing. For
example, those organizations
(06:48):
with better knowledge processes and practices
tend to be more innovative. You know, designing
a culture of innovation
means ultimately
at at the core, it's all about behaviors.
It's about recognizing
the types of behaviors
associated
with a mindset for innovation.
And other guests in your show have said,
(07:09):
you know, you have to be able to
identify the behaviors
that you're looking for from people that join
your organization and people that work within your
organization.
You have to recognize them formally in terms
of how they're assessed through their performance appraisals.
That has to be part of it, and
it's going to look different
depending on which functional area you work in
(07:31):
within the organization.
You have to reward and recognize people for
innovative behaviors,
for constantly trying to evolve their best practices.
You know, we hear about best practice. I
actually hate that term because Yeah. Why would
you wanna stop there?
You know, people say, well, we want you
to adopt or implement best practices. Well,
(07:51):
so to what end? Yes. To what end?
Right? The best practice in my mind is
a step to the next thing. Right? It
Exactly. It levels up a little bit, and
then you get ready to do it again.
Right. It's an iterative learning process. Absolutely. But
I get what you're saying. The the use
of it is like a lessons learned kind
of thing. It just once it happens, okay,
we're done. Exactly. We're we're good. And so,
(08:12):
you know, it's that constant evolution beyond your
best practice. So it's fine to say, you
know, go outside and say, well, this is
a really good idea that's worked at Volvo.
We could adapt that for use in within
our own organization,
but we need to evolve it. Of course,
number 1, to fit the culture of our
organization and our workflow processes. Yeah. You know,
we have to continually evolve it. It's not
(08:33):
a once it's in and done, it's over.
Right? It's a continuous process.
So within organizations,
now we really need to create
the structures that allow people to be innovative.
So let me give you an example with
a company that I've been working with recently.
Okay. An engineering firm, which, you know, they
have innovation in their core values, very important
for the company,
(08:53):
and they want to get people engaged in
innovation. So what prevents people from being engaged
in innovation? Well Fear. Fear. It's culture. Fear.
Fear. Absolutely. Fear is probably number 1. Right?
Plus, you know, there's constraints of their own
job description and what they're being measured against
is often not what it's not that innovative
behavior that No. That they would like to
(09:14):
exhibit. So what this organization
did was they tried to define innovation
using an analogy of a t shirt.
To encourage people to engage in innovation, perhaps
outside their areas of expertise or the job
description.
They framed it this way.
An extra small t shirt is something, a
change that you can make
(09:35):
within
a week. That doesn't require a lot of
extra resources, but something that you see as
the employee doing the work that will make
things better.
We will give you the time to do
that. If the innovation is bigger, like a
large t shirt, for example,
that may require
resources. So that has to go through a
(09:57):
vetting process.
So they have employees contribute ideas into what
they call an idea hopper. Mhmm. And then
they vet these ideas. Okay. K. Well, what
can we do to test this idea on
a small scale first to deliver some sort
of metric that then we can build upon
and move beyond that? So they're actually creating
a mechanism for all employees
(10:19):
when they see something that they can make
better in the context of their day to
day work, they have permission to do it.
If it's not gonna cost a lot of
money, the firm will actually give them the
money and the time to do it. Well,
wait a minute. So that kinda goes against
the what most people would assume or have
experienced, I'll say, in my experience is that
I can remember many times where I'm like,
(10:40):
hey. You know, if you did this differently
or did you guys think of doing this,
the usual pushback is,
where do you work? Why why are you
talking to us? You know, those types of
this is not your job description. Go away.
Right. You're not an expert in this. Yeah.
Yeah. And and it is a challenge. And
even this firm has has found that to
be a challenge because, particularly with new employees
(11:02):
Yeah. They're afraid
to extend themselves too much. Stick their neck
out. Exactly.
And that's a change of behavior. That's a
change of culture. Once you start getting the
dinosaurs out the window
that enforce that type of Right.
And you get more of an innovative
open air kind of culture
(11:22):
to happen. In this case, you're speaking of,
I'm just curious. Who owns that piece of
it? Who owns the construct that that lives
in? Well, yes. I mean, they they have
an innovation team.
So not where they wanna end up, but
where they had to begin,
just to get the ball rolling. So they
have an innovation team of of people from
across the organization
(11:43):
that work together and try to figure out
ways to get people to engage
in innovation
outside their area of expertise.
