We help our clients get back on an accelerated path to success.
Every key initiative or imperative comes up against one or more defining moments at which your team is about to be, or becomes, stuck. As a leader, you recognize that your organization is at an inflection point. A crossroads. With implications that are not acceptable. Problems like these are resistant to traditional approaches. Time is not your friend.
Our proprietary approach, grounded in systems science, has been used to get large teams unstuck, aligned, and on a clear path to meeting key objectives in a remarkably short period of time. Some recent examples are:
The traditional approach to solving problems is linear and time-consuming. It works only when time is on your side. When time is critical and milestones are missed, this approach will only continue to deliver slow response times.
We've combined advances in cybernetics, networks, psychology, and systems-science to accelerate solutions and action that course-correct at defining moments exponentially. The progress and impact your organization has been struggling to achieve on a strategic, top priority initiative are finally within reach.
We assemble the right variety of stakeholders and engineer interactions between them that quickly:
Break down silos and remove politics
Confront known issues/dependencies stalling teams
Create shared understanding of the way forward
Co-create ownership and action plans
A full engagement is typically 3-8 weeks long, requiring only 2-3 days of your people's time. In as few as three weeks, your team can be on the necessary trajectory and speed. Fully aligned and unified. This is a big promise, extremely difficult to deliver by non-experts, and is why our clients partner with us.
Having recognized that your organization faces a defining moment, that current-course-and-speed isn’t going to cut it, you need to act quickly and decisively to course-correct.
Preparation starts with activating a requisite variety group of people who will figure out the best way forward and lead implementation. This starting point comes from a basic rule of system science called the Law of Requisite Variety. Simply put, it states that to deal with the multi-dimensional complexities surrounding a defining moment, you need to involve a correspondingly multi-dimensional group of people.
To get ready for the rapid problem-solving and mobilization that will happen at a Syntegration, we work with you using our proprietary tools to firmly establish the ideal conditions:
The 'Central Question' that gets at the root of the situation and the necessary outcomes
The likely scope of topics that will need coverage in finding solutions and thus representation within your group
Requisite Variety, the necessary and sufficient participants from in and around your organization's ecosystem who collectively hold the expertise and ownership to not only solve, but implement
The heart of our powerful approach is a Syntegration. During your 2-3 day Syntegration, you will experience the ultimate cross-functional, inter-disciplinary, large group co-creation. You and your team will work together in a uniquely and effectively orchestrated way to deconstruct the Central Question, rapidly surface everything that matters, absorb and think through all facets in parallel, and culminate by deciding on the best way forward, with strong, broad-based buy-in.
Unlike any other approach, a Syntegration engineers the specific and necessary conditions for rapid solving and coordinated commitment to action. It is state-of-the-art for surfacing a large volume of critical information in a very short period of time; equipping large groups to integrate and synthesize all this critical information in new and innovative ways; and, ultimately, landing breakthrough ideas, strategic pathways and best-bet tactics.
The results are holistic, actionable plans created by an aligned, engaged, and motivated team with ownership and buy-in, every time.
Our unique approach yields significant outputs and outcomes:
Clarity and shared understanding on what needs to happen
Actionable strategies and tactics that have been rationalized and prioritized by the group
Highly engaged team members and stakeholders, including partners and customers, decision-makers and doers
Strengthened trust, new relationships, and sustained cross-functional networks
And, all of these outputs and outcomes are anchored on an unprecedented value proposition of rapid time acceleration.
We provide a 'Board-ready' deliverables package that includes a report and presentation centered around the path forward. These customized, comprehensive deliverables organize and represent the extensive insights and content generated through the Syntegration. It provides:
A synthesis of the recommendations
Emergent themes
Clear prioritization of action
Communication assets that convey a powerful story for employees, Board and other key stakeholders
Where applicable, a detailed action plan with owners, timelines, budget requirements, and dependencies identified
This document provides a summary of the Syntegration discussions, relevant source materials, supporting documentation, and other reference materials.
Most Syntegration engagements conclude with a one-day execution planning session for the smaller group of decision-makers and doers who will be central to execution. It ensures that the strategies and action plans generated are detailed out, formalized, and further embedded into the organization. Decision-makers use this session to assign next steps, estimate resources and appoint accountability for execution within the larger context of the organization. The doers gain full context on the implementation steps they will own, and experience first-hand the genuine sense of urgency and commitment leadership has for their tasks ahead.
All the steps in the formula are complementary and build one upon the next to deliver rapid leaps on top challenges and goals.
The first five steps are about setting things up. The final step is about reporting out on the mix of immediate wins, short-term tactics, and longer-term initiatives that have emerged, and embedding them into the organization.
Steps six through nine are where a high-variety group of people spend 2 days using our proprietary collider, Syntegration, to quickly figure things out, and align.
Syntegration, which is like the Hadron Collider (but rather than collide atoms, we collide expertise from a requisite variety), drives high-quality collisions amongst people exponentially faster than traditional approaches. It leverages a fully-connected network architecture, iteration, and multiple behavioral protocols to drive the necessary collisions amongst a special-purpose group. At every collision point, whether in large or small gatherings, results are captured and rapidly disseminated to other collision points that build on those results.
To learn more about why collisions are the state-of-the-art currency for rapid solving and execution-at-scale, read our white paper “Collisions Are The New Brain Power”.
