“To keep pace in your industry, let alone excel as a leader, requires your rate of learning to be greater than, or equal to, the rate of change.” -Unknown
This means a few things:
Skills based training isn’t enough, extraordinary leaders must be able to rapidly shift perspectives and change their own mindset.
Strategic planning isn’t enough, extraordinary leaders must be strategically thinking, all of the time.
Charisma and creativity aren’t enough, extraordinary leaders need to be ambidextrous thinkers – able to think conceptually and sequentially, in the abstract and in the concrete, and able to move quickly between the two.
Extraordinary leaders cannot do it alone, they must be adept at building and sustaining large social networks of engaged people.
The Insights to Action™ Strategic Thinking System is a “smart” facilitated process. This means:
It focuses on the rigor of the process and quality of thought.
It draws on both verbal and visual facilitation techniques.
It teaches skills beyond the subject matter.
It results in tangible, engaging communication tools.
This meta map describes the sequence of a strategic thinking process. When people can see a map of where they are going, most especially when they are in unfamiliar territory, they are generally more willing to trust the process.
At any point in the discussion participants can draw a line of sight back to this map and know exactly where they are in their thinking process.
Our History As Prologue – understand your story-to-date. What people, places and events have shaped your organization?
Insights to Our History – to learn from your History you will want to understand what is best left in the past, and more importantly, what has worked really well for you.
Taking Inventory: SCOT – the tried and true “SWOT” analysis pictured in a way to encourage appreciative inquiry. Use this tool to help your organization identify and plan for high leverage opportunities.
Environmental Scan: Knowing Where You Are – what is the larger context that you are operating within? What are the forces at play? How do you know the difference between a significant trend and a fad?
Learnings to Date – when you are beginning in the middle, that is work is already underway when you step back to take your strategic perspective, this tool will guide your group to assess what has been learned to date and how best to use that moving forward.
Insights
Insights to History
Insights to SCOT
So what? What matters from what we’ve learned? Because of the phenomenal access to data technology has given us we have become very adept at collecting a lot of data really fast. We are not so good at sorting that data to determine what matters, right now. Decisions are often made before the sifting is done to separate facts and opinions from insights, the result is action plans that often solve the wrong problems.
Use this tool, to debrief each of your exercises. Encourage participants to think about what they already knew coming into the session, combine it with what they’ve just learned, look for connection points between seemingly disparate data points, and find insights that are beyond the obvious.
When you’ve completed your process, step back and look at your Insight charts side-by-side and ask the question “Have you addressed the insights you identified along the way?”
My Bold Vision – use this tool (table-top size) for individual brainstorming prior to the group creating their collective vision for moving forward.
Making it Real – from insights to actions this tool is where you will decide what you are going to go do. What are the elements of your Change Vision? How will you hope to achieve your goals? What 5 steps will be bold indicators to your organization of progress and faith in the future?
Three Year Approach & Setting Priorities - once you’ve described your Change Vision and your 5 Bold Steps you are ready to begin action planning; this is the nitty-gritty of tactics. However, before you dive into the detail use one of these tools to get consensus on priorities using either time or impact on the business as criteria for guiding decision-making.
Action Plan – use this tool to think through, and map out, the who, what, where and when of your next steps.
Insights to Action: Telling the Story – the success of your plans will depend on the ability of your planners to carry the message from the planning session to the organization in a succinct, powerful and hopeful way.
This tool creates the Cliff Notes™ to the session and allows participants to practice the “elevator speech” so that the story is told with one voice.
Additional Communication Tools – each of the large format templates becomes a communication tool of its own as soon as it is created. Consider digitizing your output and using the digital versions as a storyboard of your process and your plans.
Research indicates that the most successful change efforts are dependent on an emotional connection between the person leading the effort and the people doing the work. This means:
Skills based training isn’t enough, extraordinary leaders must be able to rapidly shift perspectives and change their own mindset.
Strategic planning isn’t enough, extraordinary leaders must be strategically thinking, all of the time.
Charisma and creativity aren’t enough, extraordinary leaders need to be ambidextrous thinkers – able to think conceptually and sequentially, in the abstract and in the concrete, and able to move quickly between the two.
Extraordinary leaders cannot do it alone, they must be adept at building and sustaining large social networks of engaged people.
The Insights to Actions™ strategic thinking system is designed to encourage leaders to think differently, to make that thinking visible, and to learn how to communicate their thoughts and ideas in a way that can easily be grasped by others.
Got opinions? Check.
Got data points? Check.
Got insights? Check.
Got an action plan? Check. Got a future? Check.
Creative Inspiration & Attributions Creative inspiration for these tools have come from many sources over the years and each deserves acknowledgment. I encourage you to visit the websites of these professionals to appreciate their versions of visual thinking and to find additional tools:
Dan Roam - who wrote The Back of the Napkin, and simplified beautifully the art and science of visual thinking (link).
The Grove Consultants International - pioneers in bringing visual tools to the meeting room; check out their on-line store for a line of fabulous templates and additional tools (link).
Juanita Brown & David Isaacs - who understand the power of making conversation visible and have built it into the World Cafe technology; a global movement that is changing conversations everywhere (www.theworldcafe.com).
In addition I would like to acknowledge several individuals, who are also pioneers in the area of visual thinking, for their significant contributions to my thinking and growth as it relates to visual tools and language: Suzanne Zilke, Pete Abrahams, Karen Stratvert, Jon Sagen, and Leslie Salmon-Zhu.
"Organizational alignment around focused priorities equals better business results and long term prosperity. That is what these tools promise and deliver." -Tom Hood,
CEO of Maryland Association of CPAs.
