Moonshots, Engagement and The Crowd Sourcing of Innovation
More and more of our leadership challenges seem to be “moonshots”. Incredibly complex and seemingly intractable challenges. What alternatives exist to “problem solving as usual”? Recent history and current experiments may offer suggestions. The last 10 years have shown us the potential of web based social engagement. Our second decade is showing us how that potential can be applied when the challenge requires a “moonshot” – a level of innovation which is beyond the ability of any small group of people acting on their own. “Crowdsourcing” (human engagement at the scale of the whole) may hold some hope.
... Read more about how your potential can be applied when the challenge requires a “moonshot” in the June 2010 newsletter.
What Managers can do to Increase Employee Engagement
When I was in business school my leadership class professor had us complete an activity that’s really stuck with me. The exercise goes like this: take out a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper, place it horizontally on the table, create a timeline starting with the year of your first job and ending in the present. Write in your positions along the timeline then draw a line graph creating peaks at your career highpoints and valleys where you were less satisfied. Step back, look at the peaks and identify what it was about those jobs that made them high points.
... Read more about how to Increase Employee Engagement in the April 2010 newsletter.
Six Challenges Shaping Our Work and Our World:
What’s Possible in Turbulent Times
In this mid-winter newsletter we reflect on our work with organizations and communities over the last year, and highlight six challenges that are shaping our work and our world. In response to requests from our readers for “real life stories from the field”, we share in this issue inspiring client cases that demonstrate what’s possible during turbulent times.
... Read more about how organizations change to meet economic challenges in the February 2010 newsletter.
Got Momentum?
Ever leave a work meeting, conference, or retreat with a surge of energy and ideas around “what” to do to innovate and improve, yet soon afterward revert to familiar habits, unclear about how to sustain the innovation and momentum? Does your team’s follow-through require the cooperation of others to build on innovative ideas and implement them? No matter how enlightening the retreat, or how sophisticated our processes for staying informed and connected thereafter, we’re often challenged to find more meaningful ways to stay engaged. On top of a busy work schedule, we need relevant, productive ways to share knowledge and to create lasting new solutions together – in integrated, sustainable, everyday ways.
… Read more about sustaining momentum in your group or team in our December Newsletter!
From Innovation To Inspired Action: The Business Innovation Factory Summit
All nine IPI partners recently participated in the 5th annual Business Innovation Factory “Collaborative Innovation Summit”. This intimate two day event featured an impressive mix of storytellers - artists and scientists, designers and entrepreneurs, social and political boundary busters, technology wizards and well traveled explorers of the human spirit, from around the world. Each person shared a highly personal experience of innovation in the way value is delivered. The experience has sparked many new conversations among us …What does innovation really mean?
… Read more about leading innovation through collaboration in our November 2009 Newsletter!
Wisdom from the Storm: A story about initiatives in difficult times
An exceptional organization's resilience comes through even in the worst of times. Bernard Mohr, a partner of mine, and I had the privilege of facilitating the creation of a highly participative team-based organization which has outperformed the competition consistently over the last couple of decades. Their very vibrant culture has survived several senior management changes and two buy-outs, yet it still retained its basic team design.
… Read more about how positive team participation drives organizational performance in our October 2009 Newsletter!
Leader and Coach: A Partnership for Turbulent Times
Organizations today are facing unprecedented pressure to change. Change is not new, but success in this environment requires deep change - structural change, cultural change, economic change. We literally need to reinvent our organizations and the way we lead them to get results. The climate inside and outside our organizations challenges leaders to lead from the top, from the bottom and from the middle as well! In these turbulent times, many leaders are turning to one-on-one leadership coaching to support and develop their capacity to lead deep change.
Change leadership sounds like it's about getting others to do things differently, but unless those of us in leadership roles change - how we think, how we speak, how we make decisions - we ourselves will undermine the very best of plans.
… Read more about change leadership in our September 2009 Newsletter!
The Paradox of Innovation and Constraint
I have to admit it. I have arrived at a stage in life where I need a good nights sleep on those long haul flights to overseas clients - and that means a flat bed, not one that feels like a hike up Mount Everest. Of course most business class seats have been designed to maximize airline income vs providing restful sleeping spaces. Until now. Continental Airlines has just announced their new "flat and longer" seats. And how did they do that?
