Stories
Examples of the Power of Jack's Work with Groups in Organizations & Communities
 A medical imaging equipment company was challenged by a complex global market and strategized to improve its product innovation platform. The constraints of innovations in this sector of health care products are many including cost, quality, reimbursement, and user-friendliness issues. After an intensive day with key engineers and marketing leaders, the group created and whittled 280 ideas down to a dozen vetted exciting concepts for new product research and development projects. The company continues today as an innovation leader in its space.
- A faith-based community service organization wanted to develop metrics for how it's fulfilling its faith mission in a very diverse and challenging faith community. Using an Open Space model, we engaged 60 key board, staff, and community stakeholders to develop alignment around a body of metrics the organization now uses to measure its fulfillment of its challenging mission.
- A thriving historical renovated urban neighborhood was severely divided over a public housing project that could upset the socioeconomic and political balance in the neighborhood. The community development corporation took leadership in inviting the community into an authentic engagement process. In spite of the meetings of over 300 people almost starting with violence, a very peaceful and productive process occurred out of which emerged a clear set of broadly supported criteria and principles for design and investment in a project that would serve key community stakeholders.
- The leadership team in an industrial division of a Fortune 500 company was puzzling over why key strategic projects were unproductive. We did a strategic planning process where a whole new set of questions led the group to realize that 90% of division's annual goals were depending on these projects while investing only 10% of what they needed to. The questions moved the group divided by finger-pointing and blaming to being on the same side of the table. This enabled them to support these critical projects at levels capable of supporting their success.
- County health and political leaders have been in at least 10 years of conflict and cross-blaming for a crisis in psychiatric care capacity in a difficult state and local economy. We invited 30 or so of all of the key stakeholders into a mini appreciative summit to outline the community's assets and dreams relative to thriving service delivery and capacity for psychiatric services. Three meetings and two months later, the group started to collaborate on research and development projects leading to promising approaches to short and long term strategies.
- A rural economic development cluster focused on agriculture struggled for several years to make a difference for small farmers. Using An Intentional Model of Building Community, in a couple of hours, the group created a collage of compelling dreams and translated these into several projects that everyone in the group committed to, creating an unprecedented level of energy, engagement, and focus.
- An information systems team with a large national health care company was charged with significantly transforming its productivity in service delivery, business partnerships, and project management. We gave the whole group a short series of half-day workshops on ways of being a strength-based team after which the team experienced downsizing in half and within months with this constraint, the team doubled their productivity and quality of culture.
- Despite a thriving urban region with dozens of universities and hundreds of companies in information technology, there had never been a gathering of university curriculum and internship designers and employers in search of new local talent. In an unprecendented series of conversations, the group collaborated to identify several very actionable joint projects to design IT curricula to the specific regional needs of employers and to design internship opportunities that can prepare new talent for jobs in technology firms.
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