Strategic Futurists; Value Systems Specialists

Advanced Strategic Thinking; Innovation Capability; Future Alert Subscription

Title Image

Our core product offerings give you a significant point of leverage that enhance your ability to increase profits and reduce costs.

The essence of the service we offer will help you:

  • To enhance the strategic thinking and selection at any level of your organisation;
  • Develop and Improve 'Purpose Driven' Innovation capabilities
  • Gain an extended lead time for emerging changes within your marketplace 

We provide you this essential results driven process through a number of ways.  Both the training program listed below and the details listed un the 'Services' tab are well worth reading - 

Training Programs with Impact

Looking Up Feeling Good will customise our training programs to suit exactly what you are looking for and to deliver the outcomes you want.  Our training sessions revolve around the core themes -

  1. Greater Operational Awareness, Sooner;  
  2. More Critically Developed Strategies; and
  3. Increased Functional Adaptability and Flexibility


Listed below are the core programs we provide.  Public programs are available to multiple organisations in the one room with no limit on the number of members from that organisation being present.

Private programs are 'client only' sessions conducted specifically for one client and may be inhouse or off-site as best fits the needs of your organisation. They are typically designed for your specific requirements

  • Introduction to Environmental Scanning     1/2 Day 
  • Public & Private Session Options

Environmental Scanning (ES) is the process of deliberately searching out emerging, unusual and provocative snippets of information that indicate the early signs of change within your Industry both as potential areas of increased risk and possible opportunities for development.

The 1/2 day program introduces you to the process of Environmental Scanning (ES), shows how your organisation can build an ES framework, gives you models to consider when building that framework and shows how you can maximise opportunities that these early change indicators uncover.

  • Environmental Scanning Intensive Course     11 weeks
  • Private Only Training Option
This intensive ES training course uses weekly face to face, phone and online based contact modes to inject the critical ES skills required to both uncover, capture and analyse data discovered in the ongoing company ES.  Limited to no more than 3 employees at a time, this course builds a comprehensive capacity for your organisation to move beyond the 'data monitoring' agency model towards one in which it actively sources and assesses emerging signals of change from within and beyond its operating environments.  This enhanced capacity acts as a strategic advanced scouting party, giving your senior management team extra time to consider, articulate and prepare effective strategy in the light of potential change.
  • Introduction to Strategic Foresight Tools & Methods     1 day
  • Public & Private Training Options
Strategic Foresight is the process of consciously considering potential in the future at any given time.  This process leads to better decision frameworks and additional time to develop organisational readiness for change. This one day program covers a vast array of popular strategic foresight tools and methodologies, how they work and can be applied, their benefits and their limitations.  In order to increase your organisation's Foresight Quotient (FtQ) and thereby improve your strategy development, having the capacity to know what tools are available and how to apply them is vital
  • Introduction to Scenario Planning     1 day 
  • Public & Private Training Options
Scenario Planning is one of the best known Strategic Foresight Methods.  Knowing which Scenario process best fits your needs and whether undertaking a Scenario Planning exercise is going to be of value to your business, is an important key to ensuring 'relevance' of the process for your organisation.  In this one day program you will be taken through the common Scenario Planning methodologies, consider case studies as examples of how they have been applied and then assess whether Scenario Planning can provide the leverage to improve your organisation's strategy development processes.
This exceptional client only program has been designed to help your business uncover the answers to some critical issues - the two or three key future focused questions you would want answered.  Combining an intensive Environmental Scan, closed door face to face sessions and a final report, your key team will be guided by two expert facilitators as you consider the future operating environment for your organisation, what that means for where you organisation is now positioned, what you might do to prepare for potential changes and how you link the ideas for the future to operational imperatives for today.  Our clients who've been through the ASp have had great success at redefining and identify opportunities and risks greatly adding to their depth of understanding of their potential to succeed in their given Industry sectors.

