With a title like Chief Innovation Officer, one could assume this work is all about PowerPoints with big ideas, how to make it work, and how to cut back.
But that isn’t Howard’s story.
Howard entered public service right out of high school, spending his whole career in local government.
“I’ve been working in the public sector since 2011,” he said.
He first interacted with Change Agents in Virginia Beach, where he was the assistant to the Deputy City Manager.
Howard explained that a combination of important mentors and Change Agents, “kind of set my whole career.”
This class not only made change accessible, but it also brought a different definition to what innovation could mean.
“For me as an administrator, innovation looks like process improvement work, it’s the data analytics, it’s the performance management.
But really…it’s about how do we help our organizations do more good in the communities that they serve?”
From there, innovation stopped meaning buzzwords and a spiral of PowerPoints with no real action.
Instead, Howard grabbed onto practicality—the small changes that turn into huge results.
So, he took his experience over to Myrtle Beach, utilizing tools like City Stat, Change Agents, and rvrwrk to craft his own innovation haven.
Instead of waiting years for budget and board approvals, Myrtle Beach built a way to experiment first with the “Living Lab.”
One of the tools they used was Coco.
For Howard, the appeal revealed itself immediately through the task of process mapping.
He explained, “What would have taken me six to eight hours of my life and their life, I now have them call Coco and get information in a matter of 15 minutes, which jump-starts all of our conversations.”
Something as simple as cutting back the time of process mapping not only saves the time of employees, but also allows people to start enacting change more quickly.
Now, they won’t lose themselves in the slog of transcribing and process mapping.
With Howard’s motivation and a snowball of seeing change happen, he wanted to build his own Innovation Academy in Myrtle Beach, calling me in to help with the first cohort.
This isn’t just a test run anymore; it’s taking that first step and seeing change happen in ways that matter.
In the first cohort of Myrtle Beach’s Innovation Academy, just 20 participants had…
- Cost savings: $123,000
- Staff time saved: 3,000 hours
Howard put it best:
“That’s pretty freaking impressive.”
“A lot of organizations, especially small ones, think they don’t have the resources. No, no, you absolutely can, and you can get started. You just actually have to start…
…And when you start, pull in these tools. Pull in Change Agents Training. Pull in Coco, test it one time, and see the magic unfold.”
In Myrtle Beach, Howard is just one example of how people are enacting change in their communities.
One of the strongest examples from Myrtle Beach came from an employee named Becca, working in opioid response.
She asked us:
How can we serve our residents better?
Becca works in opioid response, connecting people experiencing substance use disorder to treatment, recovery housing, and peer support and other recovery resources.
After using Coco, running through a process map, Becca saw that there was a flaw in their system.
When they’ve identified someone in need, it takes them about 7 days to get back to that person.
At that point, their window of intervention closed.
Becca’s solution? Access to a system.
Instead of waiting to give a report, Becca’s access sped up the process, and as a result, “she’s literally saving lives,” Howard said.
We always think of innovation as these huge ideas, sprawling and almost intangible.
We always think, ‘That’s too hard, no, that won’t work, it’s going to take a long time to fix this, why would we change if it works?’
When in reality, Becca took one small step to enact a huge change.
With tools like Change Agents and Coco in your back pocket, taking that first step gets a lot easier.
Interested in kickstarting innovation in your city? Drop me a line here for a free consultation.
P.S. Interested in seeing how Coco can help you map out your processes in just a few hours? Drop me a line here to schedule a free demo.
P.P.S. ICMA kicks off another Innovation Bootcamp in June. Click here to join us!
P.P.P.S. May 2026 soundtrack (courtesy of Kora):