Tackling barriers to trade, the 'Chinese Walls' erected in large organizations to repel initiatives and the "not invented here!" syndrome and open governance and government

1. The ‘Humpty Dumpty’ Problem
Nicholas Robinson, May, 2015 1
Open Government: Innovators and Gatekeepers

2. Combating innovation-hostility in
organizations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKreL1jvkg
Gatekeepers: the ‘Humpty Dumpty’
problem
An ecosystems approach to enable
more open governance
Monocultures stifle creativity
2(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015

3. Culture and Counterculture: Reason
and Belief
• Aka. hearts and minds
• Organizational culture
– May become fragmented
• departmentalization and roles may develop a culture
and a counterculture
• As documented and occurring in our inner-city state schools in the UK: external
peer group pressures reach both inside and outside the classroom (Sociology of
Education)
• B. F. Skinner's “Technology of behavior in American life: From consumer culture to
counterculture” (google)
• T. Liyoshi, M.S.V. Kumar, “Opening Up Education”, Ch. 1; Visions of a new learning
ecology, MIT, Google Books, (c)2008
• Google “education, classroom learning, culture social science, counterculture, peer
group pressure”
(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015 3

4. Socially smart behaviour
• Those that succeed in work and life do so by: -
– Adopting a set of rules
• Playing the game
– Developing an ecosystems awareness
– Safety in numbers
– Inclusion and exclusion
• Self-preservation
– rarely rock the boat
• Adopting survival tactics
– know their Machiavelli
– form alliances and associations aka. networking
– Develop empathic skills
• Develop a “counter-culture”
– Humpty’s hard shell
– Deploy “not invented here”
(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015 4

5. The Humpty Dumpty Problem
Closed governance: -
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall ..
for Humpty Dumpty was overseer of
all ..
5(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015

6. Europe 2.0
• Open Government
• Science 2.0
• Creative Solutions
• Organizational Culture
• Environmental
awareness
• Empathy with the local
social and economic
environment(s) aka.
cultures
(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015 6

7. Humpty Dumpty became prosperous
and important ..
– So he developed a hard shell
• to protect his soft sell
– And because he was so brittle
• he built a wall
– So he could sit high and tall
• and control all passage below
– And prevent collaboration with outsiders
• who might threaten his position
7(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015

8. Humpty The Great Gatekeeper
• Mature organizational structures become
brittle because they end-up headed by
‘Humpty Dumpty’ types
• “I run a budget of $1M a day
– to keep intruders away”
– We ‘don’t do inventions’ that are “not invented
here”!
– We run a monoculture!
(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015 8

9. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall..
• Male territorialism and organizational
structures
– organizational structures beget (cause to appoint)
organizational thinkers
– job-security under threat
• creativity-driven targets struggle in a monoculture
• Trade barriers were erected
– overseen by yet more gatekeepers
– But no one could see why, except of course
Humpty from on-high
9(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015

10. Not all the Kings Horses
• Nor all the Kings men
• Could put Humpty together again!
– Organizations run by rank and seniority are not
self-healing
(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015 10

11. Brittle Vs. Self-Healing Organizational
Cultures
– Cultures and Countercultures
– Lack of collaboration occurs where everyone
works on an authoritarian ‘need to know’ basis
– Inflexibility begets inflexibility in the ranks
– Leaders set the culture ‘trickle-down’
• Authoritarian vs. Collaborative
• Creative vs. Organizational
• MBO vs. MBC
(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015 11

12. Towards Open Governance
• Incentivising self-healing organizational
countercultures
– Understanding thoughts and feelings as the
determinants of behaviours
– Adopting “continuous improvement” as a culture
– Understanding Ecosystems
– Implementing reward systems
• Career progression
(c) Nicholas Robinson Design, May 2015 12