  • Introduction to Visioning     1/2 day 
  • Public & Private Session Options
Much has been written about Visions, what they are and what they should do.  But the ways in which you can create a Vision that works is less understood.  In this half day program we explore what Visions are, how they can be used and consider which of the methods for creating a Vision would suit your organisation.
  • Visioning - Creating a Compelling Vision  1 day
  • Private Session
At the bottom of the ladder, 'message from on high, motherhood filled' Vision statements do nothing to excite or engage staff, management, customers and stakeholders, and in fact can be down right detrimental to the business.  At the top of the ladder are the Visions that act as shining stars for the organisation, drawing it and its people forward into a better future.  This one day workshop is aimed at helping your organisation create the type of Vision that is 'energy charged', that makes everyone's heart beat a little faster and that often makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand up and take notice!  Compelling Visions capture the essence of the organisation's future - make yours a great one!
  • Contingency, Risk & Wildcards     1 day 
  • Public & Private Session Options
How prepared is your organisation for the 'never in a million years' event?  You know the types of things - the collapse of Enron or HIH, Exxon Valdez disaster, the Piper Alpha tragedy, even the emergence of the iPod and file sharing!  Have you considered how you would know that your world was about to suddenly change?  This one day session introduces the Strategy Manager and Risk Manager to two of the latest tools for understanding the Wildcard events - the Cascading Discontinuity Set (CDS) and the Reference Impact Grid (RIG).  Both tools enable your organisation to be more critically aware to the potential for sudden change, identify where that change might come from, how it might look and what you might do in the light of such an event.  The RIG takes the idea of contingency plans and risk assessments one step further - it shows how you can identify the risks of your competitors and turn that risk into a significant business advantage!
  • Backcasting - Linking your Organisation's Future to Today's Choices     1/2 day 
  • Public & Private Session Options
Explorations of the future indicate a willingness by the organisation to better understand its potential future operating environment.  But unless the exploration of the future is tied back to the Operational choices for today, explorations of the future can often be little more than theoretical navel gazing exercises.  Backcasting is arguably the single most important step in a futures exercise.  Too often it is the single most important step organisations fail to undertake.  This half day program gives you a step by step process to ensure that your thoughts for tomorrow are tied to your actions for today!
  • Advanced Strategic Planning     1 day 
  • Public & Private Session Options
This program is delivered as part of the Australian Strategic Planning Institute's public workshop - see their website here   The sad fact is that whilst many organisations undertake Strategic Planning processes, too few of them leverage their Strategic Plans to boost business performance.  This session covers what Strategic Plans really are and what Strategic Planning is supposed to do, how Strategic Plans fail and how you can make your Strategic Plan an integral part of ongoing business peformance improvement by looking at areas of measurement, accountability and governance.
  • Introduction to Value Systems   1 day 
  • Public & Private Session Options
Value Systems (also known as Spiral Dynamics (tm) is a model for understanding individual and organisational behaviour.  Used behind the scenes to enable the breakdown of Apartheid in South Africa, Value Systems theory has since been used in elite sporting teams, education, manufacturing, recruitment and retailing industries around the world.  This introductory session introduces you to Value Systems, (what they are, and are not), where you can go to gain more information and how you might apply them in areas like Marketing, HR, and product development.
(Spiral Dynamics is a Registered Trade Mark of National Values Centre in the USA)
  • Value Systems in Marketing     2 days 
  • Private Session
This two day program draws on the content in the Introductory program and takes a specific focus to the area of marketing.  It explores why most Branding efforts are mismatched to the consumer, why demographic and ethnographic studies often focus on the wrong customer issue, and how you can use the Value Systems approach to build highly adaptable and targeted marketing efforts.
  • Value Systems & Recruitment     2 days
  • Private Session
Employee Recruitment, motivational challenges, staff management, retention and employee incentive programs are often mismatched because the rely on outdated approaches to staff management.  This two day session explores how different Value Systems see the world through different lenses, the implications for management and how you can use that understanding to dramatically boost the performance of your organisation.
  • Certification in Spiral Dynamics - contact us for further details
    Official certification in Spiral Dynamics can only be conferred by the National Values Centre in the USA.  An annual Public program is conducted in Australia and Private programs can be conducted by arrangement

  • Innovation via the Killing Trends method     1/2 day
  • Public Session
    Much of what you read in newspapers, government websites and popular magazines would have you believe that Innovation is not only something we all should be doing, its easy to do!  This half day session explores the myths and misconceptions about what Innovation is and then explores the Killing Trends model for Innovation - one that actually works!
  • Innovation via the Killing Trends method     2 day program
  • Private Session
    This is a client only two day program that takes your organisation through the Creative/Innovation mine field to discover a clear path to indentifying not only how your organisation can Innovate, but where it should start to do so!

