Think Differently!
The biggest challenge in life is to be yourself in a world that is trying to make you like everybody else! "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them," is a mantra used many times in life.
No organization has ever been successful without new and innovative ideas. Innovation, be it in business or education, is all about challenging the status-quo. Before an organization can begin to innovate, it must answer a few difficult questions. The most important questions are: “What does innovation mean to your institution? Does your institution enable or stifle innovation? What about your competitors…how innovative are they?”
Sometimes, colleges and universities have to remind themselves that they don't have to do what everyone else is doing. So, how do you accomplish that task? You accomplish innovation by going through 4 stages: generate ideas; refine your ideas; select the specific ideas that you want to try; and lastly, implement the ideas. The problem with many institutions is they want the BIG ideas, but never have a plan to see them come to fruition. In other words, they may be good at listening to the innovative ideas of their employees, but never research them enough to say, "I think we want to go with that idea and run with it."
Many times, innovators see the biggest enemy as the institution itself, the reason being that institutions are not designed for innovation, they are designed for ongoing operations. In education, we serve our stakeholders, who might be students, boards, trustees, taxpayers, or any number of customers or patrons. In the end, we strive for productivity and efficiency; therefore, we evolve and deliver what is being sought by them. When it comes down to it, educational institutions have to focus on serving their students BETTER than other schools, or stakeholders will spend their hard-earned money somewhere else. With that being said, there is continuous pressure to be more efficient and profitable and to continue to advance in new areas. When institutions want to be "innovative" there will inevitably be conflict within. ‘Repeatable’ and ‘predictable’ are the stakeholders’ friends. Predictability is especially powerful because it serves as a baseline for future expectations and holding people accountable. In many organizations, budgets are set based largely on predictable outcomes.
Ultimately, when any educational institution decides to pursue innovation, the leadership must have a vision for the future. When you think about it, titles or positions don't really matter though, ideas do! If you want people who possess the skills to innovate, they have to be the faculty and staff who remember why you are in business in the first place…for the student. They must be open-minded enough to new ideas and resist the urge to say, "We have tried that before and it didn't work." In the end, when we want innovation…we must THINK DIFFERENTLY!
Rich Flotron, 2016 Region III Leadership Fellow