"People don't resist change - they resist being changed." - Dr. George Land

Creative Strategic Renewal

The purpose of Creative Strategic Renewal is to assist individuals and groups in effectively innovating and dealing with turbulent change. This creative computer-assisted group process supports organizations in:

• Assessing the critical facts related to business and organizational needs that are new and often more complex than past requirements and identifying the accuracy and relevancy of the information.
• Determining the Purpose, Vision, Missions and Values needed to maximize the organization's future success.
• Creatively generating a variety of different approaches and strategies to accomplish the business purpose and missions.
• Mapping a course for success with the key payoff, strategies, functions and applications that should exist in the business-the KEY Opportunities for the future that businesses and organizations should address, as well as those to be maintained, diminished, let go of and those to be researched for future application.
• Judging how effective the alternative approaches might be-and how to allocate resources for the accomplishment of critical initiatives.
• Developing effective commitment to action and implementation start-up plans and accountabilities for the chosen solutions.

Background of Creative Strategic Renewal

Unfortunately, people who have worked in a successful organization automatically create an atmosphere of assumed consensus. Routinely, mental filters protect people from undesirable information that could disturb the status quo. To preserve comfortable unanimity, embarrassing questions, 'soft-headed' thinking and unusual approaches are ignored or avoided. New facts or changed conditions that may force new kinds of changes in a business or organization are often denied. Key questions lay unasked. Attention is focused on information that bolsters the idea that status quo should be maintained or simply incrementally improved.

Under these all too normal circumstances the usual operating groups find that vital business and organizational changes and innovations are very difficult. The Creative Strategic Renewal process creates a non-judgmental, open, imaginative atmosphere into which all facts can be introduced - and heard, one where ideas about new possibilities are sought and rewarded. The future orientation of possibilities prevents finger pointing, blame, guilt or embarrassment. Information encompassing new and different viewpoints can be freely shared and understood.

The Creative Strategic Renewal process, using individual computer input terminals in a group setting, helps the group assess, fit together and map out many different viewpoints and factors. It forces a test of all the factors relative to one another related to the missions of the organization. A picture of the differences in viewpoint on each factor is mapped anonymously and the group has an opportunity to share new and different information. Having exchanged data, the group tests relevancy a second time to bring about a new consensus of the total business situation and the critical needs that will affect the success for the organization in the future.

The Payoff

When people anticipate alternatives for future action the weight of a decision generally rests on how easily they can recall other examples of a similar situation. This shortcut in thinking serves well in stable situations, but impedes business and organizational changes that can address vital strategies more effectively for the future. Research shows convincingly that people make decisions based basically on gain or loss. Under ordinary circumstances, losses loom larger than gains in people's minds. The results are decisions aimed more at not giving something up rather than those that can lead to new gains.

The Creative Strategic Renewal process frames questions in such a way as to compare gains and opportunities rather than just the problems. The gain/loss issue is effectively circumvented and new opportunities, usually clouded with uncertainty, are clearly identified.