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Our Services

Does your organization have a clear purpose statement and an ambitious set of objectives?  Are the needed strategies, systems, skills and culture in place internally?  What external linkages would increase your success?  How are today’s social and environmental challenges being addressed?  Are you charting a clear path through COVID-19? 

The “OD4Impact Core Practices” thinkpiece describes how we help clients tighten their focus, get more creative, build capacity and culture, take on challenges, and increase impact. 

Our unique combination of dialogue, participation, and collective impact tools increases alignment, collaboration, and positive change.  Our Precautionary and Adaptive Management (PAM) approach guides thoughtful responses to COVID-19.

Drawing on these proven practices, we provide customized OD services in four main areas:

HIGH-IMPACT STRATEGIES

Successful organizations maintain a crisp overarching strategy that begins with a statement of the desired future. Clearly-worded goals, measurable objectives, cross-cutting initiatives, and a well-resourced implementation plan round out this “living document”, which is regularly discussed and embraced throughout the organization.

We can help you update and strengthen these fundamentals through an engaging process that draws input from diverse perspectives. Understanding and support for implementation across the organization is increased, and your strategy actively shapes a range of discussions, choices, actions, partnerships and outcomes. Related services include:

  • Strategy assessment and gap analysis
  • Vision, mission, and goal setting
  • Workplan development, implementation and tracking
  • Change management initiatives

DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP

Setting direction and having an agreed set of clear priorities is essential to organizational success. Equally important is ensuring that staff working at various levels and in various roles have enough autonomy to innovate and respond as conditions require. Properly balancing these two imperatives means that organizational leadership is not solely a top-down affair; team satisfaction and contribution are maximized when leadership is “distributed” this way.

Recognizing that the group is more capable than the individual, being able to organize and support focused courageous conversations that address issues and build healthy group dynamics is a key leadership skill. Another is the effective design and use of highly-participatory methods that tap into all of the organization’s skills and knowledge to answer critical questions.

These “soft skills” help your organization have a more authentic, appreciative and collaborative culture, from which solutions more easily emerge. Our powerful services include:

  • Leadership development
  • Team-building
  • Personal development
  • Conflict resolution
  • Cultural transformation

Is your organization ready to build capacity for aligned action to grow your impact?

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SYSTEMS and SKILLS

The success of even the sharpest strategic plan or initiative requires staff and leadership to have the necessary capacities and tools. This is especially true when collaboration across teams, within organizations, or in partnership with external groups is required.

We can help organizations of all sizes evaluate and improve their digital and in-person forms of:

  • Capacity assessment (individual, team, organization, network)
  • Work planning (and implementation) across teams and divisions
  • Meeting design, chairing, and reporting (using Zoom, Meet, Teams, and more)
  • Interactive event design and facilitation (using JamBoard, Mural, Pigeonhole, and more)
  • Large-scale external summits (using creative formats)
  • Communication and engagement tools (websites, newsletters, thinkpieces) and platforms
  • People practices (empowering and transparent policies and systems)

POWERFUL PARTNERSHIPS

The benefits are many when an organization is well-structured internally and has a strong set of thoughtfully managed external relationships. It can draw from the skills and resources of its partners, receive useful perspective on a range of issues, be more resilient to unexpected challenges, and provide staff and leadership greater career satisfaction.

Organizations that develop trusting external relationships see improved implementation of their initiatives. Trust and seeking mutual benefit are “enabling elements” of collaboration, which can greatly increase impact.

We can help your organization build helpful external partnerships on four levels:

  • Partners (with direct working relationships)
  • Networks (featuring stakeholder engagement)
  • Public (ensuring community and social support)
  • System (tapping into broader social movements)

Learn more in our “Infinity Loop Impact Model” thinkpiece.

TOOLS

Our firm prides itself on using engaging and effective tools (organizational assessments, meeting formats, small-group exercises, online workbooks) supporting a range of collaborative online or in-person meetings, workshops, retreats, and summits.  We often draw on circle-based formats, Art of Hosting tools, and Liberating Structures methods, adapting them to meet client needs.

We always ask the most critical questions (whether individually or in groups), surfacing challenges and opportunities, sorting and considering these, tapping into creativity and commitment, and generating momentum and action.  Reflection and dialogue (“conversation with a centre, not sides”) exercises help identify and address the right things, while our participation ethic means that everyone contributes to solutions, ensuring rapid implementation. 

Each situation brings a unique set of factors, participants and dynamics to be assessed before formats are chosen.  Experience shows that pre-planning efforts add clarity, generate buy-in, and lead to successful events and desired outputs. We excel in leading these discussions, and maintain a large “toolkit” of formats to choose from or adapt.

Favourites include:

Asset Mapping

Angry Elephants

Appreciative Apples

Congruence Model

Critical Friends

Fish-Bowl

Focus Groups

Future Search

Graphic Facilitation

Graphic Recording

Global Trends / Local Issues

Hopes and Fears

Interview Matrix

Key Informant Interviews

Now. Wow! How?

Open Space Technology

Presencing

Pro-Action Cafés

Socratic Circle

The U-Process

Vision Tree

World Café

World’s Easiest

ADDITIONAL

We ensure that our clients receive all the support and services that our assessment, strategy, facilitation, and engagement efforts reveal are needed. We maintain associate relationships with other skilled professionals (providing coaching services, highly creative formats, graphic design, training models, and HR-People Practice services) and bring them in as needed. We also have affiliate relationships with firms whose tools and resources are complimentary to and supportive of our services and that we regularly use in projects.

With extensive experience in organizing and overseeing custom-built teams (including sub-consultants) for our processes and projects, the Principals of OD4Impact can help clients meet a wide range of organizational needs.

Our firm prides itself on using engaging and effective tools (custom-built meeting formats, structured exercises, online workbooks, etc.) supporting a wide range of highly collaborative online and in-person meetings, workshops, retreats, and summits.  We often draw on circle-based formats, Art of Hosting tools, and Liberating Structures methods in our work, and are skilled at adapting them for the specific audience, issues and context.