THINKING OUT OF THE BOX—MOBILIZING ASSETS FOR INCREASED SUSTAINABILITY ASSETS FOR INCREASED SUSTAINABILITY
GOALS GOALS ☞ ☞
LEARNING LEARNING CONCEPTS CONCEPTS ☞ ☞
The Goals of this Exercise are:
♦ To eliminate artificial constraints on thinking and get your creative juices flowing.
♦ To explore the possibilities for making better use of the existing assets within the organization to increase sustainability.
♦ To promote new ideas and non-traditional solutions that rely on organizational assets as the raw materials.
The Learning Concepts Associated with this Exercise are:
♦ Thinking Out of the Box—getting beyond traditional or accustomed ways of thinking about organizational issues and answers;
allowing the imagination to take over and explore a broad range of ideas that may never have been considered before.
♦ Mobilizing Organizational Assets for Sustainability—the deliberate and strategic utilization of organizational assets and capacities into every aspect of organizational activity.
Mobilizing organizational assets toward increased sustainability means taking strategic action based on the new knowledge that has been gained in this process. Just as thinking about organizational development from the assets perspective is a new way of thinking, this strategic action should emerge from the same kind of shift to thinking
“outside the box” of usual day-to-day actions. As a first step, the working group should engage in some fun activities that help to promote creativity and generate ideas that come from this new way of thinking.
GROUP ACTIVITY GROUP ACTIVITY
A good exercise to begin this process is called You Can Market Anything. For this exercise, break people into groups of two or three and have each group spend 20 minutes developing a marketing plan for a new product. The objective of this exercise is to get the group to start thinking “out of the box,” that is, to eliminate any artificial barriers to a positive attitude. The product can be anything, but should be something beyond the realm of usual thinking, for example, men’s pantyhose. The participants should be sure to use their own personal capacities in the marketing plan. Each group should then share its plan with the other participants. The results are often silly, but tend to be very imaginative.
As a second step, the working group can reflect on the lessons they have learned together in the process of producing individual organizational asset maps and using the other tools in the SHOW-21 Tool Box. They should then combine the creativity that just surfaced through the Thinking Out of the Box exercise with the reflections and apply them to a hypothetical organizational challenge. Throughout this part of the exercise, the working group should pay attention to applying both lessons learned and creative thinking about assets to the situation defined for them. The discussion should produce a strategic action plan that mobilizes as many organizational assets as possible.
ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIVITY ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIVITY
In additional to the group discussion of mobilizing organizational assets, it is useful for each organization to explore internal opportunities for asset mobilization.
Mobilizing assets may take the form of adding something entirely new or building new relevance into a component that already exists. This exercise may be carried as an organizational activity, and the participants may be selected from among members of the board, employees, or whatever part of the organization seems most appropriate.
To experiment with possible mobilizing strategies, use the following questions as a guide. The goal is to identify as many opportunities for a new kind of action as possible. A written document can be prepared in responding to the questions and can be used for strategic planning purposes. Use a blank copy of the Asset Mobilizing Map to illustrate strategies developed in graphic terms.
A. THE ORGANIZATION ITSELF:
1. What new programs and/or activities might the organization develop?
2. How could you make the organization more accessible (e.g., services to a new set of constituents; promotion of your location)?
B. THE ORGANIZATION’S HUMAN ASSETS AND CAPACITIES:
1. In what ways could you identify and mobilize currently untapped employee capacities (e.g., develop a program around a particular skill)?
2. In what ways could you identify and mobilize currently untapped board member capacities (e.g., tap into board member corporate connections)?
3. In what ways could you identify and mobilize currently untapped volunteer capacities (e.g., offer imaginative involvement opportunities based on what volunteers would like to contribute)?
C. THE PHYSICAL/FINANCIAL/REPUTATIONAL ASSETS:
1. How could you get more from your physical assets, or positively transform this component of your asset map (e.g., share space or equipment with another organization; rent some of your space)?
2. How could you get more from your financial assets, or positively transform this component of your asset map (e.g., develop new funding streams; develop a for-profit activity)?
3. How could you get more from your reputational assets, or positively transform this component of your asset map (e.g., marketing efforts)?
D. THE CONSTITUENCY:
1. In what ways could you mobilize the capacities of the individuals you currently serve on behalf of the organization (e.g., as spokespersons or in fund-raising efforts)?
2. In what ways could you mobilize the capacities of individuals you have served in the past on behalf of the organization (e.g., as spokespersons or employees)?
E. COMMUNITY OF RELATED ORGANIZATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS:
1. In what ways could you mobilize the assets and capacities of the other organizations and institutions with whom you have relationships on behalf of the organization (e.g., developing joint programming; sharing employee expertise)?
F. THE COMMUNITY OF LOCATION:
1. In what ways could you mobilize the assets and capacities of the other organizations and institutions in your geographic area on behalf of the organization (e.g., buying materials from local suppliers; hiring locally)?
G. THE SUPPORTERS AND FUNDERS:
1. In what ways could you mobilize the assets and capacities of your supporters and funders on behalf of the organization (e.g., inviting members to increase their involvement; asking funders to support innovative capacity-building activities)?
APPLICATION APPLICATION
Example 1:
Each organization in the SHOW-21 program worked with the Asset Mobilizing Map to develop a set of asset-mobilizing strategies specific to its own organization’s needs. For some, this meant revisiting previously developed plans and modifying them to incorporate new perspectives on the assets that might be available to impact the activity but which had not been thought of earlier. For others, this meant developing entirely new strategies based on assets newly identified.
Example 2:
A nonprofit organization involved in the development of both a health professionals curriculum and community-based definitions of health used the Asset Mobilizing Map to explore directions its efforts could take in terms of providing medical and nursing students opportunities for studying health within a community setting. By identifying the full range of human assets—physicians, nurses, hospital staff, students, and community members—that could be part of their strategies, and exploring different ways to mobilize those assets, the organization created a new strategic plan, its health professionals curriculum has been widely accepted in medical and nursing schools, and the organization has developed a new funding stream based on its publications.