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(This is the third in a four-part series.)
Last week I wrote on the how leadership interaction can affect innovation. This week, we focus on disruption. The inspiration for this blog comes from a statement by Steven Justice - Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin RET.
Last week I wrote on the how leadership interaction can affect innovation. This week, we focus on disruption. The inspiration for this blog comes from a statement by Steven Justice - Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin RET.
When you stand in the future and look back, you are not bound by what you currently know. Drag the future into the present. A true innovative idea is disruptive, especially if there is a legacy system in place.DISRUPTION
"Disruption" - disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process. (Google Dictionary)On November 17, 1968, the NFL experienced the disruption of all disruptions. A decision by television executives to televise the movie "Heidi" instead of show the end of the game between the Jets and the Raiders would change how games were televised.
Check out the Decades TV Network video about the infamous game.
One of the greatest disruptions of all times regards one of this planet's greatest big thinkers and innovators, Leonardo da Vinci. Other than his artistic masterpieces, most of his works weren't publicly known until hundreds of years after his death.
The SciShow video Great Minds: Leonardo da Vinci does a great job of telling this great disruption story.
As students of leadership, we know there are periods of enlightenment and ages of darkness. Big thinkers like da Vinci see what the ordinary eye doesn't or are so curious that they think and dig beyond what society thinks is "normal." Da Vinci deconstructed birds to understand flight and corpes to understand the workings of the human body. Some may have thought him mad. As Monday morning quarterbacks, we call him brilliant. Much of what a Vinci envisioned in the areas of engineering and medical innovation came too soon. There was no sense of urgency for his findings. No problem to solve. No disruption apparent. The Renaissance was about art, and art he did well.
Fast forward: Today we talk about renewable energy and climate change. We have a crisis at the border and more jobs than people who want to fill them (including those in wildland fire). But...is there a disruption? Do we need to innovate? Is there a sense of urgency or are those sounding the trumpets deemed mad by parts of society?
Wildland Fire Challenge - Digging a Little Deeper
Consider the following statement from Blackbird - A Legacy of Innovation
After success there is a period of relentless incrementalism (resting on your laurels or incremental improvement) - a threat to the mission; you don't want to be doing the same things over and over again. Look for breakout capabilities (that is what we look for in innovation) - Sean Roche, Associate Deputy Director, CIA, Digital Innovation
- Has the wildland fire service gotten to a point of incremental improvement?
- Are we doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results?
- Is the time right for breakout capabilities to emerge?
Pam McDonald is a writer/editor for BLM Wildland Fire Training and Workforce Development and member of the NWCG Leadership Subcommittee. The expressions are those of the author.
1 comment:
I am an AD. ADs are a very large part of our wildland fire fighting. In fact, I haven't been in an expanded dispatch in recent years where the largest part of the staff wasn't ADs. Many work on the lines, in admin, and in leadership.
Yet, ADs seem to continually get the back seat when it comes to preference, and training. We all kind of take it, accepting it as a sort of punishment for not being permanently employed by the Government. Many of us, because of the shunting to the side, have Impostor's Syndrome, knowing we know our jobs well, do our jobs well, but not being recognized on a higher level for our knowledge and skills.
I, and many other ADs have had to fight just to work from season to season, not knowing when someone above is going to deny us the chance because they "don't like ADs". This is a well known issue, but no one seems to want to do anything about it.
ADs are a valuable resource to the fire world, and someone needs to acknowledge that.
Maybe this can be our next innovation?
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