July 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 49

Increasing the diversity of leadership
teams leads to more and better
innovation.

Esports is now mainstream and,
even without the live event spectators, provides significant opportunities for community engagement.
Agencies should continue building
dedicated esports spaces, providing
it within summer camp offerings
and partnering with local academic institutions, tech companies,
hardware providers and gamers
to, eventually, make esports one of
their core program offerings.
A Moment of Zen:
Keep evolving. Today's next practice will become tomorrow's best
practice.

How Your Organization
Can Be a Next Practice
Organization

Champion true diversity,
equity and inclusion of
people (and ideas).

The best ideas come from the most
diverse perspectives and life stories. A 2018 Boston Consulting
Group (BCG) study (tinyurl.com/
yb7dfb43) of 1,700 different companies across eight countries found
that " increasing the diversity of
leadership teams leads to more and
better innovation and improved financial performance. " Companies
with more diverse management
teams have 19 percent higher revenue due to innovation compared to
those with below average diversity.
Park and recreation agencies
can benefit from this diversityinnovation premium when leaders
intentionally support and elevate
diverse perspectives and differing
voices throughout the organization.
In the end, let the best idea win!

failure (and being blamed for it), they
will seek tried and tested choices and
simply do what they've always done.

Build a blame-free
culture that supports
failure.

Emulating best practices allows
for fail-safe strategies that help you
do just enough so that you " don't
fail, " but don't necessarily ensure
you " do succeed. " Henry Ford,
Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Reed
Hastings and Elon Musk didn't
build Ford, Disney, Apple, Netflix
or Tesla/SpaceX, respectively, by
trying " not to fail. " They did it by
repeatedly failing and innovating
until it worked.
Round Rock Parks and Recreation Department in Texas utilizes a " Shark Tank " style approach
where staff present new ideas, service or events that the department
funds, resulting in such successful
events as Pop Up Play Day and
Water Adventure Camp.
The Milwaukee Public Schools
Department of Recreation and Community Services (Milwaukee Recreation) went further by combining a
" Shark Tank " style activity as a part
of its work with equity. Staff teams
pitched ideas to help make an area
of the department's offerings become
more equitable to the community.
For these initiatives to sustain, it is
important that leadership creates a
safe space for new ideas and continues
to support the staff even when they
fail. If staff members are afraid of

Be open to " aha "
moments beyond
your own industry and
geography.

Adopting existing best practices can
help improve existing business models, but not when a pandemic may
have entirely transformed that model.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz got the inspiration for expresso
from visiting Milan and modeled the
company from a coffee shop to become the third place (after home and
work) in people's daily lives. What
can your organization learn from
the way the Prime Minister of New
Zealand led her response to the pandemic, how the German Bundesliga
restarted their soccer league without fans or what teachers and kids
worldwide have done to adapt to
e-learning virtually overnight?
A Moment of Zen:
Change is coming: Be the force for
change or you will be forced to change.

Final Thought
In a world of Blockbusters, always
be a Netflix.
Neelay Bhatt is Vice President of PROS Consulting
Inc. (neelay.bhatt@prosconsulting.com).

P A R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N . O R G | J U LY 2 0 2 0 |

Parks & Recreation

July 2020 - Parks & Recreation

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