Tough road. There's no doubt about it. But
they have strong corporate support.
They have identified
sort of buckets
that employees can look at and say one
of them is efficiency and effectiveness.
Another one is revenue generation.
(12:05):
And a third bucket is culture. Wow. If
the innovation is gonna positively impact the culture
of the organization,
then that fits within sort of the stated
strategy of the company. Wow. I would say
that's brave.
That's a brave thing to do.
Right. Right. Because I could see it making
a division in camps, so to speak, of
(12:26):
people
that are gonna be like, oh my god.
Make this thing go away. You know? Right.
Sure. Sure. And on the other side of
it, it's like, oh, I've been sitting on
this idea since I got here. Thank you.
Well, you know, what I found in most
organizations I've worked with, and and you probably
experienced this as well, is that the things
that keep the executives up at night, those
big problems, why does this thing keep happening?
(12:47):
Why are we losing money in this area?
Why are we not meeting our production schedules?
And so on and so forth. The answers
usually lie within the heads of people within
the organization. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't provide
a mechanism
for those people
to actually get the answers up to the
decision makers
or to do
to fix the problem as they see it
(13:10):
happen. So as you know, like the roots
of knowledge management, part of it is the
TQM movement, total quality movement, which was largely
driven by the automotive industry in Japan, in
the late sixties and early seventies,
where they recognize that the employees on the
line, if they see a problem in the
manufacturing process of the vehicle, they could stop
Yeah. And say, there's a problem here. We
(13:32):
need to address this. So it's empowering
those people with the ability to say, hey.
We can do it better.
We need to stop the process and look
at this and stop continuing to make the
same mistake over and over again. So it's
the same kind of principle around innovation.
I mean, it's creating those things. But unfortunately,
like knowledge management and innovation, they appear on
(13:52):
placards of most corporations.
But it's not really actionable because they haven't
aligned their structures to drive the outcomes they're
looking for. So, you know, I think it
was Peter Senge that said, your structures are
perfectly designed to give you the outcomes you're
currently experiencing. If you don't like those outcomes,
you must change your structures. And that means
alignment.
(14:13):
Alignment of people, process, technology,
everything in your organization
has to align to drive the outcomes you're
looking for. And that includes the onboarding process,
mentoring, professional development, all of those types of
things have to be aligned.
But it really does. The organizations that I've
seen do it very well, both in terms
of knowledge, management and innovation are those that
(14:35):
can take it to the behavioral level. Well,
let's talk about that. How would you recommend
to a organization
that wants to get there? Would love to
try this. What are the first three things
you're gonna tell them that they need to
do? The way my process has always started
is that I start with a meeting with
the executives and try to figure out what
their corporate priorities are.
(14:58):
What their strategy is. What is it they
hope to achieve?
Then I like to get a benchmark
of where the organization
is against those priorities.
If I was doing it in in the
space of knowledge management or innovation, because we
use diagnostics for both. Mhmm. You know, a
knowledge audit that actually
lets the executives know
(15:18):
where the employees are at, where their organization
is at, with respect to being able to
achieve those corporate objectives.
Same with innovation. So we have a workplace
innovation diagnostic, which kind of sets a baseline
for the organization
of how innovative it is actually.
How whether there are opportunities
involved that allow people to to bring innovation
(15:40):
to their work Mhmm. Job, or what are
the barriers that are preventing this from happening?
So I think that's the critical piece is
to get that benchmark, then you can start
to establish your metrics. Do you see any
industry that does it better over others? Is
there an industry that's just really good at
this Well by nature? Here would be from
my experience.
(16:00):
I mean, and and it really depends on
what you mean by better. There's certainly software
industries, Google, and so forth does a really
good job with this, of course. I would
also say, though, that public companies,
and I don't mean publicly traded companies, although
they they tend to be better too. I
think when I say public companies and government
organizations, for example.
(16:21):
Universities
are particularly good with this. And there's a
reason for it because they don't really have
to worry about
their performance and whether Oh, yeah. Their jobs.
Right? So
best example I've seen in terms of the
behavioral level has been the Bank of Canada.
They did what I would consider an exceptional
job
(16:41):
at this. Right? By by identifying what are
the behaviors that we want from our people,
and then actually rolling those into the hiring
process,
rolling them into performances,
appraisals,
and then from the knowledge piece. In other
words, in order to make knowledge flows better
within the organization.
