Innovation insight: Make sure you're solving the right problem

Part One of the behind-the-scenes story of the FHL's first Power Play – a three-month social innovation sprint to increase female leadership in hockey.

In the summer of 2023, one of the FHL's community innovation teams spotted a core barrier for girls in hockey pretty quickly.?

?? Girls drop out of ice hockey at 2X the rate of boys.?

Why? Lack of female leaders behind the bench. Just 6% of coaches in Canada identify as female. This gap means that girls miss out on all the life skills and joy playing hockey can bring.

But figuring out how to change that, for good, turned out to be much more complex. They needed more time and expertise to find the right leverage point.

That's why they got together again in April 2024 with other business, sport, government and non-profit leaders to kick off our first #FHLPowerPlay, a 3-month innovation sprint to accelerate female leadership in hockey. While short-term approaches like coaching programs can help increase participation, the reality is that they've had little impact over the past 50 years. We need to play the long game to tackle the root causes of the problem.

In their first working session together, the Power Play team acknowledged that figuring out where to focus is one of the toughest parts of social innovation.

As the team explored the research and their own experiences, they highlighted several key system barriers to female leadership:

• lack of training and support
• league structures
• funding and policies
• attitudes and beliefs
• and an absence of role models and mentors.

But their innovation coach reminded them that they can't fix all of those things. They need to pick one opportunity they think will have the most long-term impact.

This is where most innovation stalls - it's too hard for passionate changemakers to let go of all the other problems they see and just pick one thing. In their earlier work, the Power Play team came up with the idea of finding ways to grow male allyship. Nobody knows if that's the right answer, but it's a good place to start.

However, despite what everyone thinks innovation looks like, coming up with ideas is just the first step. Now the hard work begins. How do they turn their big-picture idea into a specific solution that can create real system change? That's the challenge they'll start to tackle the next time they meet.

Stay tuned for more #innovationinaction updates from the #FHLPowerPlay - and get in touch with our comms team [email protected] if you'd like to support this critical work. #systemchange #behindthescenes #futureofhockey