Exploring the paper Mazzucato, M., 2018. Mission-oriented innovation policies: challenges and opportunities. Industrial and corporate change, 27(5), pp.803-815.
Blog four of five, in a series by Dr Chrissi McCarthy.
In the previous two blogs of this series, we considered the business and social cases for EDI.
We found that, as with most things, the answer rarely lies in one extreme or another but with a balanced position.
When we are dealing with organisations, we must balance the needs of the organisation with the needs of its people. If we swing too far one way, the organisation can cease to function, serving no one. If we swing too far, the other profits are driven through exploitation.
The balance is key.
Most exemplary CEOs know that finance is an outcome not a driver.
When we focus all our efforts on finance alone, we forget what makes us successful. Besides, an amalgamated view is hard to untangle, making it difficult to see what exactly is being impacted and what is having the impact. You need to break it down a bit to gain clarity.
Similarly, the social case speaks to the heart of the organisation. It is my experience that most organisations have heart.
Whether it is clearly displayed as we see with the NHS, the Charitable sector, or HE. Or if it’s slightly more nuanced, like the small business that takes pride in its work, the multinational that wants to be the best at customer service, or the bank that really does want to improve the world through financial services.
For me, the heart of the business is knowing what it wants to achieve.
That’s where a mission-oriented approach comes in.
Taking a mission-oriented approach means outlining precisely what the organisation wants to achieve and setting a plan to do so.
Mazzucato’s paper delves much deeper into mission-oriented approaches for innovation policy from an economic standpoint. While there is much to be learnt, we are keeping it simple today and taking the premise and applying it to EDI, but I would encourage further reading if you are building a functioning framework.
Paraphrasing, there are three precise requirements of a mission-oriented project
- Missions should be well-defined
- A mission does not comprise a single project
- Missions should involve different types of actors
Let’s have a look at this from a frame of EDI work
The mission should be well defined.
You need to know what you want to achieve if you are ever to have a hope of achieving it. Then use FIE as a diagnostic lens to achieve it.
You need to establish the business’s directional, bounded, and accountable needs.
Most EDI work does not do this, which is why we end up with endless action plans and a struggle to demonstrate why the work mattered to the business.
Having a clear understanding of what is vital to the business, and how FIE builds on that, is key. It helps you build value in your work, which in turn increases the resources you have to impact people’s environments.
A mission does not comprise a single project.
Missions are big.
So, the work needed to undertake them is most likely to span more than one project.
Really understanding what needs to be done to bring this mission to fruition.
For example, your mission might be to further the organisational contribution to research; what that looks like for a large HE institution will be distinctly different from that of a boutique research agency.
You need to know your context and set scope, boundaries, and limits on the extent of the work.
Missions should involve different types of actors.
Coproduction is key; we often create strategy in isolation.
One person attempting to have all the answers.
It’s a hard ask, I’m inclined to say an impossible one.
Strategies of one miss too much.
Effective strategies ask the right questions, from a broad range of people seeking to understand their part in the organisation.
What works, what doesn’t, and how do we build on this knowledge?
Well-structured Coproduction reveals the nuance that makes it all work.
To be clear, poorly structured coproduction brings all the challenges of the social case, disappointing all who gave voice along the way.
So ensuring a clear strategy for gathering, analysing, implementing, and communicating decisions is key.
What does this give us?
When we position this work through a mission-oriented lens, we should build upon
- Value
- Context
- Coproduction
Three key, if underutilised, elements in any EDI work.
So if a mission-oriented approach is the next step, how do we take it?
In the final blog of the series, we will consider how to start implementing it.
