Strategic Planning & Visioning
Strategic business planning takes on a whole new meaning when it is grounded in the assets, successes, and core strengths of the whole system and reinforced with positive images of the future. Strategic planning and strategic action become inextricably linked.
Sustainable Enterprises and Corporate Responsibility
Doing good and sustaining profitability over time go hand in hand. Increasingly, the most successful companies are those focused on the triple bottom line: people, profits, and planet. At Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, leadership in social responsibility translates into a high sense of purpose, meaning, and value, igniting high levels of performance, rapid growth and pride. AI methodologies help companies tap into high purpose and engage people at every level, calling on businesses to become “Agents of World Benefit.”
When Green Mountain Coffee Roasters employees made a trip to Guatemala and Mexico several months ago they took with them Frontline producer Sam Quinonoes and a television crew. They captured the important story of Fair Trade Coffee and why it matters so much.
The Frontline show featuring Sam Quinones’ trip with GMCR employees to Guatemala and Mexico is scheduled to air May 22nd and 23rd, 2003. Frontline has been highly reviewed for its documentaries , with some saying it is the best new show on the air. Seeing the show will help viewers to understand the coffee industry and the larger issues around global sustainability and even world peace. Peace comes from understanding, compassion and appreciation of others and their situations. We encourage everyone who is engaged in thinking about the subject of what it means for Business to be an Agent of Benefit to tune into this program.
Customer Service
The often-quoted story here is that of a muffler company who had a 95% satisfaction rating with customers. They decided to make it 100% and began calling the 5% of dissatisfied customers to find out what went wrong. The result? Satisfaction ratings plummeted. There’s a moral to this story: you get what you’re looking for.
AI is based on the belief that “words create worlds”. By inquiring into and appreciating what’s working, valued, and desired most in customer service, images of possibility and achievement become not only believable, but also mobilized.
Marketing & Branding
AI is highly useful in marketing and branding in that it evokes a process for understanding your product/service’s unique value proposition, competitive position and designing strategic, innovative approaches to targeting, expanding, and nurturing customer confidence.
Supply Chain Management
AI engages the whole system in a rapid and democratic discovery of strengths and future possibilities, empowering all facets of the supply chain—from supplier to customer—to collectively design and deliver in a manner that ignites innovation, improved productivity, and performance. AI is a powerful process for identifying complex interdependencies in supply chain management and enhancing the relationships that form the building blocks of organizational sustainability in rapidly changing markets.
Mergers & Partnerships
Mergers and new partnerships work when the merging cultures develop relational strength, a clear understanding of the new expanded asset base, and a shared perspective on the future. AI makes this possible by bringing to light the full organizational capacities of all partners, enabling the collective goals to be realized.
Process Improvement
Whether creating new or redesigning existing processes for increased effectiveness, an AI approach enables participatory process design to best match the organization’s unique business demands, goals, and changing environment. From discovering internal best practices, to benchmarking, to co-constructing processes – AI unleashes the collective wisdom of interdependent groups to ensure optimal process effectiveness.