Our Tools for Success
Arts Education
Many scientific studies are now proving that arts education is absolutely critical for student learning and achievement. Arts education must begin at an early age and continue throughout a child’s entire education. It has been shown conclusively that the effect of arts education on brain function, language acquisition, mathematical skills, focus and discipline, and team work are ESSENTIAL.
Board of Directors
Too often the members of a Board of Directors see their role as passive and as a status symbol for community service. This attitude does not help the organization, abdicates its legal and fiscal responsibility, and actually hinders the growth and success of the organization. The Board of Directors can be better engaged by working in tandem with the management on behalf of the organization. Training is often needed to support these functions.
Community Outreach
Every organization exists within a community. Each organization would benefit from an assessment of its impact on the community, how much it relies on community participation for its survival, and how best it can provide for the community. Community outreach should be an important part of strategic planning, staff function, fundraising strategies, and creative programming.
Creative Problem Solving
It is a mistake to believe that only a few people can be creative. Through proper training, everyone can discover an ability to think “out of the box” and produce new ideas. It is imperative, however, that there is a climate within the organization to encourage creative thinking- every employee regardless of position can find new ways of seeing, thinking, and understanding.
Creative Programming
Using the principles of design thinking, useful strategic planning, intrapreneurship, and employee empowerment, creative programs can be designed to better serve constituents, improve fundraising and the bottom line, and support mission and vision.
Curriculum Development
These challenging times have put a spotlight on the lack of useful curriculum for students starting in middle school that can help to provide a pathway toward a viable occupation upon graduation. In partnership with local government and businesses, school systems can create viable career paths with expert curriculum guidance.
Design Thinking
Through a human-centered approach, every organization can assess how it serves its customers, clients, and community. By asking “How Might We…? organizations can create processes, programs, and products that actually meet the needs of their constituents.
Empower Student Learning
Many education systems are functioning on principles established decades ago. Our world has dramatically changed and how students learn has changed also. Design Thinking can be a critical tool in assessing how students learn, what teachers need to meet today’s challenges, and how the community can support and empower student learning.
Intrapraneurship
Employees can contribute to the growth and success of the organization through their ideas to improve each aspect of the business. By creating a climate of encouragement, clear organizational goals, and a process to review the viability of each idea, intrapreneurship can flourish.
Learning Organizations
Organizations that promote shared vision, team learning, systems thinking, positive mental models, and personal mastery for all employees have discovered value that translates to a more productive operation and greater success.
Management Practices
Organizations that uncover personnel problems, might want to ask if those in management have actually been trained to manage people, processes, and potential. These 3 P’s are essential to a successfully functioning organization.
Partnerships
Strategically selected partners can provide extraordinary benefits to an organization through valuable creative programming, services to the community, fundraising potential, and support for management functions. The key is how to select partners and construct a mutually beneficial agreement.
Social Entrepreneurship
Many companies are now recognizing the myriad benefits of assessing their business in the light of helping social problems that hinder growth and development in their community and across the country. Some organizations have established foundations attached to their business for the express purpose of addressing social needs.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is useful if it is based on reality, is supported by representatives of the entire organization, and the process supports the mission and values of the organization. Many strategic plans sit on the shelf because they are not based on real possibility, but rather on impossibility.
Union and Management Relations
Ongoing communication and transparency, process for solving problems, and joint planning are essential elements that build trust and a sense of shared vision. If employees and management see themselves as both vital to the health and progress of the organization, adversarial relations between union employees and management can be avoided or ameliorated.