Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization

Usefulness of an “innovation doctrine”

• Many see “innovation doctrine” as vague, slideware-level advice akin to mission statements and “think outside the box.”
• Critics argue doctrine alone can’t overcome entrenched incentives, budgets, and legal constraints.
• Some defend the idea if “doctrine” is understood like military doctrine: clear principles and processes that enable effective action, not rigid rules.

Bureaucracy, incentives, and dysfunction

• Large orgs and agencies accumulate rules to manage risk, audits, and complexity; this slows even trivial changes.
• “Innovation hero” stories are seen as symptoms: when basic automation requires months of political and procedural effort, the system is self‑defeating.
• Multiple comments stress incentives: budgets tied to headcount, risk-averse middle management, and reward systems that favor compliance over improvement.

Government vs. private sector

• Disagreement over whether government needs innovation: some say it’s a monopoly with little competitive pressure; others note states compete fiercely (e.g., militarily) and spend heavily on innovation.
• Public-sector constraints (civil-service protections, budgeting rules, strict accountability) make firing and change hard, but targeted units with top-level backing (e.g., digital services) can work.

Culture, trust, and middle management

• Recurrent theme: leadership doesn’t trust “grunts,” assumes they’ll create “NIH spaghetti,” and so builds heavy oversight.
• Others counter that messy homegrown systems often arise from too much oversight, budget denials, and perverse promotion incentives (e.g., reward “org-wide impact” for reinventing wheels).
• Middle management is depicted as the main blocker: judged on safe delivery of top initiatives, hostile to nonstandard work, and motivated to veto bottom-up ideas.

Risk, change, and the quality of innovation

• Several argue most ideas are bad; friction is a necessary selection mechanism, not automatically “dysfunction.”
• Others respond that zero tolerance for failure kills necessary experimentation; slack time and “screwing around” are required.
• People and organizations strongly resist change; even small improvements can trigger “immune responses.”

Metrics, process, and gaming the system

• Stories of Jira/Agile metrics being optimized at the expense of real work: teams inflate or split tickets to satisfy burndown charts or “planned points” KPIs.
• This is seen as a sign of deeper dysfunction: metrics drive behavior, but are often decoupled from actual customer or mission value.

Career and human consequences

• “Innovation heroes” often burn out, get marginalized, or leave; for every celebrated hero, several quietly exit.
• Some suggest the rational strategy in such orgs is to automate your own work quietly and avoid visibility.
• Others note that large organizations often prefer acquisitions over internal innovation, because their core strategy is to defend existing business models, not disrupt them.