Main Page

From GPWiki

Jump to: navigation, search
Executive Summary - Executive Summary.
Explaining 4D - 4D Explained

Thursday 28 of August, 2008

What is it all about?

Group Partners changes the way its Clients think and work.

Our Clients are the Leaders of large, often multi-national businesses and government agencies. They are thinking about their future, it's complex. They are aiming to improve the performance of their business and they want to make the best decisions about how to get there. They need objectivity and support in this. We have developed an inspiring way to help them.

We have no vested interest in any specific outcome. We want to avoid resolving the wrong problem really well. We are dedicated to working on the team with the leadership, boards of directors and senior folk who aim to increase performance and be more effective.

We help our clients to understand for themselves the opportunity develop better outcomes. We co-create the right future through structured and inspiring tools and techniques that we designed when we were clients ourselves.

We have worked with over 2000 Clients on every imaginable type of business problem or opportunity and always aim to get breakthrough results.

The Playbook

What's It All About? This pack explains how the 4D approach works and demonstrates the main frameworks. 4D is central to our philosophy of improving Efficiencies, Innovation, Complexity, Facilitation, Thinking, Pattern Recognition and Visualisation for our Clients. See Also 4D Explained Get A Free Copy If you would like a copy please contact Hazel Tiffany via email 4D is Group Partners rigorous approach to answering the important questions of business. We have worked with almost 800 different clients in the last 10 years and built up a significant track record built on a major database of experience. See Clients, References, Solutions, Outcomes, FAQs, Big Pictures, 4D Deliverables, SVT and Expert Network

What's It All About?

This pack explains how the 4D approach works and demonstrates the main frameworks. 4D is central to our philosophy of improving Efficiencies, Innovation, Complexity, Facilitation, Thinking, Pattern Recognition and Visualisation for our Clients.
See Also 4D Explained

Get A Free Copy

If you would like a copy please contact Hazel Tiffany via email
4D is Group Partners rigorous approach to answering the important questions of business. We have worked with almost 800 different clients in the last 10 years and built up a significant track record built on a major database of experience. See Clients, References, Solutions, Outcomes, FAQs, Big Pictures, 4D Deliverables, SVT and Expert Network

Our clients are trying to solve complex issues. They will fall into the core areas addressed by our 'Playbook'

  • Making the critical decisions - See Also Decision Manifesto
  • Frameworks for Transformation and Change - See Also 4D™
  • Alignment and Goal Congruence - Direction, Vision, Process and Systems - See Also Structured Visual Thinking™
  • Future Scenario Development and Innovation across the enterprise - See Also Structured Visual Thinking™
  • Strategic Design Sessions designed for Execution - See Also Genesis
  • Visioning and Strategic Planning - See Also Structured Visual Thinking™
  • Leadership Development
  • Team Building
  • Communication across multiple stakeholders
  • Immersive Systems - See Also SVT Live™

The Tools

We bring people who are passionate about creativity, facilitation, innovation, expertise, best practice and insight to bear on this and we call it all Structured Visual Thinking™ and 4D™

Group Partners in 5 Minutes

For those of you in a rush please go straight to GP in 5 Minutes. If you want more context and are prepared to paddle about in what, why and how then continue to explore and click around below. See Also What Irked Us?

Why Business Needs A New Approach

"After what seemed like a relatively short time we had at last got an end to end story we could all tell. For us it was an end to 6 months of pain put to an end. We all wished we had done this at the beginning. It was an astonishing release."
"After what seemed like a relatively short time we had at last got an end to end story we could all tell. For us it was an end to 6 months of pain put to an end. We all wished we had done this at the beginning. It was an astonishing release."
Deadlines are ever present. Constant pressures to complete the task. An entire business to improve, a competitive strategy to create. These are critical and daily issues affecting business. There are many techniques but in our experience they are often costly, uninspiring and fail to be truly owned by the people in the business.

Go to More Detail
If you would like further details about the Structured Visual Thinking™ 4D™ or Partnering with Group Partners please contact John Caswell via email

Why Business Needs New Tools

Business needs different tools to survive the daily pressures of time, competition, capacity to think and reason.

It's actually really frightening to contemplate the enormity of a task when faced with countless moving parts and so many of them out of our command. Every team member with a different perspective and contribution.

Having been in large global businesses all our lives we have witnessed the lack of best practice in teamwork, meetings; collaboration over strategy or value creation processes. We've noted a difficulty generally how we innovate; over how to think or team over everything we need to do to win and survive.

Whether it's a new strategy, a better experience for customers, a transformed culture or innovating new products or markets, the way it gets done is often massively ad hoc, time consuming and unrewarding for everyone involved.

"What was really interesting was that we 'saw' our shared thoughts emerge in a way that caused us to have new and better thoughts. None of us seemed to disagree with what emerged in the way that we would normally disagree one to one. The visual seemed to act as an interpreter at a much more valuable and efficient level."
"What was really interesting was that we 'saw' our shared thoughts emerge in a way that caused us to have new and better thoughts. None of us seemed to disagree with what emerged in the way that we would normally disagree one to one. The visual seemed to act as an interpreter at a much more valuable and efficient level."
What price doing all that's required and getting this wrong too!

