Creating a Culture of Continuous Innovation
Or, (How to) Create a Culture of Continuous Innovation (when so many people work from home).
Tailored training and coaching to up-level leaders’ ability to optimize team engagement and performance even when the team works remotely.
NEW! Online, Project-based Training
The Challenge
We see a crisis in engagement already looming and believe that only the most effective and humane leaders will thrive in the new normal.
- Employees are enjoying the accelerated move to remote, flexible work.
- Location that provided even periodic face-to-face collaboration and accountability was the glue of the organization.
- For some, the tiresome social overhead of the office has been removed, for others the social nutrients of daily team interactions must be unsatisfyingly sipped through the small, flat window of video conferencing.
- The values and urgencies of home are now much more influential than the values of the office. Zoom shirt, anyone?
- The early bounce in productivity is giving way to emerging trust and collaboration challenges.
Leaders will soon face calls to extend productivity gains and cost savings, even as we move to blended office and remote work. The early solidarity of the crisis may soon be replaced by something with a much sharper edge. The very best workers may be the most reluctant to plug back into office culture as it was. They have options and they know it.
Some leaders are naturals at engaging their teams and can help people innovate and perform under any circumstances. Others need a bit more support via a bespoke mix of training and coaching.
Learning Outcomes
Leaders will learn to
- Improve productivity and engagement in remote work teams.
- Teach team members to design performance innovation experiments for themselves.
- Accelerate self-led personal change.
- Create a culture of daily performance innovation.
What’s the learning experience like?
There’s a lot of experience and wisdom in participants, so we use questions and projects created by each participant to engage and enliven the learning. By discussing and working on the participants’ actual issues, the power and relevance of the model and methods come alive and produce immediate results.
What makes this training relevant now?
Working from home remote work raises the stakes in most engagement and productivity. But it also increases the difficulty of holding accountability and engagement and reducing distraction.
We’ve heard anecdotal evidence of senior leaders who used to be in the office early are now not starting work until their first business meeting at 10 am. We’re seeing workers distracted by the values and demands of home much more than when they were in the office where the social group is all focused on the work of the day based on one set of organizational values. Now the values of the children, the spouse, the dog, the home are competing at every moment for the employee’s time and attention.
By creating a culture of continuous, self-led performance innovation, each team member engages themselves in relevant, creative experiments to improve their productivity. People win, productivity wins, and the organization wins.
Which leaders benefit most from this training?
This training supports leaders responsible for critical front line and more senior teams. It serves new leaders looking for early wins and experienced leaders seeking to optimize the results.
What makes this training’s unique?
This training focuses on humane leadership and performance improvement based on the values, models, and methods explained in the book, Humane Leadership and the Wisdom Jigs that help quickly apply and internalize new models and methods.
- Less focus on backwards-looking team results and more on proactive engagement and creativity at an individual level.
- Less about management and more about leading collaboration and innovation.
- Less about metrics and more about experimentation with performance innovations.
- Less about individual remediation and more about creating a culture of continuous performance innovation that leads to great productivity, engagement, and results.
Questions?
What training formats are available?
You can start with one to one spot coaching and move smoothly toward multi-month culture change programs across a number of teams enterprise wide.
Individual
- One hour spot coaching
- Monthly coaching to leverage time to transform our performance and experience
- Half-day and full day deep dive coaching to reboot, discover and shift root causes, or plan future directions
Team
2 hour trainings
Team upgrade
2x 2 hour group meetings, 1x 1:1 per attendee Team culture change
1x half day group deep dive, 2x group meetings, 1x 1:1 per attendee
Multiple Collaborating Teams
- Performance innovation training – with breakout rooms and accountability partners – half day 4 hours
- Culture change kickstart – 2x group sessions in multiple cohorts with 1x 1:1 sessions per attendee
- Culture upgrade – 1x half day group deep dive, 2x group meetings with 1x 1:1 per attendee
Can our culture really change?
We believe that the basic unit of change is one individual but that culture change can be catalyzed by consciously growing a network of individuals who have learned and benefited from the new approach.
As leaders and key team members learn to design and run their own performance innovation experiments, their successes accumulate into a recognized set of wins and best practices.
The leader becomes a lab director and facilitator of his team’s performance innovation experiments. Each experiment builds team engagement, confidence, and productivity.
What learning outcomes can we expect?
Your leaders will be better equipped to:
- Improve team engagement and performance by becoming a performance innovation lab director.
- Develop their team’s (and their own) skills that create value for clients, the team, and the organization.
- Earn more influence with their team and throughout the organization.
Who have you trained?
What do clients say?
“Stephen had my students deeply engaged with their own selves within the first few moments of the group discussion. By the end of Stephen’s guest lecture in my class, I could visibly see how my students were feeling empowered to be their own agents of change.”
– Bret Anderson, Ph.D., Chair of Economics at Southern Oregon University
“Stephen is definitely one of a rare breed of talents, who can look at the big picture, combine that with integrity and a human touch, and turn out results with a direct focus on the bottom line.”
– Andre
“Stephen is sincere, knowledgeable, patient, and full of wonder.”
– Charlie
Can I sample humane leadership and performance innovation?
We have made the first week of our university level course and course Freedom and Responsibility for Young Adults available for free so you can get a sense of our online content. Of course, live training is also available and we would be happy to discuss your needs with you.
Can we customize the training for our team?
Yes, we enjoy tailoring our trainings to meet your culture and needs. I would be happy to discuss your needs.
Do you offer other courses?
Yes! See a complete course catalog here.