And they use a lot of technology for
(17:02):
this, but they created an environment
that said, okay. If you've got a great
idea,
you can bring it to this innovation
space. You can book time
in this innovation space to flesh out this
idea, to work with this idea.
And then they had a knowledge lab that
had a completely different function. And the knowledge
lab was to disseminate
(17:24):
the work that was going on within this
innovation space
to everybody in the company. And how did
they do that? You know, they have a
very robust technology infrastructure, so they have screens
everywhere.
Cafeteria all through the building.
All of the stuff that was going on
in the innovation space was being projected out
throughout the entire building,
(17:45):
to every
person that wanted to watch. The idea behind
it was then to get people who said,
hey. You know what? I really like what
they're doing over in this area, in research,
for example,
or in economics.
I have something to add to that. So
then they created a very a hoteling like
structure within the organization where
you didn't have a defined office space. You
(18:08):
could book
space in any area of the company. So
if you saw an idea or a group
working an idea
that you thought was particularly interesting or something
that you could bring value to or something
that somebody was doing that there may have
already been a lot of work done that
they were not aware of, you can simply
book a space within that group and begin
(18:29):
to work with that group real time. That's
absolutely phenomenal. Yeah. I the closest thing I
can even put into that was I saw
it when I was deployed to Iraq.
We had one command structure
that would take people and push them out
the different commands and different levels of
the war front
to give them a boots and ground,
(18:50):
kind of internship at that level so they
would have a a better and thicker understanding
of
everything that's out there. And, so that's what
it sounds like, but you're given free agency.
It sounds like they've got free agency to
say, you know, I think I'm gonna go
hang out with these dudes for a week
or 2 just to see Yeah. Yeah. I
could spend as much time as I want.
(19:12):
Holy cow. Wow.
Well, while you were talking about this, I
looked at Bank of America yeah. Bank Bank
of Canada. Excuse me. I looked at Bank
of Canada and did a quick search on
innovation,
and this is what I found. How do
we evolve and advance our work to prepare
for the future?
Harnessing the power of innovation.
(19:34):
And so they are taking this at a
very high priority
of of
not just existence
or thriving, but
preparing to Right. Absolutely. Evolve. Yeah. So a
lot of these, what we call crown corporations
like the Bank of Canada, and, we have
a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. I, you
know, I did some work with them. What
(19:54):
they did, which I also thought was extremely
interesting,
was they wanted help solving affordable housing, you
know, a problem that we're all experiencing in
the United States and Canada and elsewhere. Big
problem. Yeah. What we were able to do
with them was we were able to create
a prototype program called knowledge management and workplace
innovation
using the challenge, the innovation challenge of advancing
(20:18):
solutions to the affordable housing crisis in Canada.
So a real world problem.
We brought students in from around the world,
not just
virtually,
to advance
ideas for solving the problem. And what we
did, and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation was
particularly great about this, is they gave us
their expertise.
They gave us all the background documentation. So
(20:40):
we started with the research,
and then students were able to review that
research,
engage with experts at the Canada Mortgage and
Housing Corporation, and then start to advance
potential ideas for addressing this problem. It's a
fairly acute problem, and there was a time
frame attached to it. So I think it's
2030 or 20 I think it's 2030
(21:00):
we were supposed to have affordable housing for
all Canadians, which represents 30%
of a person's income towards housing, which we're
not even close to being at the moment.
But it had a strong, strong mandate, and
these students started
advancing
ideas in a real world context, dealing with
a real innovation challenge. At the end of
(21:21):
it, they presented their findings to the board
of directors,
and we were very happy that the Canada
Mortgage Housing Corporation
recognized
that this was a sort of a micro
credential. But they actually went one step further
and said, we recognize
this credential, and it was theirs as well.
They helped us build it. They recognize this
credential
(21:42):
and will recognize it in their hiring practices.
That's a great thing to have it actually
materialized
as a valuable item. Right? I mean, that's
helped to build a benefit
other than the knowledge. I mean, it's a
benefit to the workers. So
what is the future of Wincan?
Well And tell me what Wincan is for.
(22:02):
Sure. What's the aim? Sure. I let me
start where it where it all began. So
it began with a conversation in 2015
by between myself and and doctor Tom Carey,
who we've known. We've known each other a
long time.
