Thoughts

· In our experience no organisation can truly achieve its potential without long-term development and investment in its people.

· We believe that whilst visioning exercises, developing mission statements and producing action plans have an important part to play in promoting change, they will only deliver sustainable improvement when allied to sound organisational and individual development.

· We have found that those developmental activities are most helpful when they are experiential and focused on human relations and interpersonal skills. In our experience Appreciative Inquiry and Strength based approaches really deliver sustainable change.

· There is no short cut to a healthy, strong, diverse organisation. You must invest in people and then reflect on and learn from each stage of your investment.  

· We continue to learn from our own and others' experience and from academic research. This learning will never cease and we know it will increase in pace and depth as we work with a variety of clients.  

· We work with conviction, both as organisational leaders and managers and as independent advisors, helping to deliver sustainable change rather than quick fixes and 'flavour of the month' approaches.

 

Do you have a view and would like to share it? We would be pleased to hear from you.  Email us here

What's important when developing organisations?

Some of our favourite quotes:

· "More than a method or technique, the appreciative mode of inquiry is a means of living with, being with, and directly participating in the life of human systems in a way that compels one to inquire into the deeper life-generating essentials and potentials of organisational existence".
David Cooperrider

· "Appreciative Inquiry is, in my view, an exciting breakthrough, one that signals a change in the way we think about change…AI will be of enduring consequence and energising innovation…"
Richard Beckhard

· "The task of Leadership is to create an alignment of strengths…making a system’s weaknesses irrelevant".
Peter Drucker

· "When we don’t see systems, we fall out of the possibility of partnership with one another; we misunderstand one another; we make up stories about one another…we hurt and destroy one another." 
Barry Oshry

· "We believe that …the vision is used as a guide to determining what should change, rather than today’s presenting symptoms being triggers for action."
Richard Beckhard

· "We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we only have a dim or even inaccurate view of what's really important to us."
Peter Senge

· "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it".
Albert Einstein

· "Everything can be taken from us but one thing - the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given circumstances."
Victor Frankl

· "The hope of leadership lies in the capacity to deliver disturbing news and raise difficult questions in a way that people can absorb, prodding them to take up the message rather than ignore it or kill the messenger."
Heifetz & Linsky

· “The single most common source of leadership failure… is that people, especially those in positions of authority, treat adaptive challenges like technical problems."
Heifetz & Linsky

· "The practice of leadership requires the capacity to keep asking basic questions of yourself and of the people in your organisation and community."
Heifetz & Linsky