Organization Development & Strategic Planning

Teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. Unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn.

– Peter Senge

The speed of change has made it increasingly difficult to manage organizations. Five- and ten-year plans can seem unrealistic at this pace of change. However, the organizational skills developed in an inclusive strategic planning process become the tools for ongoing assessment, strategic thinking, and planning throughout the organization. In this sense, effective strategic management and leadership can be understood as a learning challenge. i4cl supports organizations in this effort, helping them to see themselves from multiple perspectives in order to identify ways to effectively work towards its goals often through building or changing the culture.

The ASKS learning model informs our approach to a specific strategic planning process and also to developing the skills needed for ongoing strategic thinking at all levels of an organization. The first step in strategic planning is to explore and understand the challenges an organization faces. Working with the organization’s leaders, i4cl draws on a variety of tools to support staff, leaders, and other stakeholders in identifying strategic pathways toward an organization's goals.

Recent research in organizational development points to a culture of team learning as key to an organization's agility, responsiveness, and sustainability. Organizations with such a culture are skilled at balancing long-range planning and action with the need to adapt to unanticipated circumstances with responsiveness and short-term planning. They welcome insights and input from all levels of the organization, and the systems and organizational stance of openness and collaboration help that happen.