And we looked at Canada's track record around
innovation,
in terms of impact to GDP.
And it's not good.
(22:22):
We
it's not good. We ranked one of the
lowest of similar countries in the world,
because there's all kinds of reasons, geography, population,
market size.
But fundamentally,
we're good innovators. They're good innovators in Canada.
We're just not really good at commercializing our
innovation or taking it that final step. I
(22:42):
guess, you know, there's a lot of structures
in our society, both at the education side
and the, employment side, where we we haven't
created structures
to support sustainable innovation.
In schools, we learn things in silos. We
don't encourage students to see the connections between
domains of knowledge. You know, we we think
that they're all separate.
We treat education and work as 2 separate
(23:05):
worlds. Right? As opposed to an integrated world.
So Tom and I talked about this, and
and Tom said, well, do you think
that knowledge management
could be a conduit or a bridge between
the world of work and the world of
academia?
And I said, yes. I do think it
could be. So that's how it began.
So we looked at how do we make
(23:26):
innovation systemic? There's lots of great innovation that
goes on,
but it's either not sustainable and certainly not
systemic. So how do we make it systemic?
Well, we have to we have to ensure
in order to make it systemic, we have
to ensure that every
graduate
is innovation capable,
and every employee is innovation enabled.
(23:47):
So we started to look at, well, what
is innovation? Right? Really. Because everybody uses the
word. Not many people really know how to
define it very effectively or action it. So
we started to do a lot of research
around the mindsets,
the skills,
the experience, and the knowledge of innovators. And
mindset is really kind of where we zeroed
in. Is there a mindset for innovation? And,
(24:08):
yes, there is a mindset for innovation. So
that's how we started. Okay. As As we
build out, we we really are driving a
research
supported
solutions
to innovation challenges. So what we're doing with
WindCann, we're a catalyst organization.
We know that there's lots of money in
government going out to innovation. There's lots of
people that are trying to get engaged in
(24:29):
it. What we're trying to do is be
the catalyst for it. So we're asking, bring
us your problems. Bring us the things that
are keeping you up at night, and we
will help you to solve those. And we'll
do that through our research because we do
a global reach in terms of our research.
Then, you know, the best and the brightest
people that have been very successful at it,
we're adopting adapting models. So we'll bring that
(24:50):
to workplace organizations,
and we'll help them implement some of the
best practices. Everything seems to be around the
workplace
or, I'll say, adult learning. Right. When do
you bring innovation into grade school? And I
agree with you. It needs to be at
that k to 12 level. I'm looking at
the wipodotintwebsite,
(25:10):
which is the, Global Innovation Index.
And they've just released a 2023
report, so I was just taking a look
at some figures here. Mhmm. So I just
wanted to bring this into the conversation
Sure. Just so everybody knows what country is
the absolute top ranked innovation country,
and it's Switzerland.
Yep. Underneath that's US,
(25:32):
Sweden,
Singapore,
United Kingdom,
Finland,
Netherlands.
So those are like the top cluster. They've
got a beautiful chart here.
And so there is a lot of people
apparently putting money into the idea that innovation
matters. Absolutely.
Again, you have to the rankings, it depends
(25:52):
on who you go to for the ranking.
Okay. I've seen different rankings, but, you know,
a country like Switzerland. Right? I think of
Switzerland. They don't really have any natural resources.
They've relied largely
historically on the banking system. Right? Innovation
tends to happen most when there are constraints.
Israel is also an extraordinarily
(26:13):
innovative
country.
Denmark Mhmm. Is incredibly innovative.
But there's a lot of constraints. They don't
have, I guess, the abundance of natural resources
that we have in the United States and
Canada.
They have a different approach to supporting innovation.
So let me give you an example of
Israel. Israel uses, at least in the funding
area so Canada puts a lot of money
(26:34):
into innovation. We're just not getting a lot
out of it. But Israel does it differently.
So Israel provides direct funding for innovation.
We tend to provide indirect funding. In other
words, we give money to the universities
who then in turn partner with the innovator.
What tends to happen is a bun fight
(26:55):
over IP.
We take a very safe approach in Canada
where it's easier to fund our own. So
we're already obligated to fund our universities.
We tend to put money into the crown
corporations, which are part of the government. So
it's a safer approach where Israel
says no, we'll fund the innovator.
