Bring What’s Possible to Fruition
Appreciative Applied Creativity™ is adapted from the Simplex CPS model from Min Basadur and the Appreciative Inquiry model from David Cooperrider. ALCEMIS facilitates leaders and their teams through this model to help them:
- Identify needs, challenges and opportunities
- Determine facts and assumptions regarding the needs, challenges or opportunities
- Define the key need, challenge or opportunity
- Develop ideas to address the key need, challenge or opportunity
- Assess and select the best idea(s) to solve the key need, challenge or opportunity
- Develop an implementation plan
- Gain acceptance, including overcoming resistance
- Execute the plan
Simplex
The Simplex system developed by Min Basadur is a model for leading innovation. The Simplex system is about creativity in action or applied creativity. It combines a creative problem solving (CPS) process along with profiles of individual creative problem solving styles and imaginative or analytical skills to help organizations develop their creative habit.
Appreciative Inquiry
At ALCEMIS, we encourage positive and possibility thinking. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) focuses on the positive core of organizations, on the best of what has been and the possibility of what could be. AI is a natural fit for how we view the possibilities of what people in organizations can accomplish when they work together to co-create solutions for positive results. When organizations use AI effectively, appreciative thinking and acting become imbued in how the organization works, allowing it to continually adapt and grow in positive ways that deliver value to all stakeholders.
Application
WCDA employs 1,500 people in 7 states and delivers computer software and services to small businesses that help them benefit from products and services similar to those used by big companies but at a price the small business can afford.
Because of their unique offering and the owner’s leadership, WCDA experienced rapid growth over the last 3 years. With current market conditions, though, they are now experiencing a lull. Realizing that they grew really fast, WCDA’s owner and her leadership team decide they should reevaluate how they got to today and how to plan for the future.
WCDA engages ALCEMIS to help them focus on the best of what helped them deliver rapid growth, so they can capitalize on that success. Through a series of one-on-one interviews and large group sessions facilitated by ALCEMIS, WCDA discovers and identifies:
- the best of what was
- areas of opportunity
- related facts and assumptions
- what actions they need to take to move forward
As WCDA continues to use Appreciative Applied Creativity, they refine their areas of opportunity to align with their dreams for continued profitable growth. They utilize brainstorming tools and techniques to develop ideas to move forward for evaluation and selection and then select the best of the best.
Engaging multiple cross-functional team members helps WCDA craft well thought-out plans, including how to address areas of risk and resistance. Integrating change management tools into their planning process helps them to gain acceptance across the organization for successful execution of their plans for the next phase of growth.
