What we do

Organizational Transformation & Innovation Culture Development

Leaders have a profound and deep impact on the organizational culture and innovation environment of their enterprise.

We’ve found that organizational growth and transformation with concurrent and rapidly increasing staff levels changes the culture. We begin by collaborating with you to establish a desired culture — a high performing culture — built on a foundation of integrity, resilience, and innovation.

After identifying the current culture, we support your team to create a vision for your desired culture. Your team will then distinguish the gap between the current culture and your desired culture allowing your team to see new pathways to the high-performance culture you are committed to establishing.

As a result of this cultural transformation, employees, have the freedom to fully express their talent; become more engaged in their work and the organization naturally becomes a great place to work.

Our work is designed for organizations that are:

Services

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS with CULTURAL INTEGRATION

Outcome:

Executives in the companies that are acquired meet with the acquiring company executives to create alignment on a new vision, mission, values, and strategy.
To have the alignment session succeed, both the acquired and acquirers engage in a process of letting go of their past to create a new future company.
They implement the new strategy and in doing so they elevate their leadership presence and abilities.
They implement the new strategy and in doing so they elevate their leadership presence and abilities.
Our process to create the new future with the merged company is very powerful and customized. People will leave aligned in a new direction and new future for the company and will be engaged in the organization and open and ready to implement a new strategy. There will be structure in place to culturally integrate.

Applying our Innovation Ecosystem methodology, participants on implementation teams develop as leaders through hands-on work that directly strengthens organizational innovation. They learn to iterate, experiment, and manage projects in an innovation ecosystem environment that supports organizational agility and cross-functional collaboration, enabling them to lead breakthrough innovation, innovation culture, and organizational transformation.

This innovation ecosystem methodology is proven to deliver extraordinary business transformation results. In one engagement, a $15M operating-margin goal became $54M through strategic implementation and innovation-driven execution. Our Innovation Ecosystem offsite, informed by foundational work with Tom Peters and IDEO, builds self-generating innovation capability, and participation consistently accelerates leadership development and executive alignment.

Mergers and Acquisition’s: Aspects of the Change Journey

Leadership Transition
Community Building
Cultural Alignment: Create and Align on New Identity: Mission, Vision, Values and Culture
Strategic Planning through the Lens of Newly Created Future
Implementation of the Strategic Plan
Organizational Design Consistent with New Identity

Strategy or Critical Projects Implementation

Applying our methodologies in Innovation Ecosystem design and the Innovation Ecosystem methodology, participants on the implementation teams are naturally developed as leaders as they are part of a hands-on team making a significant contribution to the organization and its organizational innovation efforts. They will learn new ways to iterate, probe, experiment, and manage projects in an innovation ecosystem environment. These skills in the Innovation Ecosystem framework enable them to be leaders of innovation culture and organizational agility in their organizations.

This innovation ecosystem methodology is proven and has shown to produce extraordinary business transformation results. For example, for a goal of increasing operating margins by $15M over a year, the team reached $54M through strategic implementation. The kickoff Innovation Ecosystem offsite was designed from our foundational work with Tom Peters and IDEO and adapted to support breakthrough innovation. Everyone that has ever been on one of our Innovation Ecosystem implementation teams has been promoted in their job and grown exponentially as leaders; it has proven to be an extraordinary, hands-on leadership development and executive alignment process.

Executive Team Alignment

A one- or two-day executive alignment offsite to have an executive team align around a critical project, core process, or addressing a business imperative within an innovation ecosystem. We begin by getting familiar with and analyzing what there is to align on—the pros and cons—and we interview everyone on the team using our deep listening methodology. We customize the design using interview data and organizational context.

The outcome: An executive leadership team aligned and in action around a critical project, strategic process, or to explore a solution to a complex business challenge. This executive alignment increases the velocity of decision-making, execution, and resolution, enabling organizational transformation and breakthrough innovation.

Leadership Development

Our Leadership Development programs are all customized to identify and address the leadership capability gaps required to elevate the performance of leaders and support organizational transformation within an innovation ecosystem.

Outcomes:

Identify and refine one’s personal leadership model and the implications.

Practice key leadership capabilities:

Systems Thinking and Design
Deep listening from a blank canvas
Shaping/Managing Culture
Building Relationships
Accountability
Leading Learning
Design Thinking- Innovation

Our Leadership Development curriculum is based on the following assumptions:

Self-awareness is essential to effective leadership.
There is no one right model for everyone.
Personal alignment requires matching one’s leadership style with an organization’s culture.
Leaders model learning by continuously developing their capabilities.
Leaders design structures that promote learning and raise the collective IQ.

Executive Forum

An executive team gets together every month to learn from each other within an innovation ecosystem. We use this offering in addition to executive alignment sessions to continuously practice the alignment process as a team and to learn how to operate with organizational resilience and agility in addressing complex business issues.

Executive team members learn from each other and begin a consistent practice of working within their team to align around critical issues, strengthen cross-functional collaboration, and learn how to navigate change together within an organizational innovation environment.

We customize each executive forum to include targeted leadership development areas. We identify leadership capability gaps for each member, see where there is overlap across the executive leadership team, and design sessions to address the shared development needs required for organizational transformation and sustainable innovation. This executive forum methodology can be used with boards as well.

Executive coaching

Executive Coaching is an inquiry-based approach to personal and professional development within an innovation ecosystem, aimed at creating self-awareness, generating strategic action, and facilitating continuous learning and growth. It focuses on improving leadership performance by helping individuals develop and sustain new perspectives, mindsets, leadership skills, and behaviors that support organizational transformation, executive alignment, and innovation culture.