The innovator will then create partnerships with universities,
(27:15):
but based on the need of the innovator
and not on the need of the university,
needs of the innovator. And if the product
passes a few number of gates to be
viable,
the government
becomes the first customer. In other words, they
agree to buy the innovation
and developing the business
within
(27:35):
the country. In Canada, we tend to stop
short of that. You know, and you can
listen to some of the interviews on my
podcast about this, where we recognize something being
a value. We put money into it at
the front end of the prototype stage, but
then we provide no money to take it
to market, and we don't buy it. And
then the innovator takes their innovation
to the United States.
(27:57):
Yeah. It's just it's a risk at first.
Oh my. See, this is the problem. Right?
Is innovation
requires
taking a risk. So that's the challenge. Yeah.
You're you're taking innovation
to an entrepreneurial
level.
There's a bridge there. You're going from innovation
that in organization is
within an organization, but you're talking about innovating
(28:18):
in order to bring something
to market to have an economy behind it.
So now you're talking about not all innovators
are good entrepreneurs.
I'm sure. Well, that's true. So there's a
piece missing there. And can it be approached?
Well, let me do also differentiate between
an entrepreneur and an intrepreneur.
(28:40):
Okay. Right? Because I think this is another
important distinction. So we're talking about organizations and
innovation within organizations.
We're talking about entrepreneurialism,
right, or entrepreneurs
rather than entrepreneurs.
So they are innovating within the constructs
or the confines of the organization for which
they work. Okay. In certain cases, I mean,
(29:00):
we're not typically funding. I mean, government is
in Canada, not typically funding, you know, intrepreneurs.
They're funding more the entrepreneurial innovator. It doesn't
necessarily
mean, for example, that again, it's an invention
never seen before in the world. It could
be an adaptation of something that already exists
in a different context for a different purpose,
(29:21):
driving a different outcome. I think it's an
important distinction to make is that, you know,
within organizations, we're really talking about entrepreneurialism.
Right? The people are able to innovate within
the construct or within the confines of organizational
structure. So they're 2 different things. But really,
Wingman's objective
is to become that catalyst
(29:41):
in in a sense to become a knowledge
hub. Because what we find is that a
lot of times great ideas start, they become
funded,
or the funding ends and then the idea
kind of just goes away.
And then the next round of funding starts
and they start right from the beginning. And
we think there's a much greater value, much
(30:02):
greater chance of creating an innovative country
if we build on
the work that's come before Yeah. Rather than
reinventing the wheel over and over and over
again. You think about most large things that
have hit the human framework in the era
of innovation,
which goes back to, I'm sure,
(30:24):
the wheel.
The idea that it's just a one and
done kind of thing, I wanna hit again
because
if you look at research
around certain things,
there are, like, a little steps made here,
and then somebody takes it over here. Right.
And then somebody else takes it over this
way. And then, so it is a matter
(30:44):
of years and maybe decades
before
something actually clicks.
But it had to happen in order for
somebody else to say,
you know, to spur another idea, to spur
another innovation. Right. You know? So there are
certain things that are destined to fail just
because they had to happen in order for
(31:05):
something else to spin out of that. Right.
Another industry that I think is good in
this idea of parallel thinking here with the
length of time it took to get to
something to market
was the idea
of mechanical type.
So if you look at the documentary called
California
typewriter,
it talks about all the failed inventors
(31:27):
that had tried making a typewriter
in all these different iterations and all these
different styles, and it took decades
Sure. Of people just keep plugging away to
get something that would work. Right. And I
think a lot of people don't realize
that just because it failed on paper at
this juncture
(31:48):
doesn't mean anything in the grand scope of
things. Exactly. You know, I I'd say something
about failure. I've never liked that term
failure, you know, fail fast and all this.
It's
only a failure
if you don't learn anything or if you
stop. Right? So to your point, every invention,
every great innovation in human history has been
(32:08):
the result of people building on the work
of their predecessors. They don't just start from
the scratch.
They they go, okay, that didn't work. And
why didn't it work? And so, okay, so
this is why it didn't work. But the
premise might have been sound, and they build
on top of that and take it in
a different direction. We see the same in
the software world. Agile development, the gaming industry
(32:29):
does this all the time. Software companies do
it all the time. You know, they build
off ramps in case it needs to go
in a different direction that they hadn't anticipated.
So the the notion of failure to me
is really a
mental model. It's not a failure. I would
say it's more you didn't get the outcomes
you were expecting.
