Academies

Innovation Leaders Academies

Legend says that in ancient Athens, at the end of a busy day,citizens gathered for philosophical training and development in a sacred olive grove outside the city that came to be known as the Academy. Now as in our Hellenic past, adults learn best in small, immersive groups of peers who share a common vocabulary and aims. Following this proven best practice, GISTICS supports a variety of private, on-site, two-day planning and execution workshops called Innovation Leadership Academies.

A Innovation Leadership Academy produces a socialized Project Roadmap detailing up to seven tracks, each track containing eight to 15 45-day projects that an individual or small group will execute.

Participants first identify enabling capabilities which form the building blocks for the Project
Roadmap. Next, in small peer groups led by trained facilitators, we mind-map the enabling capabilities.

We inventory the factors that hinder the ability to achieve these enabling capabilities, in a series of activities that engender the energy and enthusiasm necessary for change. Finally, Participants outline the sequence of actions, assign priorities, and map them as eight -to-15 45-day projects.`

Working from the bottom up ensues consensus among key stakeholders -- the individuals who will subsequently execute these 45-day projects.

Finally, a project planning team, often in conjunction with a project management office, fleshes out 1-page quick plans for the 40-90 resulting discrete projects. This creates a socialized context for an integrated two to three year transformational process.

Some clients choose to turn each "quick plan" into a project folder within a wiki project portal that supports ongoing research, project execution, and documentation.

How does this compare to the traditional management consulting approach?

Usually, a firm seeking major innovation engages a management consulting firm to research current state and develop a business requirements document plus a master plan for developing a new strategic capability. An investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars produces a massive 3-ring binder with equisitely plans that still require months of orientation, consensus building, and training before transformational change takes root.

An Innovation Leadership Academy collapses traditional consulting engagements -- with all their cost delays -- into a powerful, transformational, 2-day experience…at one-tenth the cost.

In this section you can examine these Innovation Leadership Academies:

• Brand-interaction Engagement Agencies
• Digital Asset Management
• Marketing Operations Management
• Social Media Monitoring
• Media Collaboration