How do you achieve the most inspired individual and collective strategic thinking? How do you harness this thinking to create a strategy for sustainable competitive advantage?
There is no greater strategic advantage than the unleashed capacity of people working together as a cohesive whole in pursuit of a noble and mighty purpose. The heart of Ensemble's work is to help you and your people build powerful relationships with one another such that you can form inspired teams capable of managing leading edge processes and exploiting state of the art technologies.
The starting point of our assignments is to engage with your people in meaningful dialogue to understand the culture that governs your current work practices. We explore the qualitative and quantitative impediments to effective high performance team work, and start the process of building alignment by bringing your people together to share new insights gained from this process of discovery. Our engagement generates a profound understanding of current reality and inspires the creation of a bold shared vision. Together, these provide the pre-requisites for the design of an effective strategy to get you to where you want to go.
Whilst we acknowledge the importance of the traditional approach of identifying problems, obstacles and potential solutions, we know that by using only analytical tools, we will never fully exploit the true power of a unified team in pursuit of a common purpose. The difference you get when you work with Ensemble is that in addition to high powered analytics, we have a rich repertoire of social technologies. Our starting point is an appreciative inquiry into what is excellent about your organisation, what you as a collective do exceedingly well, and beyond the noise of business as usual, to have you reflect on what your mighty purpose is.
The best organisational strategies require a holistic, systems-based view. To achieve this we assist your people in:
- Defining the boundary of the system
- Developing a clearly articulated and measurable goal
- Considering obstacles that might prevent the organisation from progressing toward its goal
- Defining what must be done to overcome the obstacles
- Understanding the quantity and capability of the resources necessary for goal achievement
Developing breakthrough solutions, and thinking through complex issues is greatly enhanced when you can visually demonstrate your reasoning to increase buy in. Ensemble uses visual systematic tools, from the Logical Thinking Process, of the Theory of Constraints, TOC.
The Logical Thinking Process provides you and your strategy team with robust tools, to enable you to construct, test and communicate the logic of your thinking. The Logical Thinking Process helps build consensus on the nature of your challenge and find solutions through the use of rigorous cause and effect logic. The Thinking Process provides the necessary focus for teams to answer the fundamental questions of any strategic initiative.
- What to change?
- To what to change?
- How to change?
By combining The Thinking Process with our repetoire of social technologies you are able to go a long way in addressing the many levels of organisational resistance to change caused by disagreement on:
- The nature of the problem
- The direction of the solution
- Whether or not the solution will work
- The potential negative side effects of the solution
- Whether or not the solution is viable in the environment
The Thinking Process uses the following logic trees for strategy development. These trees are visual strategy tools which were developed within the Theory of Constraints suite over the course of many years.
1. Strategic Intermediate Objectives Map - Define the paradigm
Establish the goal and identify the critical success factors to reaching that goal. Then determine identify the necessary conditions for having those critical success factors.
2. Current Reality Tree - Analyse the mismatches
Why change and what to change.
3. Evaporating Cloud - Create a transformation
Challenging the assumptions underlying the root cause of the problem.
4. Future Reality Tree - Design the Future
What to change to. Exploring the positive and negative side effects of the proposed solution.
5. The Prerequisite Tree - Plan the execution
Uncovering what is needed to make the change and the obstacles to achieving the goal.
6. The Transition Tree - Deploy the strategy
How to change quickly and smoothly. Tasks generated by this are put into a Critical Chain Project Plan.
Ensemble helps you and your organisation create the means by which you control your destiny. By deliberately engaging with head, heart and hands to collectively design a strategy for the future of highest potential, we leverage the power of your greatest asset - your people.
Call us on +61 2 9387 3955 to find out more.
