NGO Soul + Strategy 045. What we as NGO leaders need to do to spur innovation: Dermot O'Gorman @ WWF Australia
Summary
What can we learn from civil society leaders who wish to spur the adoption and implementation of innovations?
How do humans – within organizations, and particularly in NGOs – react to change?
What is the best advice when leading NGOs through innovation, from a senior team leader’s perspective?
Today, I am interviewing Dermot O'Gorman of WWF Australia on the do's can don'ts of NGO leadership when it comes to promoting innovation.
Dermot’s Bio:
- Global Leader in Innovation for Sustainable Development
- CEO at WWF Australia
- Visiting Scholar, Stanford University Digital Civil Society Lab
- Board of directors, ACFID, Australian Council for International Development
We discuss:
- How can AI help us with our nonprofit core purpose: e.g. in the field of conservation, the monitoring of fish caught/harvested, from the source to the plate of the consumer – to find out whether it was poached or legitimately harvested
- High-risk, long-term capital in philanthropy is not sufficiently available, but NGOs also do not ask enough for it. We don’t have the right organizational risk profile in place, but also do not have the organizational systems to execute
- One of the most important things leaders can do to spur innovation is to invest in it
- CEOs cannot afford to delegate the creation of an innovation-friendly organizational climate to others: they have to be Chief innovators
- CEOs have to be able to say transparently: I do not know if this will succeed, we will test and validate, iterate, and work with decision stage gates till we figure it out
- Don’t fall victim to ‘shiny’ innovations and their halo effect, or to supersmart single ‘heroes’ that purport to introduce and manage innovation on their own
- CEOs among others have to give senior staff protection so that they can focus on 4-6 weeks sprints, and they have to signal to the org that they will manage the risks that come with innovation
- The board’s risk appetite matters a great deal as well
- Why the removal of old org processes is hard: you need something in place till the new process is in place; and if old processes are linked to values/ideas that staff have an attachment to, this is particularly hard
Quotes:
“We fundamentally underestimate both the upsides and the downsides of innovation”
“As CEO, you cannot delegate innovation to an innovation chief; you need to be around to take away obstacles, indicate the strategic boundaries within which innovations have to fit, etc."
“Don’t let the perception on brand risk – often in the head of one Communications staff member -- be an overblown obstacle”
Resources:
Dermot’s article: the need for a first ‘regenerative revolution’
Tosca's report: HERE
Links to previous episodes on innovation:
https://5oaksconsulting.org/podcast/
Youtube video of this podcast