Redefining Thinking

Over ten years ago now we set about rethinking business thinking. Redefining the way we might achieve improved performance and value but achieve it faster; more effectively and with significant focus on sustaining the outcomes; gain total ownership by the people at the heart - our clients.

Keywords in our thinking: Best Practice Principles, Facilitation. Pattern Recognition. Structured Visual Thinking, 4D, Clients, References, Information Design, 4D Deliverables, Approaches, Key Images, Expectation Setting, Technical Specifications.

Structured Visual Thinking™

"We now have a real issue. We never want to have another meeting or strategy session without applying these techniques. Trouble is none of us can visualise on the fly and keep us in check like this process does!”
"We now have a real issue. We never want to have another meeting or strategy session without applying these techniques. Trouble is none of us can visualise on the fly and keep us in check like this process does!”
We designed Structured Visual Thinking™

These three words carry our vision and our mission at the same time as ensuring that in the process we avoid solving the wrong problem really well.

Structure has many forms - order, prioritisation, form or arrangement immediately spring to mind. We think in a structured way and bring an informal yet totally logical framework to support the clients assignment. We have designed a way of structuring - combining ideas, conversations and the value that resides there to help business design and promote new value.

"25 individuals with individual skill and passion walked into that room and a team with a collective mission walked out. In a very short period of time we had unburdened ourselves, killed some sacred cows, dispelled several myths and built a path we all cared about and a story we were eager to tell... Probably the most important time we have spent together as a team."
"25 individuals with individual skill and passion walked into that room and a team with a collective mission walked out. In a very short period of time we had unburdened ourselves, killed some sacred cows, dispelled several myths and built a path we all cared about and a story we were eager to tell... Probably the most important time we have spent together as a team."

Visual techniques have been used to excite and inspire humans for ever; in every walk of life; in every aspect of what we do. Interestingly it's not been common in the business world for the visual aspects of the thinking or strategic process until recently. We have pioneered unique tools and approaches that apply visual solutions to these areas of business. We do this to build real energy and understanding in real time. We want to generate that wow moment, the engagement and unlocking of passion in the process.

We create a real ownership of the outcome by unleashing the power of conversation. We do this through the visualization of important conversation and critical fact.

"The simplicity of what we arrived at defies the fact that it contains everything we actually care about. If you look across the whole framework and think about how we got here it's incredible - everything in its place, the next steps literally staring us in the face."
"The simplicity of what we arrived at defies the fact that it contains everything we actually care about. If you look across the whole framework and think about how we got here it's incredible - everything in its place, the next steps literally staring us in the face."

Thinking is a natural human act which is so indefinable and illusive without an embodiment of it that we could talk about it for months. We all observe many direct results of good or bad thinking every day. We see teams of individuals with different ideas and wildy conflicting opinions working to the same end. Our role is to alter the process and arrive at a more consistent and agreed set of ambitions with the best available insights welded together to an increased level and value.

Structured Visual Thinking™ is flexibly applied. Whilst we would prefer to always apply a Discovery component gain alignment and shared appreciation we also deliver bespoke programs to solve very specialist requirements and we have developed very specific frameworks for deliberate applications.

Unique is not a word we particularly aspire to but it does enable us to draw out some comparisons. In its own right unique might not suggest a specific value.

However.

"This was an amazing experience - turning random ideas into value statements, fragments of insight into components that we can use - at the very same time as enabling everyone on the team to realise it was there all the time. We just had to drag it out and get it up there on the wall for all to see."
"This was an amazing experience - turning random ideas into value statements, fragments of insight into components that we can use - at the very same time as enabling everyone on the team to realise it was there all the time. We just had to drag it out and get it up there on the wall for all to see."
  • We have developed 4 phases of thinking using Structure Visual Thinking(tm) in order to solve business problems.
  • We apply a specific algorithm to these frameworks known as The Business Equation
  • Within these frameworks are a specific series of conversations within a set order and proven to elicit certain conclusions within a set amount of time.
  • Within these conversations we have developed a way of developing the resoning through classes of questions and by applying a visual language.
  • Our deliverable is multi-media and directly rooted in the language of the client or the task. We are not selling a methodology or consulting mantra.
  • The outcomes are truly co-created scenarios of the clients own thinking.
  • We will take existing content, scope and frame a suitable application of our approach in order to elicit what is important, what is desired and what is missing.
  • We will inspire a team to greater heights by co-constructing a vision for how things can be and the way to get there.
  • We will work in 'real-time' and remotely to recognize the flaws in an argument and the valuable patterns in the conversations so that the team builds an emergent value that didn't previously exist.
  • We will systemise the outputs into immediately usable and reusable form.
  • Our materials can be immediately be used. We have removed the need for lengthy iteration and reiteration by removing many semantic and subjective opinions right within the process itself.
  • We will bring experts into the conversation from our Expert Network as required but not until we have understood the overall context in order that we all share in the big picture and we avoid solving the wrong problem really well.

Visit Our Blogs: Just Think

Image:present.jpg

Retrieved from "http://www.grouppartnerswiki.net/index.php?title=Main_Page"
Personal tools