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There are a myriad of school reforms being implemented that lack research and a foundational history that can be researched. Appreciative inquiry and the 4-D process is uniquely positioned and provided our school with a authentic reform model using the perceptions of faculty, students and parents. It provided our school with a powerful reform that led to doubling our graduation rate, and increasing faculty cohesion, which led to accolades from our district leaders, and an outstanding accreditation visit.
Dr. Vince Carbino
Principal
City of Angels School and Virtual Academy
Los Angeles Unified School District

We are masterful consultants, with a long and successful track record in strength-based organizational and individual transformation. Where others see complexity, we see opportunity.  When faced with dynamic human and organizational challenges, we design and facilitate high-engagement change processes that produce powerful and productive partnerships, stimulate innovation, and get results.   As leaders in the field of Appreciative Inquiry, our portfolio encompasses many of the best known, most highly regarded cases of high-impact positive change.  Satisfied clients describe our work as practical, provocative and expansive.

Organizational Development Organizations get results in today’s rapidly changing global environment when they build proactive and inclusive cultures, when employees feel and act like owners, and take initiative to adapt and even get ahead of change.  We work with clients to help them take the reins of change and actively create the future they want. Our organizational development services focus upon the clarification and alignment of seven key elements of organizing: mission, strategy, structure, relationships, culture, leadership and processes.  Our work ranges from support for a local company’s growth strategy, to the design of a company-wide leadership development program, to helping a global company that seeks to create a culture of innovation. The mainstay of our work is Appreciative Inquiry. We apply it to our clients’ goals for merger integration, union management relations, culture building and transformation, leadership development, process and performance improvement and innovation. Our Appreciative Inquiry-based processes accelerate organizational change by increasing engagement, promoting cross-silo partnership, and fostering a free exchange of information, knowledge and best practices across the value chain.  People working in partnership to cultivate compelling shared visions, set direction and launch inspired actions that pave the way for people, profits and the planet to flourish.

Strategic Planning
Traditional strategic planning – choice making among a small group of executives followed by a prolonged rollout – takes time and even more effort.  And it is time that most organizations don’t have when faced with rapidly changing markets and business environments.  Our strategic planning processes actively engage all the people whose future it is in co-creating the future they most desire.  As people commit to one another and the future they’re co-creating, they forge the connections that are crucial to successful implementation.  Rather than “driving” a plan through the system, our strategic planning processes create a “pull.” We have conducted strategic planning processes for telecommunications, service and manufacturing companies, communities, universities and K-12 educational institutions, health care organizations and government agencies.

Appreciative Inquiry Summits – Large Scale Meetings
Organizations and communities are often faced with complex, multi-dimensional challenges that call for collaborative action among large numbers of diverse stakeholders. In such cases, we design large-scale meetings, called Appreciative Inquiry Summits that foster dialogue, collaborative decision-making, and high levels of commitment.  Appreciative Inquiry Summits are a particularly useful vehicle for high engagement, accelerated change when focused upon a clear and specific outcome. We have used Appreciative Inquiry Summits to assist clients in a wide range of endeavors including:

  • Implement a strategy for an IT organization to achieve improved results
  • Create and implement a mutual vision for organizational leadership
  • Surface organizational strengths and create an aligned vision for excellence for a virtual high school.
  • Develop a new design for more effective efficient meetings.
  • Establish cross-organizational partnerships for internal orgnaizational partners.
  • Redesigning Work Processes in a High Tech Information Company.
  • Implement positve Appreciative Leadership within a manufacturing company.

Corporation for Positive Change’s large group meetings unleash unprecedented commitment and collaborative action by including everyone who has a stake in the outcome in one simultaneous conversation.  If you want something done and want it done fast, consider an Appreciative Inquiry Summit.

Team Building
Organizations are host to dozens, hundreds or even thousands of teams. Organizational effectiveness depends upon team effectiveness. We offer team-building processes in support of formal and informal teams, helping team members clarify their purpose and goals, build and enhance empowering relationships, and align their strengths to realize their best contribution to the organization. Our Appreciative Inquiry approach fosters trusting, respectful relationships that liberate people’s individual and collective power. As part of executive development, culture change or even process improvement initiatives, we design and facilitate strength-based team building processes that bring out the best of people and teams.

Community Development
Today’s most progressive communities forge positive partnerships between citizens and leaders, actively foster social inclusion and equality, and engage people in the decisions that affect them; and there is no better way to achieve these goals than through community-based Appreciative Inquiry.  Corporation for Positive Change’s award-winning work in cities and municipalities throughout North America has help clients enhance aging and educational services, forge positive partnerships across ethnic groups, develop local transportation plans and a downtown urban marketplace, and enabled the exchange of financial best practices in the face of budget challenges.  Whatever your goals or challenges, we can help you bring your community’s dreams to life.

Shadow Consulting
We offer special consulting services to other consultants and change agents who are taking on large projects. Our shadow consulting services provide targeted behind the scenes support at key junctures like planning and conceptualizing projects, designing effective activities to engage participants. We can also work with change agents to strengthen your skills as a facilitator, ensuring that you are in top form and able to implement your project successfully. Working one-on-one with one of our highly skilled Appreciative Inquiry consultants provides you with access to the latest in thinking and research in a highly personalized format. Contact us today to learn more about shadow consulting and how it can work for you.

Coaching by Tenny Poole

Coaching

We offer personalized one-on-one coaching to enhance leadership and professional confidence, resiliency and effectiveness. [ more > ]

Consulting by Tenny Poole

Consulting

We are visionary leaders in the growing field of positive change. Our methods and tools are firmly grounded in the strength-based principles of Appreciative Inquiry. [ more > ]

Workshops with Tenny Poole

Workshops

In our workshops we bring leading edge theory and research to life through relevant experiential activities and practical applications. [ more > ]

Speaking engagements with Tenny Poole

Speaking

We are highly engaging keynote speakers available to raise the energy, positively shake things up, and inspire action at your next conference or corporate executive development program. [ more > ]