    Customised Programs 
    Other customised programs around the core themes are available - talk to us to see how we can create something that truly fits your needs

    'Your Future Questions Answered Today'.  So why wait - ask away! 
    Email Looking Up Feeling Good or 613 9445 0289
Looking for some great books to help your business thinking?  Check out these -

'The Money Tree & How to Grow One: Creating Success in Your Business'
and
'Killing Trends - The Graceful Art of Innovation' (coming soon)
Both at www.barberbooks.com

'The Never Ending Quest' available from ECLET Publishing
Summary of book found at www.clarewgraves.com/neq/neq.html
and you can purchase the book via www.clarewgraves/neq/NEQ_order.html
by Graves, Cowan & Todorovic

'Who Really Matters? - The Core Group Theory'
Art Kleiner

'12 and 1/2 Ideas That Work'
Robert Sutton

Books to Improve your futures thinking

Oryx & Crake
Margaret Attwood

Source these books at various locations online

Companies to help you if we can't -

Advertising & Marketing:
August - website here (for product launches and web development)
Frontier Media - website here (for advertising campaigns and media buys)
Selbys - website here (for advertising banners, marquees and corporate display materials)
Mellar Marketing - website here (for customer insights, research & analysis, and events planning)

Futures Thinking:
If we cannot assit you with your futures thinking needs there are a range of alternatives both within Australia and around the world:

Meta Futures - www.metafutures.org (for critical futures thinking)
University Futures - www.universityfutures.org (for futures work in the education sector)
Shaping Tomorrow - www.shapingtmorrow.com (for trends and futures articles & thinking from the UK)


Training Services:
Paramount Training - paramounttraining@bigpond.com.au (for NLP, Spiral Dynamics & Counselling)
Performance Toolkit - specialists in Coaching skills for managers and leaders (website here)


Of course we are bound to know many others for almost any need you have, no matter where in the world you are.  Contact us at our email address Email Looking Up Feeling Good or on 613 9445 0289

Call Us Today - We Really Do Deliver

Right now you probably sense that we can help you.  Our skill sets across industry sectors, our track record and our ability to help companies like yours, to think more effectively and be better prepared as an organisation are exceptional.

What you will get are great results and wonderful value from anything we undertake on your behalf.

As strategic futurists we make just one prediction we'd stake our company on - you'll be glad you engaged us to help you with the challenges you face.

Keep informed - Sign up

Look ahead for your business - sign up for your exclusive updates.
name

email address

Events

Preparing for your future corporate strategy
Friday 16 July 2010
A series of recent activities has me writing on the idea of 'future strategy' and how different organisations are approaching their future development. What is interesting is the strong sense that preparing for your potential future requires multiple paths forward, not a single 'home run'. To that end I've recently considered sporting bodies and local community driven programs which has triggered these 'thought bubbles'
Read more...
The Crisis of Capital
Monday 5 July 2010
Stephen Downes is one the handful of bloggers I follow consistently. I do so because Downes (unlike many others unfortunately) like to write about his thinking AS WELL AS promoting the thinking of others, whether or not he agrees with them. In that way you get a solid collection of alternative views within his field of endeavour (learning & teaching et al). The link below will take you to a presentation by David Harvey that walks you through an interesting interpretation of the Capitalist model and where we are at in the world affairs. Whether or not you agree with the content, it is highly recommended
Read more...
Catching Up on some 'Light Reading'
Monday 28 June 2010
Coming off what has been undoubtedly my busiest period (3 months) in the past decade, I'm in the throws of catching up on some light reading. I usually have at least two books on the go and my preference is for the books to be about diverse topics because it allows the mind to seek out random connections. I once 'solved' the nuclear fusion problem whilst reading books by Umberto Eco and John D Barrow. A physicist friend of mine suggested my idea was radical and yet theoretically possible. But I digress. Right now I have a wide combination - 'From Poverty to Peace' by Duncan Green looks at ways in which we can empower people to help themselves more effectively, whilst looking at the myriad of mistakes so commonly made in the area of 'aid'. 'New knowledge in Human Values' is an older book edited by Ambraham Maslow with a wide contribution of thoughts from the likes of Pitirim Sorokin, Dorothy Lee and Paul Tillich (among others) and is a walk through some of the thinking about Human Values emerging in the late 1950's. The chapters are appropriately dense undertakings and I'm finding it hard to stick with, especially as I'm more inclined to lean towards the model of Clare W Graves and his Value Systems Thoery; 'Coercion as Cure' by Thomas Szasz is a ripper of a book thus far, though I'm only a few chapters in, I can tell the quality of a book by how much 'tagging' I do within a text
Read more...