It appears they asked their "innovation team" to freely imagine the possibilities of passenger comfort without reducing airline income. How do both freedom and constraint (and other seeming paradoxes) act as enablers of innovation? Let's explore further.
… Read more about positive change and innovation in constrained circumstances in our August 2009 Newsletter!
Are You Part of the Strengths Revolution?
Do you know how to LEAD from your Strengths?
Do you and your team spend most of your time playing to your strengths?
… Read about how LEAD works to ignite Strength Based Leadership in our July 2009 Newsletter!
Quick Links
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Upcoming Events
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July 25-30 - Bethel, ME, USA
NTL Institute - Appreciative Inquiry - Strategic Planning
August 3-4 - Portland, ME, USA
Sustaining Cooperative Capacities: An Appreciative Inquiry Workshop for Lasting Positive Change
October 7-8, 2010 - Providence, RI, USA
Sustaining Cooperative Capacities: An Appreciative Inquiry Workshop for Lasting Positive Change
October 29, 2010 - Cambridge, MA, USA
Performance by Design: Building a Strength-Based Culture
Nov. 30 - Dec 3, 2010 - Ottawa, ON, Canada
Appreciative Inquiry Foundations Workshop: Igniting and Sustaining Positive Change
Click here to learn more about our events
|
|
info@innovationpartners.com Website More Contact Options
|
According to the Gallup Organization, many of us don't! In fact, our natural strengths - the source of our greatest potential - often get lost in the shuffle as we "put out fires" or scramble to solve the problem of the moment.
What if you could bust the cycle of deficit-based thinking and incremental improvement, and replace it with a simple four-step process designed to address daily opportunities and challenges from a strength-based point of departure?
LEAD is a strength-based planning process that draws on the research and principles of Appreciative Inquiry, Appreciative Intelligence, Positive Psychology and the Strengths Movement and grows out of the simple idea that what we focus on increases.
Moonshots, Engagement and The Crowd Sourcing of Innovation
More and more of our leadership challenges seem to be “moonshots”. Incredibly complex and seemingly intractable challenges. What alternatives exist to “problem solving as usual”? Recent history and current experiments may offer suggestions. The last 10 years have shown us the potential of web based social engagement. Our second decade is showing us how that potential can be applied when the challenge requires a “moonshot” – a level of innovation which is beyond the ability of any small group of people acting on their own. “Crowdsourcing” (human engagement at the scale of the whole) may hold some hope.
... Read more about how your potential can be applied when the challenge requires a “moonshot” in the June 2010 newsletter.
What Managers can do to Increase Employee Engagement
When I was in business school my leadership class professor had us complete an activity that’s really stuck with me. The exercise goes like this: take out a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper, place it horizontally on the table, create a timeline starting with the year of your first job and ending in the present. Write in your positions along the timeline then draw a line graph creating peaks at your career highpoints and valleys where you were less satisfied. Step back, look at the peaks and identify what it was about those jobs that made them high points.
... Read more about how to Increase Employee Engagement in the April 2010 newsletter.
Six Challenges Shaping Our Work and Our World:
What’s Possible in Turbulent Times
In this mid-winter newsletter we reflect on our work with organizations and communities over the last year, and highlight six challenges that are shaping our work and our world. In response to requests from our readers for “real life stories from the field”, we share in this issue inspiring client cases that demonstrate what’s possible during turbulent times.
... Read more about how organizations change to meet economic challenges in the February 2010 newsletter.
Got Momentum?
Ever leave a work meeting, conference, or retreat with a surge of energy and ideas around “what” to do to innovate and improve, yet soon afterward revert to familiar habits, unclear about how to sustain the innovation and momentum? Does your team’s follow-through require the cooperation of others to build on innovative ideas and implement them? No matter how enlightening the retreat, or how sophisticated our processes for staying informed and connected thereafter, we’re often challenged to find more meaningful ways to stay engaged. On top of a busy work schedule, we need relevant, productive ways to share knowledge and to create lasting new solutions together – in integrated, sustainable, everyday ways.
