A Boy, Some Cardboard Boxes and a Lot of Creativity
Craine Monroy, is a 9 year old boy who lives in L.A. During the holidays and at weekends, he hangs out at his father’s auto parts store where he runs his own arcade. Watch this short film to see not only a superb example of creativity and ingenuity but also an extraordinary act of kindness from his first customer, Nirvan Mullick.
Ingenuity
One of the definitions of ‘ingenuity’ is ‘the ability to deal resourcefully with unusual problems’. To us, this is essential in growing a team, organisation, country or even, especially recently, the planet. Finding the resources within a group to solve a problem quickly and efficiently not only reduces costs, it also means that people will have more space and time to devote to initiating, which is so vital for growth. Encouraging INGENUITY is one of the key outcomes of our Think, Do, Be Innovation Programme (Initiating is another but more of that in another post.)
Customer Service
What is customer service? Is it as basic as keeping our promises and making sure we know what others in our organisation have promised too? Is everyone in your organisation aware of your brand promises? See more about keeping your customer promises here.
Team Values Alignment Process Workbook
Lorraine has been busy over the last few months writing and developing a new product – the Team Values Alignment Process workbook.
This is a powerful process to help teams tap into each other’s real motivations and intentions. This process enables:
* Individuals to communicate their core values clearly
* Meaningful and honest communications within the team
* Key decision making about individual and team values match/fit
* A values relevancy check with the organisation and global trends
* Conflict resolution for individual and team conflicts
* Revitalised team direction with new conscious commitments
* Team role alignment with mission critical goals
* Alert and agile team based culture
The process is available as a downloadable 50 page workbook. It contains seven guided steps for some initial individual preparation and some team sessions. It can be facilitated by the team leader or an independent third party and she is giving unlimited use per organisational purchase. Do contact either us here at Future Plan or directly to Lorraine at the Passion@Work site for more details.
A Health Check for High Streets and Town Centres
A few months ago Future Plan provided a team of facilitators to The Department of Business Innovation and Skills for a Healthy High Street Conference. The half day conference included talks by retailers, town centre and property managers as well as facilitated workshops posing some challenging questions to the participants about what the earliest signs of High Street decline might be.
Comments after the day included:
”The workshops were excellent.”
”Amongst other things, the faciltators kept the groups focused on the topics they were allocated and that led to high quality ideas from the groups.”
”We wouldn’t have had such a high quality output without the facilitators”
The results and a guide have just been published by BIS. Read more here.
Future Plan consultant shortlisted for innovation award
Pat Naylor, a director and consultant with Future Plan, has been shortlisted for a global innovation award.
Pat’s entry is now in the final 100 of the MET-funded Ideas to Innovation Challenge, an award that searches for the world’s best ideas for improving graduate management education.
The MET received entrants from over 60 countries, with the winner taking US$50,000 for their idea.GMAC Ideas to Innovation Challenge
Pat will find out whether her entry has made it through to the final in November.
Future Plan is incredibly proud of Pat’s achievement and wishes her all the best in the latter stages of the competition.