What We Offer

Far too often, strategic planning/change initiatives dedicate significant effort to develop a plan that loses steam once the project team winds down, leaders change, or funding priorities shift. For the complex, long-term challenges we now face, it is imperative to create change in ways that sustain commitment, action, measurement, and follow through on long-term goals…and the capacity to learn and adapt as conditions change.

New Directions Collaborative helps organizations and networks create positive change on visionary goals in ways that engage and motivate people from all parts of the system that will be implementing the changes. We use innovative techniques to help people “see the system,” understand how issues and challenges are connected, and engage across difference skillfully to create transformative solutions. Groups then naturally move beyond fragmented compartmentalized approaches to collaborating on actions that create positive impacts on multiple dimensions.  

We offer a range of services to help organizations and larger networks to self-organize and achieve audacious goals, including:

• Create clarity on what is needed amidst complexity and change; frame strategic questions to inspire inquiry and emergent solutions  
• Design processes to engage stakeholders from across the system/organization in ways that all voices can be heard and an integrated view of “the system” can emerge
• Cultivate the inherent passion and motivation within a group to clarify a common purpose and generate a compelling vision and goals that they feel inspired to work on
• Use maps and surveys to help people see how their work connects to the larger whole and discover connections and ways to align their work
• Collect, analyze, integrate and communicate data to inform strategy and decision-making and measure and coordinate joint work
• Help networks of organizations create structures and governance to support on-going collaboration in person and on-line 
• Create processes for reflective learning, amplifying what works, learning from elsewhere, and adapting to change

Click here for case studies of some of our strategy and systems change projects.

Or you can check out our blog posts about sustainability and strategy.