So if you stop there and say, well,
(32:49):
I I it failed. I'm I'm it's abandoned.
Done. Or if you say, well, what did
work here? Or what can we build upon
or at least to capture that instance in
such a way that other people can go
back? This is the scientific method. I mean,
sort of understands this, I think. Right? But
see, the thing is is that most corporations
I'm gonna say this in a generalization,
(33:10):
see if you agree.
Most corporations
will let something
hang out there and dry. And if it
didn't work, they're just like, move on. Yeah.
You know? Either they fire somebody or there's
some kind of punitive something going on. Right.
Because they don't look at it as a
learning cycle.
Hey. We've spent money on this. You know,
just like you said, what what could we
(33:31):
gain from this for the organization out of
this experience? And maybe there is a to
do out of this in 10 years. Nobody
knows this yet. Right. If we don't ever
do anything with that knowledge in a proactive
way in order to
revive it again,
then it is money out the window for
sure. What's the biggest problem in most organization?
Well, there's probably 2. 1 is redundancy, and
(33:52):
the other is repetition of past mistakes.
Because we don't we haven't
we haven't retained the knowledge of the people
that have tried it before.
Right? And so we just keep doing the
same thing over and over. It's like a
oh, it's a new day. Start over. You
know? Heard a story about this at a
very large university,
(34:14):
and she said that they were assembled in
this team for this thing that happens every
4 years, some evaluation.
And it was like nobody knew what they
were doing. They grabbed these people up, and
they spent all this time trying to figure
out what was done before
to in order to help them figure out
what to do now because there was nobody
on this assembled team Right. That had any
(34:36):
prior knowledge. Right. They had to start from
scratch,
and they build all this. They met they
checked the block, whatever the requirement was. Zip.
Done. And then poof. Yeah. All gone. You
know, it was like there was not even
a recovery of any kind of
live
connection with anybody that was part of this
team. Because, you know, the bad thing is
(34:57):
it's predictable. It's gonna happen again in 4
years. Wouldn't you think they would put some
assets towards trying to make it easy on
the next time? Nope. You've you've spent some
time in the military, so you know this.
I mean, this is what the military is
particularly
adept at is the after action review.
And we use technology to fly missions ahead
of time to see what might happen. But
(35:19):
every time a mission is completed, there's a
formal after action view. What went well? What
didn't go well? What do we need to
fix in the future? How do we need
to address this to keep our soldiers safe?
Another thing that's well established in the military
is rehearsal. Yes.
We rehearse. We rehearse. We do sand tables.
We rehearse. We go over things, phase lines,
(35:42):
and then this is gonna happen, and then
that's gonna happen. We orient everybody to the
mission.
I have never seen that in any civilian
structure. No. I think of the cohesiveness
that could really build if we just did
some rehearsals
of whatever the mission is. What are you
know? And maybe it's not the same bucket.
I get that. It's not the same,
you know, execute. Go do this.
(36:04):
But it kinda is on a project level.
And why don't we put those efforts in?
Well and and we certainly have the technology
to do that. I mean, I've spent time
in aerospace as you know, and I was
the COO of a simulation based engineering firm.
So we
built simulators and simulations to do just that.
Yeah. Pre mission simulations. Right?
(36:25):
Flying a helicopter,
landing on an oil rig in the North
Sea during inclement weather, and what could go
wrong? We have that same capability in in
for businesses as well. So let me give
you a really good example. Okay. Engineering firm
is they decided
that, you know, they they were looking at
how can we attract better talent to our
organization.
All applicants come through engineering schools. They all
(36:47):
have the same background. They all have the
same degree. How do we get to the
best ones? Right. So what they did was
they employed a simulation and they said, okay,
so do you want to find out what
it's like to work for our firm? What
we want you to do is we're going
to take you through a virtual walkthrough of
a project that we're working on a building.
We want you to advance solution to some
(37:08):
of the problems that our own engineers are
experiencing
on the job site.
Students walking through. So students are saying, well,
you know, you could do this to fix
that support beam and so on and so
forth.
But the intangible piece of it is they
got to see how people communicated with one
another, how they were willing to put their
ideas out into a public space. It also
(37:29):
gave the potential
of hiree
the ability to feel what it would be
like working this job Yeah. With this company.
