Organizations benefit from giving themselves a strategic "rebooting" from time to time. It can be tough to put aside the very real operational and administrative concerns to focus long term on seeking new strategic alternatives and remaking strategic choices about the investment of management attention and financial resources. The Co-Creativity Institute specializes in setting an environment and context which allows contentious issues to be talked about complexly, creatively, and strategically.
We are expert at developing an understanding of organizational and strategic dynamics with interviews and other data collection before leading intensive meetings designed to develop a shared strategic understanding of opportunities and threats, design new strategic approaches, and build cohesiveness among the executives in delivering on the details of the new strategies.
We operate from a few key principles:
| The world keeps changing and when we are focused on operational urgencies, it can be difficult to take the strategic perspective together. |
| Strategy is best generated by the people in the thick of things, dealing with operational realities and keeping track of emerging changes in the field. Our expertise is in helping such experienced experts take a more strategic view of issues and discover collaborative and synergistic opportunities. |
| Creatively facing the real conflicts and dilemmas facing an organization can build a much more appealing inventory of alternatives. More importantly, it reinforces the teamwork of diverse individuals, each of whom is responsible for advocating conflicting goals. |
| The opportunity context of organizational units is constantly shifted by industry and technology changes. New strategies may be needed to respond to shifts in industry structure, industry technology, management practices, as well as changes in the demographics of current and potential employees and customers. |
| Organizations are also expected to react to and take appropriate advantage of emerging computer and communication technologies. |
| It is critical to realize that strategy is about deciding what not to do and what to do poorly, so that resources are focused where they will have the most impact on organizational goals and values. Any organization should have a mission that exceeds its resources, so it is necessary to set priorities, adjusting them from time to time as the opportunity context shifts. |
We can successfully organize an entire strategy process, or integrate our support into an ongoing process and/or retreat. Our contribution is to make sure that participants get into a the strategic parts of their brains, that issues do not get blocked by organizational structure or organizational beliefs and paradigms. Once issues and opportunities emerge, our team works to help the participants reach some kind of closure and consensus on these critical elements. As part of the preparation for the meeting, we gather input from some or all of the attendees by visit, phone, or Internet survey.
During the meeting we review classic strategic insights and help the participants apply various well proven tools to more clearly understand and discuss the dynamics of the department’s opportunities and goals. As appropriate, we can integrate specific approaches to strategy the organization has selected as appropriate, including popular management books. We also capture the stream of interaction and, after the meeting, summarize the information, ideas, and insights generated by the meeting in a report that will generally be made available to all attendees. As ideas and alternatives emerge during the process, participants will be encouraged to format them in ways (such as budget requests and amendments to corporate standards) which fit departmental and organizational decision making processes.
Our goal is for the strategic and executive team to leave with a clearer idea of each other's goals and perspectives, a common sense of the organization's mission, strategy, and tactics, and relationships among attendees that will greatly facilitate the implementation of the strategy based changes and tactics.