Practical Innovation For 21st Century Organizations
- How do we blend great people and ideas into something practical, actionable, valuable and repeatable?
- What does it take to innovate within, between and among individuals, groups, communities and institutions?
- What enables us to transform cooperation into collaboration?
Regardless of the scope and scale of your organization, these are questions for our times. Addressing them requires us to reconsider how we define both organization and innovation and to work with more effectively with interdependence. The issues we face are becoming more complex, and yet, the solutions need not be.
The NorthShore Group's consulting approach is based on the conviction that, no matter your mission, it is possible to create an organizational culture capable of leading at all levels and effectively managing positive change with simple elegant solutions. We have confidence in what is possible because we have experienced it ourselves. Collaborating with you, we adapt systemic change theory into practical methods that can be learned and practiced in small bites producing practical results right away.
We live in a connected world. Imagine your organization as a mobile with interacting layers - each time one part moves and changes the others parts move and change in relation. Now imagine that there are many mobiles connecting organization to organization -- across industry sector and geographic boundaries.
Imagine what might be possible for your organization, for societies.
In a recent blog, Change is Dead, Wendy Farmer-O'neil, proclaims "Enter the age of complexity. Our challenges are now complex. They don't readily yield to analysis, but demand of us new skills like pattern seeking and new ways of working together like collaboration (yes, new, but that's another conversation). Our solutions are seldom repeatable (although they may inform future challenges in an evolutionary way) as our challenges are embedded in unique contexts and histories. Our solutions converge in an evolutionary flow, each leading us in a spiraling pattern to the next iteration of the challenge. No more home base. No more status quo."
Our newest workshop teaches a new methodology for understanding and dealing with complex change., we call it lovingly the "Three Lens Conversation (TLC). TLC was intentionally designed to address complex organizational dilemmas in a world with much uncertainty. Click for more information.
Lucy's principles for possibility
- Innovation goes well beyond R&D; it can occur in any aspect of an organization: people, processes, structures, inputs or outputs.
- Innovation results from effective interactions of untapped potential already present in individuals, groups, communities and institutions.
- Everyday problems are frequently connected to other issues and ideas that contain the potential for innovation
- Lack of innovation reflects a pattern of stuck-ness, resulting from persistent, unconscious assumptions about what has happened, is happening or will happen.
- Assumptions and innovations, by themselves, are neutral, and therefore, are potential for both positive or negative change.
- Human beings, even in the most difficult circumstances, are capable of much more than we can imagine.
- When human beings connect and relate well, they manifest innovations that are simply unavailable to them when alone.
- Technology that enables virtual connections, combined with facilitation expertise, exponentially expands the possibilities for innovation by building relationships that matter.
What could these principles imply -- for your organization -- and the world?