Best Practices and Insights for Facilitating Creativity, Alignment & Organizational Results

Author: Trent Wakenight

When we are lost in the woods, the sight of a signpost is a great matter.

C. S. Lewis

The past 20 months have been like being dropped into a forest without a map. As darkness falls, panic sets in, and a pathway forward fades from view. Finding a clearing in the woods becomes the number one priority, as one literally can’t see the forest for the trees. 

As leaders are reluctant to aim for the outer edge of the forest,...

The El Dorado County Office of Education (EDCOE) reached out to The Grove early this year to assist it in some long-overdue strategic and prioritizing conversations. A plan was in place to conduct a two-day strategic-visioning offsite when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, effectively stymieing the notion of an in-person process. The leaders at EDCOE chose to push forward and move the process online, and Laurie Durnell, principal consultant, along with Kayla Kirsch, Grove associate, led...

Several years ago, select directors of organizational development within the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) attended The Grove’s Strategic Visioning workshop. These directors work for the national BGCA and support the independently operated local and regional clubs with organizational development and tools. This team interfaces with club boards and staff around national goal-setting and planning, among other things. After experimenting with the...

The National Parks Institute (NPI) Executive Leadership Program has made a comeback, and The Grove is once again centrally involved. Over the course of ten days, 22 leaders from 11 countries and eight U.S. Parks immersed themselves in a learning journey, taking them from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the S.F. Bay Area, to UC Merced, and then to Yosemite National Park. It was a powerful experience for those involved, and David Sibbet, The Grove’s founder, was the...

Recently the dean of The College of Business Administration at Cal Poly Pomona called The Grove for help. The college of six academic departments and more than 5,000 students needed to move beyond a culture of silos, update some of its administrative processes, and address what seemed to be a lack of opportunities for innovation. As the college was getting ready to celebrate its 50th anniversary and was shifting from a quarter-based to two-semester-based system, the timing was ripe...

Author: Laurie Durnell 

What can you do to get your team in sync for 2018? When people get lost in the details of week-to-week implementation, it is easy for them to get disconnected from the big-picture strategy. Early in the new year is a natural time to reconnect, review, and renew. Here are three ways to focus your organization or team and develop strategic insight for the coming months.

Option One: A “Bridge to the New Year” Session

Time Involved:...

Author: Laurie Durnell

Is strategic planning on your horizon? In my consulting work with organizations over the years—across sectors and from a single team to enterprise-wide—I have seen extraordinary results using Strategic Visioning (SV), a Grove visual-planning system. I have used it to facilitate many creative, engaging, agile and effective planning processes for client organizations.

Here are nine common planning...

Agile visual planning empowers both individual leadership and group creativity—a formula for good results for organizations that employ it.

The concept of agile planning is inspired by agile software development, a method of providing versions that are “just good enough” to engage a user base—then iterating through ever more complete and polished releases that reflect real user experience.

To get going, propose a concept, a direction, or a generative idea; then...