Fostering Improvement Through Innovation
By: Kenneth Wallace

Lewis Carroll in his book Through the Looking Glass has Humpty Dumpty smugly intone Whenever I use a word it means exactly what I choose it to mean nothing more and nothing less. Such seems to be the case whenever the topics of improvement and innovation are discussed.

Improvement means whatever the one who wants it to happen wants it to mean. It could mean doing whats being done now to a greater degree of efficiency or speed or detail. In other words do what youre doing now only better. It could also mean that something else altogether needs to be done instead of or in addition to whats being done now. In any case improvement is closely associated with measurable outcomes that can be compared with previous outcomes to determine degrees of organizational and/or personal development or deterioration.

The means of accomplishing any outcome is called process. It is commonly thought that organizational outcomes are inextricably interwoven with the processes that produce them. Poor processes cause poor outcomes powerful processes cause powerful outcomes and so on. As the process goes so goes the outcome. With this reasoning all one would have to do to improve the outcome is to improve the process in some way. Although this approach can work it often takes a long time and gives up as much as it gains in process efficiencies workplace morale and worker commitment to fully implementing process changes.

This mechanistic view of improvement has been a long time in development. Culturally accepted notions about human nature and behavior have contributed strongly to the idea that improvement in lifes outcomes is causally effected by process more particularly the right process. If an outcome is not what is wanted or expected it means that the right process has yet to be discovered. Through persistent and diligent effort eventually the correct process will be found and the consequent outcomes achieved.

Many readers will be aware of the hierarchy of needs (figure 1) developed by the psychologist Abraham Maslow. In it Maslow identified what he saw as the incremental needsbased structure of human existence and fulfillment. It began at the bottom with primal needs such as water air and other survival requirements and moved up to the top which he called synergy or the need to have things working well in all areas of life. Maslows model did not allow for skipping a step in the quest for experiencing deeper levels of humanness. For example one couldnt go to the third level without having the first two fulfilled and predictably secured and so on up the ladder. For Maslow there was a correct process through which an individual had to go in order to grow and experience greater dimensions of human fulfillment.

Maslows Hierarchy of Human Needs

The upper needs (Esteem SelfActualization and Synergy) are more complex less immediate and therefore weaker in their demands on psychic and emotional energy.

The lower needs (Belongingness/Love Safety and Survival) are less complex more immediate and therefore stronger in their demands on psychic and emotional energy.

Synergy: the need to have things working well in all areas of life

SelfActualization: the need to develop ones unique capacities

Esteem: the need to be highly regarded by self and others

Belongingness/Love: the need to be accepted liked and loved

Safety: the need to be secure and protected

Survival: the need for air food and water

Just as accomplishing desired organizational outcomes is seen as a matter of going through the correct process so too personal fulfillment is seen as a matter of following the right process. Personal and organizational improvement becomes associated with planning strategizing and manipulating the process.

This is a linear view of cause and effect and doesnt actively take into account the fact that processes dont happen all by themselves. People perform processes. People possess power beyond any process that animates behavior toward creative and surprising outcomes. People are the wind the spirit (in Greek the same word pneuma is used for both wind and spirit) that blows invisibly within and among human organizations and cannot be predicted channeled or contained.

People can bring the inanimate structures of process to life by breathing into them the spirit of their hopes dreams and aspirations. Process is merely a skeleton that holds an organization together structurally; it is people who choose either to put flesh on the skeleton and imbue it with vitality meaning and significance or to allow it to remain a lifeless empty shell.

If people choose to permeate the organization with life then poor processes would not necessarily be a hindrance to achieving improved outcomes. While it is true that an able and willing person who is trapped working in poor processes will find it difficult to improve her performance and therefore organizational outcomes it is not impossible to do so. Willing and able persons will not allow poor processes to become an excuse for not doing any better on the job. They will actively and creatively seek out ways to improve their performance and outcomes by changing even if only slightly the way they think about and do their work. In doing so they move beyond the processes themselves enriching them with innovative (outside the process box) approaches and applications.

We are now beginning to develop an understanding of innovation. If a change in the process is the only way people are allowed to change their job activities the wind of the creative spirit will blow to effect changes beyond the process. While improvement has to do with measurable outcomes of a process innovation has to do with freedom from the implicit and explicit constraints of a process. Process thinking tends to channel thoughts and action along predetermined psychic and behavioral pathways. Innovation occurs when connections are made between selfevident thoughts ideas or entities and those that are not part of the mental landscape created by the existing process.

By way of example Forbes magazine is mailing the September 2000 edition to its more than 800000 subscribers with bar codes on every page where an advertisers web site appears. With the magazine they will be sending free of charge a scanning pen and computer software that will enable readers to access the specific web page identified by the bar code by sliding the electronic pen over it. This gives the advertiser the opportunity to provide detailed information about their products and services in a way that they could not in the magazine. This is an innovative way of making a connection between two different forms of media (physical and virtual) and merging them techno