… Read more about sustaining momentum in your group or team in our December Newsletter!
From Innovation To Inspired Action: The Business Innovation Factory Summit
All nine IPI partners recently participated in the 5th annual Business Innovation Factory “Collaborative Innovation Summit”. This intimate two day event featured an impressive mix of storytellers - artists and scientists, designers and entrepreneurs, social and political boundary busters, technology wizards and well traveled explorers of the human spirit, from around the world. Each person shared a highly personal experience of innovation in the way value is delivered. The experience has sparked many new conversations among us …What does innovation really mean?
… Read more about leading innovation through collaboration in our November 2009 Newsletter!
Wisdom from the Storm: A story about initiatives in difficult times
An exceptional organization's resilience comes through even in the worst of times. Bernard Mohr, a partner of mine, and I had the privilege of facilitating the creation of a highly participative team-based organization which has outperformed the competition consistently over the last couple of decades. Their very vibrant culture has survived several senior management changes and two buy-outs, yet it still retained its basic team design.
… Read more about how positive team participation drives organizational performance in our October 2009 Newsletter!
Leader and Coach: A Partnership for Turbulent Times
Organizations today are facing unprecedented pressure to change. Change is not new, but success in this environment requires deep change - structural change, cultural change, economic change. We literally need to reinvent our organizations and the way we lead them to get results. The climate inside and outside our organizations challenges leaders to lead from the top, from the bottom and from the middle as well! In these turbulent times, many leaders are turning to one-on-one leadership coaching to support and develop their capacity to lead deep change.
Change leadership sounds like it's about getting others to do things differently, but unless those of us in leadership roles change - how we think, how we speak, how we make decisions - we ourselves will undermine the very best of plans.
… Read more about change leadership in our September 2009 Newsletter!
The Paradox of Innovation and Constraint
I have to admit it. I have arrived at a stage in life where I need a good nights sleep on those long haul flights to overseas clients - and that means a flat bed, not one that feels like a hike up Mount Everest. Of course most business class seats have been designed to maximize airline income vs providing restful sleeping spaces. Until now. Continental Airlines has just announced their new "flat and longer" seats. And how did they do that?
It appears they asked their "innovation team" to freely imagine the possibilities of passenger comfort without reducing airline income. How do both freedom and constraint (and other seeming paradoxes) act as enablers of innovation? Let's explore further.
… Read more about positive change and innovation in constrained circumstances in our August 2009 Newsletter!
Are You Part of the Strengths Revolution?
Do you know how to LEAD from your Strengths?
Do you and your team spend most of your time playing to your strengths?
… Read about how LEAD works to ignite Strength Based Leadership in our July 2009 Newsletter!
Quick Links
|
|
|
Upcoming Events
|
July 25-30 - Bethel, ME, USA
NTL Institute - Appreciative Inquiry - Strategic Planning
August 3-4 - Portland, ME, USA
Sustaining Cooperative Capacities: An Appreciative Inquiry Workshop for Lasting Positive Change
October 7-8, 2010 - Providence, RI, USA
Sustaining Cooperative Capacities: An Appreciative Inquiry Workshop for Lasting Positive Change
October 29, 2010 - Cambridge, MA, USA
Performance by Design: Building a Strength-Based Culture
Nov. 30 - Dec 3, 2010 - Ottawa, ON, Canada
Appreciative Inquiry Foundations Workshop: Igniting and Sustaining Positive Change
Click here to learn more about our events
|
|
info@innovationpartners.com Website More Contact Options
|
According to the Gallup Organization, many of us don't! In fact, our natural strengths - the source of our greatest potential - often get lost in the shuffle as we "put out fires" or scramble to solve the problem of the moment.
What if you could bust the cycle of deficit-based thinking and incremental improvement, and replace it with a simple four-step process designed to address daily opportunities and challenges from a strength-based point of departure?
LEAD is a strength-based planning process that draws on the research and principles of Appreciative Inquiry, Appreciative Intelligence, Positive Psychology and the Strengths Movement and grows out of the simple idea that what we focus on increases.