Rankin Innovations

It's just a hard act to follow for me, I've got to say. When I was first asked to come and speak to this whole gathering, I was really curious about what I would have to say, because frankly, government is not really cutting edge. Some people have been as inclined to suggest that Director of Public Sector Innovation is actually a bit of an oxymoron, Simon, I'm looking at you. It's quite challenging here, I don't come from a VC, I have never been in a startup, but what I have done an awful lot of, an awful, is an operative word, is work in really quite large inc Now I'm not sure about the audience here, how many of you come from what you call like a large corporate or a large inc Excellent, okay good, I'm reassured. Government is of course one of the very large inc So what I'd I'm watching about how to. . . This one? Technology. So, first lesson is that pain is your friend. Pain is better be your friend if you're working in one of these organisations, because if you're trying to innovate and disrupt, frankly, you probably need to be a bit of a masochist. It's really hard work, these organisations are set up specifically to stifle innovation, that's not quite true, that's probably a bit harsh, but essentially, we're working in what's even deninicals an inward-looking hierarchical bureaucracy, which is sort of set up fundamentally to do what it does, do it well, and part of that is actually making sure that it stays very focused and doesn't deviate. So in that kind of context, disruption takes a lot more than a good idea. But it takes more than a good idea, and a lot of the good ideas are still inside the business as well, And one of the things that I've learnt over my time is that to make things happen, you need motivated people, and that's easy, But to really make things stick, you need committed people. And commitment is a very different thing to being enthusiastic. And I And that's what you want for actually this kind of work, because you want people who really have some skin in the game. And so the important thing is to try and find suffering in your organisation, okay? Now, suffering here means business need, right? It means that you're not trying to do something that's nice to have, but you're actually finding an entry point where people are in so much pain you can actually genuinely do something a bit different instead of incremental. That means you're looking for things What are we going to do? We could band aid it, we could invest in a giant enterprise news approach, or we could do something small and try something new. Where's the opportunity to introduce new things and get new things happening? So I think it's really important to try and find the need in the business and not just look for the nice to have. The second lesson I've got is around building the new. So this comes from this great quote by Socrates. He says, the secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Now, that's really difficult when you go into a large organisation or a large bureaucracy because everything around you is legacy. Everything around you, the systems, the processes, the way people make decisions, this is all entrenched, it's all systematic, and the whole organisation is built to protect itself from change. Now, if you're going in there as an innovator or disruptor to try and shake things up a bit, then this is really a war that you're waiting. It's a long-term thing and you need to pick your battles, otherwise you will explode and self-combust and then you're not much used to anybody. And part of the talent in that is actually choosing a fresh battlefield instead of building on something that's actually already happening. So as an example, we run an innovation fund in my area. And part of that is working with departments to do new projects and find those entry points and do things in a different way. And recently we got an application from a department, and the application was horribly uninspiring. It was said, we've got this legacy system and we'd really We're But this department we really wanted to do some work with, and so went out to them, we had a chat to them, and the team came back and they were really excited, and I couldn't figure out why because the application had been so woeful. And they said, look, what was actually uncovered is a genuine business problem here. We have a situation, it's an emergency housing for people who are in family violence crisis. And they're trying to find some kind of safe housing. They need it in real-time availability. And how it's working at the moment is the broker then makes a call around the different areas, sees what's available. They say, I don't feel Do It's a really manual, time-cons It's horrible for the people who are trying to get housing. It's horrible for the people who are trying to help them. The whole system is really broken. So what we had the opportunity to do there was to create an entry point and create a project where we can actually redefine the problem and start co-designing with the different participants to make something genuinely different happen. And that's a project that is going to get funded. So it's really important to try to remember to not fight the old systems. Lesson n So we already talked about the fact that public sector innovation. I think it's a very, it's a potentially expensive place to be. And I'm not sure if you want government taking that kind of risk. And so, And that's more at the fireworks end of the spectr At the other end of the spectr And so you want it to pick up its game a bit. And so what I And when I talk about fires, I mean things that you can start that are reasonably small to get up and running, but then they have their own moment So that instead of you trying to go out and do special cool things, you actually have the people on the ground making the change themselves and creating the transformation. And a great example of this is the recent project that we did with the emergency department in a local hospital, right? And they didn't have any way of being able to tell what their capacity was going to be on a day-to-day basis or a week-to-week basis. They'd be guessing in terms of what their demand was going to be. It's a school holiday next week. People have more accidents on a school holiday. Therefore, we'll open a new ward, that kind of thing. By putting in a new demand prediction analysis system from the CSIRO that was absolutely cutting edge and great stuff, we're actually able to save $700,000 a year for that hospital. Creates a better service for the Blue Agency department patients. You get service more quickly. The doctors know where their capacity is. They know how many beds, the staffing resources, and work more quickly. That's a fire. And it's even more of a fire, because if it works in one hospital, then it could work in all 17 hospitals across the state. So that starts to create its own change. And then you start looking at, okay, well, if we now know how busy the emergency department's going to be, and we can actually predict that a day, a week in advance, or even in real time, then the ambulances, which are passed the supply chain to emergency departments, can start figuring out about where they route, and should they route to an emergency department that's actually at full capacity, or would it be this close by, or maybe it would better for the patient to actually go somewhere further away that has greater capacity. That's a fire, right? That'something that actually starts to create genuine change and builds off itself. And I've always been a bit dismissive about the other end. Oh, I'm going to have to really hurry now. But the fireworks, what I wanted to say was that they'really angry. The fireworks side of things are really important as well in a big organization. It could be hard from the inside, because it looks a bit superficial, and you think, oh, that's not going to actually change anything. But it actually does. When you have these collab fests, or GovHack, or Innovation Jams, or these kind of things, they bring people together across the organization. And that transcends internal silos and silos, and it builds moment So you need both. I'm not very good at keeping time, am I? Okay, so never fail. I'm going to skim through this. I just hate that whole fail-fast thing. I think it's ridiculous. There's this great quote from Mark Andreessen that says, my goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing. I think that's absolutely true. And by going into an inc They're saying, hey, inc They value knowing what's going to happen next. And the challenge from an innovation perspective is trying to help them change the mindset around actually. It's not about never failing. It's about finding out fast. Try this thing, try it small. Keep the scope tight. Find out fast whether it works or not. Okay? And part of that is around getting the scope very clearly, being very clear about what you're testing for and not testing for, and then communicating it and keep coming back to that original scope and that original purpose. This is why we're doing it. It's proving that it's good. It's proving that it's not good. So my last thing, which is quite easy, is don't get pickled. It's really hard working in these organizations. And there's this great quote that I got from someone who joined Australia Post at one point who said, you know, you come in as a cuc And it's true, you know, as a h So the challenge is really to stay fresh. Make sure that you bring external inputs into the organization as much as possible. Make sure that you get out as much as possible today as I do today. And that's really your responsibility to the organization and you need to prioritize that as someone who wants to change things eternally because if you become just another one of the pickles and you're not adding any value to anybody. So that's my contribution today. It's pretty down in the weeds compared to, I think, probably a lot of the stuff that you'll be listening to, but I hope it's been helpful and I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks.