Featured Resources

The Agility Accelerator is a powerful rapid organizational network analysis self-managed platform that visualizes and analyzes collaboration, provides insights about workflows, and most importantly, offers research-based recommendations for actionable improvements.

Strategic Edge

As the workplace becomes more distributed and decentralized, proactively ensuring and enabling positive and productive connections within and across teams, functions or divisions becomes a critical success factor for managing talent.

The Agility Accelerator provides insights and practical strategies about how collaboration is happening by identifying:

• Key influencers, change agents and boundary spanners–important transformation agents

• Collaborative overload, jeopardizing critical employees from burnout
• Silos that undermine innovation or sharing of best practices
• Inclusivity across networks
• Hidden talent–people critical to the network but not recognized as high performers
• Collaborative norms affecting engagement and performance
• Group dynamics, particularly important for transitional leaders

Key Components

1. Customizable survey
2. Launch and manage
3. Immediate results upon finish (with research-based recommendations)

This toolkit employs a series of online and paper-based resources to innovate, execute and thrive at work for use in leadership development, on-boarding and career planning workshops.

Toolkit Components

Online Personal Network Assessment: Produces online comparative results; a comprehensive paper-based report that includes strengths, opportunities and blind spots; features optional 360 feedback; a team-based component; and a coaching module.

Personal Network Card Sort: Designed for workshops or individual coaching, these cards help people see how personal networks and relationships impact innovation, execution and a sense of thriving and well-being.

12 Lessons: Each lesson has five key components–a video describing specific leadership strategies, a research paper, supporting slides, case studies and an action planning tool.

Library of Case Studies: 140 two-page mini case studies summarizing practices of leaders at all levels of an organization.

The collaborative intensity of work has exploded over the past decade due to companies transitioning to matrix based structures, increased complexity of products and services, globalization, email proliferation and adoption of collaborative tools and social media.

Our research has shown that by making a few changes – typically doing just 3-4 things differently – can enable you to claw back 18-24% of your collaborative time. These tools ask you to reflect on a set of beliefs and practices that distinguish more efficient collaborators.

Toolkit Components

Online Collaborative Overload Assessment: Produces online comparative results; a comprehensive paper-based report that includes strengths, opportunities and blind sports; features optional 360 feedback; and a team-based component.

Collaborative Overload Card Sort: Designed for workshops or individual coaching, these cards help people identify a small number of specific practices, behaviors, and beliefs they can change to more efficiently manage their time and create space for innovation.

When employees experience trust, purpose and positive energy in their network, they are four times more likely to be high performers, give greater effort, report higher engagement levels and stay longer in the organization – ultimately thriving at work.

Our research has identified specific ways to improve the quality of relationships to build trust, a sense of purpose and energize those around you.

Toolkit Components

Online Engagement Assessment: Produces online comparative results; a comprehensive paper-based report that includes strengths, opportunities and blind sports; features optional 360 feedback; and contains a team-based component.

Engagement Card Sort: Designed for workshops or individual coaching, these cards help people take action to cultivate trust, purpose and energy.

Case Studies: Best practice summaries based on a significant leadership study, providing further detail directly related to each engagement item.

Initiating and engaging personal networks in targeted ways is critical to successful role transition. Whether entering a new organization, taking on a lateral transfer or accepting a promotion, people who invest in certain network strategies enjoy more successful role transitions.

Toolkit Components

Resource Center: Contains 12 total lessons; four for each area critical to success―Initiate, Engage and Refine. Each lesson is comprised of five key components―a video describing specific network strategies in transition, a lesson guide and planning template, supporting slides, case studies of leaders successfully employing this practice and an on-line planning tool.

• Initiate: Jumpstart productivity and inclusion through connections that yield influence without authority, address skill gaps and magnify capability.
• Engage: Connect in ways that energize others, build rapid trust and create pull into important projects and streams of work.
• Refine: Re-calibrate networks and collaborative practices for long-term performance and well-being/engagement in work.

Network In Transition Card Sort: Designed for workshops or individual coaching, , these cards and the on line planning tool help people engage in 12 network practices of more successful transitions. 

A highly interactive five session virtual program teaching leaders the collaborative practices of high performers based on 20 years of research.

Participants progress through the course supported by activities, videos, articles, discussion forums and live sessions, and conclude with a detailed action plan to improve their teams/units and their own personal networks. Cohort networks are built through the experience to provide an ongoing community for each participant.

Program Description

Our research over the past two decades shows that more effective people cultivate networks that:

• Produce Innovative Solutions: Create trust and energy and craft non-insular networks.
• Execute Work Efficiently: Engage key opinion leaders and address specific performance opportunities.
• Generate Thriving: Cultivate collaboratively efficient networks and building networks that yield a sense of purpose and balance

For a look at the Connected Leaders Course Overview or to get a sense of the course design, see our lesson on Innovate. If interested in learning more, please contact us.

The quality of a newcomer’s network dramatically decreases time to productivity and odds of unwanted attrition. This on-boarding and retention tool employs a face-to-face experience for the first session followed by four virtual modules that include an overview, videos, knowledge check and action plan. The materials are based on a decade of research to help newcomers rapidly replicate the connectivity of high performers on entry and by transitioning these networks over 18 months of tenure.

Program Description

Unlike traditional on-boarding programs, this focuses on building the right network connections at the right point:

• 0-9 Months Tenure: Successful people; 1) Create PULL; 2) Leverage legitimacy of influencers and 3) Engage colleagues to make sense of context.
• 9-18 Months Tenure: Successful people: 1) Initiate enterprise-wide networks; 2) Engage In activities that create collaboratively efficient networks and 3) Find connections and work that yield a sense of purpose.

Refer to the overview of the Generate Energy and Trust module to get a sense of the course design. If interested in learning more, please contact us.

Network analytics are fast becoming an essential competency for organizations who want to understand how their informal networks function and manage them to drive change, fuel innovation and develop talent.

Program Description

A six session virtual course teaches people how to conduct Organizational Network Analysis (ONA). This program leverages a range of experts with decades of experience to help participants consider all aspects of a successful network analysis project. The course will teach you how to:

• Manage the strategic design of an ONA to maximize business impact
• Select the best approach for data capture from both survey and social media-based options
• Design effective instruments for data capture
• Generate visual and quantitative analytics
• Communicate network insights to stakeholders
• Have knowledge of the three leading network analysis software packages: UciNet, NetDraw, and NodeXL.

Refer to the course description for more details and to register.