Right? So it was a win win on
both sides,
but it was brilliant because they captured all
of this. They captured all the knowledge, all
the suggestions,
all the possibilities that were being advanced by
prospective hires.
So that became part of the knowledge base
(37:51):
of the organization.
That's pretty cool. We can be doing this
all the time. There's a lot of people
that now are advocating a pre mortem, which
is essentially what you're saying. What could go
let's play this out, and this is to
be on pen and paper and on whiteboard.
Yep. Doesn't require advanced simulation based technology,
but let's do a pre mortem. Let's see
what could happen here. Imagine the worst and
(38:12):
the best and and, you know, so that
we can anticipate.
Something in the middle. Yeah.
I like that. I'm gonna take that one.
I I like that very much. I think
that's a very useful tool, and it kinda
gets it can get you to a mind
space
with the folks around the table to at
least start engaging the future.
And that's a big piece of this. Right.
(38:33):
Right. And it is you're right. And I
love your point about mindset because it is
all about mindset.
I mean, everything we've talked about is about
having the right mindset for this.
There are skills associated with innovation, and there's
experience and knowledge to drop on and all
of those types of things. But it really
is a mindset
saying that, you know, we can make this
better. I've seen what I would call serial
(38:56):
innovators, and they're not people that you would
necessarily know, but they walk into a situation,
they look at something, and they go, hey.
This is great, but wonder
what if what if right? Yeah.
In most organizations,
that's where you get the people throwing spitballs
at that person. Hey. Who are what what
who are you? What what are you doing?
What are you talking about? Right. It comes
(39:17):
down to identifying behaviors
in such a way that,
let's call it mid management, can't prevent
or more incentivize
to encourage their people
to take
risks,
calculated risks, obviously Mhmm. To improve something. Understanding
that that person who is working that job
on a day to day
(39:38):
understands
that better than everybody else,
because they're doing it. So they're seeing the
problem.
They're saying, look, we keep making the same
mistake. A quick fix, so we just change
this and let them do it. I'd like
to hear your definition of knowledge manager.
Okay. Well, there's a good one. To me,
knowledge management is not about well, let me
(40:01):
say what it isn't. It's you're not managing
knowledge.
Knowledge construction is a social process.
So what you're really doing
is
managing the culture
to ensure that knowledge flows effectively
across the organization
from those who know to those who need
to know.
It's about
(40:23):
a number of things. But the one piece
that most people miss,
it's about
knowledge creation.
It's about knowledge capture. It's about knowledge
retention. It's about knowledge
sharing.
It's about
knowledge translation.
The creation piece is the piece that most
organizations
miss.
(40:44):
So it's really about managing the culture
to create
something or to create an environment where knowledge
flows across the organization,
where everybody knows what's going on in the
organization
that understands the key
strategic objectives
for the corporation. And as an aside, here's
something a little interesting. So for about 15
(41:04):
years, I've been doing this little survey with
every company and group I've worked with. So
across all sectors. And I ask employees,
how important is it for you to know
the strategic
direction of the organization you work for? On
a Likert scale of 1 to 10, I've
never had anybody
say less than 10. What? Employees
(41:27):
need to know
where the organization
is going so they know
how to contribute
to that strategic vision.
And it's super, super important. So that level
of transparency,
knowing where the company is going,
says to me as the individual worker, I
know now how I can contribute
(41:47):
to that.
Yeah. And I think that's the most important
thing. I love this conversation.
I think the pieces of the puzzle,
are all, like you said, around mindset, culture,
and innovation. As far as I can see,
innovation and knowledge management are hand in hand
walking down the path trying to get the
culture to go forward.
Yeah. And I think innovation has just replaced
(42:08):
knowledge management on a lot of the placards
out there. I mean, it it is on
virtually every
corporate value statement I've looked at the last
5 years.
But until we start to define what that
looks like at the workflow level, at the
behavioral level,
it's just another buzzword. Well, if we can
see it instituted
at the grade school and middle school level,
(42:29):
then Yeah. That that's a great point. Then
it'll we'll have a shift. Alright, my friend.
Yep. Thank you so much.
My pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you for joining this extraordinary journey, and
we hope the experiences gained add value to
you and yours.
See you next time at because you need
(42:50):
to know.
If your company or organization would like to
help us continue this mission and sponsor one
(43:11):
of our shows,
email byntk
atpioneerdashks.org.
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