The offer: We will lead a project to confront and get a handle on a specific urgent problem your organization is stuck in. Normally, this process will take about 6 months.
We use the CogNexus methodology and process in a time-optimized combination of three formats:
- face-to-face (FTF) meetings
- web-based virtual meetings
- individual (asynchronous) issue mapping
The Compendium software provides the shared space in which all three formats weave together the planning team’s documents, deliberations, and decisions into a coherent knowledge network.
The result includes:
- a reduction in duplicated effort and rework
- fewer dropped and missed issues
- and improvements in decision making that come from better visibility of critical issues.
This highly collaborative strategic planning approach expedites the work of planning, cuts overall costs, and produces the most robust plan possible. Dynamic Issue Analysis (DIA) increases the rigor and completeness of the group’s deliberations and creates a software-based organizational memory of the work done. The existence of an explicit organizational memory significantly reduces duplicate effort and rework, and minimizes the number of issues that fall through the cracks. The skills gained by planning staff during this project have a lasting impact on the group’s productivity and reputation for quality across the company.
The DIA learning process has three phases:
- Phase 1: Getting the core members of the team set up with Compendium, including a basic training class
- Phase 2: Getting team members familiar with the maps from the first meeting and building them out
- Phase 3: A final maintenance period as team members master the more sophisticated aspects of DIA.
Most of the learning process we recommend is on-the-job project based-learning, not classroom style. The one-on-one coaching sessions we do with members of the planning team are as much about producing a specific deliverable or result as they are about learning the elements of Dynamic Issue Analysis.
The theme of all CogNexus services is to equip our clients with collaboration and communication skills that eventually make CogNexus’ support services unnecessary.