Leading innovation inside government: culture, coaching, and courage

Executive overview

Most organisations fail at innovation not because of the wrong tools, but because leaders haven't been prepared to behave differently. Susie Braam spent 20+ years in UK national security before building two government innovation units and advising across sectors.

Training changes nothing if the culture rewards the old behaviours. Coaching leaders through real, live situations — when they feel pressure to default to control — is the only thing that sticks.

The courage to protect innovation from the organisation itself is the defining leadership skill.

Defining innovation and finding early adopters

• Innovation = anything new that creates value; ranges from process tweaks to groundbreaking capability shifts.
• Spending the first 2–3 years trying to convince sceptics is wasted energy — find the early adopters instead.
• Early adopters self-identify: they know they have a problem and are actively seeking a solution.
• The first "poster child" revealed enormous R&D spend with no visibility to the leader it was meant to serve.
• That leader became an advocate to peers — case studies spread faster than arguments.

Why training fails and coaching works

• Leaders nod along to training, then return to the same incentive structures and default to old behaviours.
• The critical gap: knowing what good looks like vs. having the courage to do it when the pressure is real.
• Coaching works because it meets leaders in the moment — when their boss is asking for answers and the team needs space.
• The goal is helping leaders do something that feels countercultural even when they know it's probably right.
• Storytelling accelerates the shift: showing the concrete impact of unhelpful leadership behaviours on teams makes it real.

The car crash incident

• An innovation team spent a week in Lean Startup immersion, then six weeks on discovery — world-class work.
• They were presented to a leadership team that had received no coaching or preparation.
• The meeting collapsed; the session had to be closed early to protect the team.
• Half the team quit. The talent was lost because the leaders didn't know how to receive evidence.
• The lesson: coaching the leadership is not optional — it determines whether innovation teams survive.

Culture vs. mindset

• Culture = the behaviours that are rewarded and incentivised in the system.
• Mindset = internal dialogue: can I hold uncertainty, stay curious, not rush to a solution?
• Behaviour is the external manifestation of mindset — you can't change one without the other.
• The two hardest behaviours in practice: protecting innovation teams from the core business, and not rushing prematurely to a solution.
• Perceived pressure is often as damaging as real pressure — leaders pre-empt demands that were never made.

Embedding innovation enablers inside blockers

• Compliance, legal, security, and commercial are typically framed as barriers to innovation.
• Braam's approach: go to each area's head and request a named person whose job objective includes enabling innovation — not just blocking risk.
• This shifts their frame from "ensure compliance" to "achieve the mission outcome in a compliant way."
• The change: thinking creatively about how to design new processes, rather than defaulting to "no, follow the process."

Why government and private sector aren't that different

• Every sector believes it's uniquely complex. Braam doesn't buy it, and doesn't find it helpful.
• Regulated environments (banking, insurance, healthcare, government) may require earlier stakeholder engagement — that's a consideration, not a different process.
• The Lean Startup methodology applies; what sometimes needs adapting is language.
• "Customer" triggered resistance in national security — "beneficiaries" or "end users" achieved the same thinking without the wall.
• The word "innovation" itself can be toxic in organisations where past attempts failed — drop the word, keep the practice.

Innovation in crisis vs. steady state

• Organisations routinely innovate during crises because bureaucracy gets stripped away and decision-makers become available.
• That fact exposes what's broken in the steady state: layers that disable speed and proximity to information.
• The design question is how to replicate crisis-mode conditions without the crisis — pushing decisions down, clarifying strategic direction so those closer to the information can act.

Where the practice is heading

• Economic pressure causes organisations to close down innovation budgets — exactly when they shouldn't.
• The path forward: align every innovation activity tightly to key strategic priorities and show impact explicitly.
• Portfolio approaches with varied risk profiles, strong storytelling, and visible progress are what sustain innovation through constraint.
• When more money and people aren't available, innovation is the only way out — but leadership has to protect the space for it to happen.