During the last half of June, we are focusing on the characteristics of an innovative organization. Which of these attributes are already within your local command? Which of these elements is your organization promoting? Which of these traits should your team advance?
Organizational agility is increasingly an information age need. The landscape is littered with once successful institutions which did not move away from bureaucratic management processes, did not embrace sharing information, and did not develop a tolerance for failure. Those organizations no longer exist. We are at a tipping point in history, and the future is inherently uncertain. Relying solely on our traditional, slow moving forms of operational dominance is no longer sufficient.
Many of our bureaucratic processes trace back to the Cold War, an era when stability and preserving a symmetrical balance of power were paramount. While these processes began with good intentions, when rigidly applied they are the antithesis of innovation. In today’s environment, these same processes are now a source of competitive disadvantage. With our own decisions mired by endless layers of process, our adversaries, freed from such constraints, are outpacing and outmaneuvering us in the innovation cycle.
As the past decade of combat operations have shown, enlisted Sailors and Marines were empowered to make life or death decisions every day. Similarly, mid-level military officers are entrusted with commanding multi-million dollar war fighting platforms, forward deployed around the globe. The same level of trust, empowerment and agile decision-making needs to spread throughout the naval enterprise and we must work together to streamline bureaucratic processes, remove unnecessary levels of review, and decentralize decision-making to increase agility.
Share your ideas on the DON/SECNAV Innovation website: http://www.secnav.navy.mil/innovation/.