This post is written by Catarina Tully, founder of SOIF, the School of International Futures, and Giulio Quaggiotto, Strategy and Innovation Advisor, MBRCGI.

  • The problem: ‘The last mile problem’–namely that innovators run the risk of using all their energy to get new approaches through the bureaucracy but fail to galvanise organisational will for change.
  • Why it matters: Resources risk being redirected to “innovation theatre” and away from the hard transformative process that is needed to achieve mindset change and organisational impact.
  • The solution: Turn the “last mile” into the “first mile”– focus on cracking the decision-making and fostering the will to transform early on.

Even if progress has been uneven, the palette of innovation approaches adopted by the public sector has considerably expanded in the last few years: from new sources of data to behavioural science, from foresight to user-centred design, from digital transformation to system thinking. And yet, the frustration of many innovation champions within the government is palpable. We are all familiar with innovation graveyards and, in our learning journeys, probably contributed to them in spite of all best intentions:

  • Dashboards that look very “smart” and are carefully tended to by few specialists but never used by their intended target audience: decision-makers.
  • Prototypes or experiments that were developed by an innovation unit and meant to be handed over to a line ministry or city department but never were.
  • Beautifully crafted scenarios and horizon scanning reports that last the length of a press conference or a ribbon-cutting event and are quickly put on the shelves after that.

The list could go on and on.

Innovation theatre is a well known malaise (paraphrasing Sean McDonald: “the use of [technology] interventions that make people feel as if a government—and, more often, a specific group of political leaders—is solving a problem, without it doing anything to actually solve that problem.”)

In the current climate, the pressure to “scale” quick-fixes in the face of multiple crises (as opposed to the hard work of addressing root causes, building trust, and structural transformations) is only increasing the appetite for performative theatre. Eventually, public intrapreneurs learn to use the theatre to their advantage: let the photo op with the technology gadget or the “futuristic” scenario take the centre stage so as to create goodwill with the powers that be, while you work quietly in the backstage to do the “right” thing.

Often senior decision-makers have little patience for the process. They want to see results, yesterday.

Fixing the problem

But this does not solve the “last mile” problem. Ultimately the purpose of any public sector innovation is to change the practice: develop new habits and routines that result in distinctively different decisions. Ideally this new way of acting would over time translate into that mythical construct, “mindset change”.

Many of us have tested the hypothesis that the “shiny new tools” (scenarios, prototypes, data visualisations, etc.) can help attract attention, while it is the involvement in the process of co-design, the interaction with citizens, the weaving of coalitions for change, the reframing and more that will eventually lead to change in attitudes and different patterns of decision-making.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that often senior decision-makers have little patience for the process. They want to see results, yesterday. Power relations and inequalities often undermine even the most well-intended participatory processes, leading to even greater frustration for citizens. The exhaustion of getting the new approach–be it scenarios or system design to survive the antibodies of a bureaucracy often leaves willing public intrapreneurs with little energy and mindspace for the “last mile” effort (which often translates into a three-minute pitch to an otherwise distracted decision-maker). Rather than facilitate learning, experiments “cause ambiguities in organisational routines and imbalances in existing power relations", preventing the bureaucracy from appropriating their results. And even in the case of sympathetic senior champions who are willing to make the time investment (there are many!), the political window of opportunity might close too quickly for them to be able to exert their influence.

Flip the script

One way to overcome the “last mile” problem (ie. policymakers taking a different type of decision) is to turn it into the “first mile”. To state the obvious, in the context of public service innovation, dashboards, experiments, prototypes, artefacts from the future, nudges are all means to one end: enable a human system (government) to have the courage and capacity to take different decisions and actions, whether at the political or at the bureaucratic level. It is a matter of individual and organisational will for renewal. So why not start from there?

There are lessons to be learnt on this subject from emerging practice that brings different fields together to address wicked problems in the public sector: from countering nuclear proliferation to achieving zero hunger, from intervening on mental health to just ecological transitions. These are spaces where approaches and lenses from different fields are brought together in the service of building coalitions to drive transformation for positive public outcomes. The projects overlay insights from the network weaving sector (weaving a community for change within a heterogeneous and diverse group of actors around a common purpose) to systems thinking (mapping the interdependencies of external drivers of change, actors and their means and levers of action), to foresight’s three horizons (highlighting the need to scan for and spot emerging changes and providing a vocabulary and a framework to discuss openly their associated dynamic impact on the relative power and influence of incumbent, entrepreneur and visionary actors).

What they have in common is that they spend a lot of time bringing the “last mile” to life in the first step of their work through a deeply substantive scoping and exploratory “first mile” stage. This undervalued step–often glossed over or scrappily conducted in the pressure to get to action– is the key to activating the superpower of otherwise inert different technical innovation approaches.

How to change things

Practically then, the experience of exploring “the last mile” problem, through trial and error, has taught us that the following is a good set of questions to ask upfront in the scoping stage:

  • Listen, understand and empathise: What motivates actors in this system to take decisions? What are the incentives that drive action and the behaviours that are rewarded? Here it is important to bear in mind that the motivations are often human, all too human: they have to do with ambition and envy, saving face and passion, rivalry and desire to leave a legacy. Assuming a totally rational decision-maker is more often than not a recipe for disaster (hence the famous quip, for example, about “policy-based evidence-making”). Working backwards from the headlines that might motivate a policymaker to take action might be a more pragmatic way to start.

  • Map the network: Who is on the rise and who is on a downward trajectory? What “niches” are emerging that represent potential allies for change? How do we support and fund initiatives that explore the third horizon?

  • Understand power dynamics: What are the power dynamics within the system–and what external coalitions or individuals can get the system to take notice (put it otherwise, who are senior decision-makers afraid of? Here it can be helpful to think of state and civil society as co-evolving along a narrow path to keep each other in check). Who are the key influencers not only on the inside, but also on the outside of government? What does the political cycle (and the budget cycle) look like and what are the windows of opportunity that they offer?

  • Identify the bureaucratic vehicle for change: What is the bureaucratic path that would make different actions not only possible, but also bureaucratically feasible? (this is what Tom Kalil, former advisor to President Obama, referred to as “the magic laptop” through experiment, or even more aptly, the “a does b so c” formula”).

  • Tell the story of the “burning platform” and provide systemic support systems: How do you make a set of interventions both “irresistible” and “irreversible” (ie. able to survive the alternate fortunes of the political cycle and the high level of churn in the civil service)? How do you shift from presenting information (adding to overload) to providing intelligence (ie. providing compelling arguments that can shape action)?

  • Shape the safe (collective) first step: How do you build courage to take action? Many of us have encountered the “first in the world” paradox: many decision-makers want to be able to say they were the first to introduce a particular policy or approach, but when they are presented with the proposal to do something new or untested they invariably ask: “Which government has done it already? How do I know that it will not fail?” Having a good set of precedents–and a few potential partners–up your sleeve is just one of many ways to reduce the perception of risk.

The challenge for innovators is that this type of work is a major investment upfront and often requires very different skills from deep technical expertise (e.g foresight, data, design). Such skills are best built at a team level (with roles eventually spanning across the “strategic” to “tactical” continuum) in a context that is unfortunately often stripped for resources. The “first mile” work also involves intense network weaving: building coalitions, targeting key influencers, creating conditions of trust. This is “obscure” or “invisible” work for which often funding is not available. It requires deep contextual knowledge of unwritten rules and political dynamics.

The upside is that there is an emerging field being built where these processes, skills, capabilities and practices are becoming more explicit and recognised. Its critical importance–and impact–are being “seen”–not only by practitioners, but by foundations and public sector leaders seeking real change.

The danger of not doing this work as the “first mile”, however, is to keep adding to the innovation graveyard.

The authors would like to thank Bas Leurs for his comments.

👋 You can create a post like this one! Share your thoughts with a community of public servants. Learn more

(Image Credit: Unsplash)