Customized Services

GROWTH PARTNERS 

We spend a great deal of time interacting with a wide array of inspiring leaders (both individuals and organizations) to sense what leadership is being demanded of them, and help to design healthy architecture to address that demand.

How might we work together to create management practices to more smoothly respond to hockey stick growth? How might we design our organizations to maximize human contribution while maximizing the humanity of the contributors? How might we baseline our company’s ESG performance to take more discerning action? How might we create guiding principles and practices for an organization to more effectively practice self-management?

These are all examples of questions that current and past partners have asked us to Guide them to finding and embedding solutions on.

These questions are not simple. The process can generate emergent needs. Fast learning and action cycles help to build longevity and enrollment into the outputs. Importantly, this work is not EASY and can’t be done by only us. Our partners are committed to doing the deeper work with us which truly changes the relationship to a partnership (as opposed to seeing us as an external expert to tell them what to do). Count on us to guide learning and action and to do so TOGETHER.

We work to co-create and partner to help partners get better at what they want to do to grow their business, people and leaders through…

• leadership training and development programs

• leadership coaching (individuals and teams)

• strategy development / facilitation

• Board Retreats / team development

• organizational design / organizational excellence

• building self-management or less hierarchical principles and ways of working

SOCIAL INNOVATION DESIGN

Our team is deeply trained and experienced in convening multi-stakeholder groups to work together to address really difficult problems across traditional boundaries. Below is a list of examples of current and past projects that we have played a leadership role in designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder innovation and collaboration: 

• How might we leverage digital innovation to accelerate the transition to the energy system that the future requires of us?
  Energy.AI as a facilitator for Energy Futures Lab and The Natural Step Canada
  

• How might we use Alberta’s leadership in today’s energy system to create the energy system that the future requires of us?
  Energy Futures Lab as a facilitator for The Natural Step Canada
  

• How might we create widespread adoption of regenerative agriculture to promote a shared prosperity for food producers?
  Regenerative Agriculture Lab with Rural Routes to Climate Solutions and The Natural Step Canada
  

• How might we effectively learn and collaborate as agricultural extension collaborative to create a bigger collective impact? 
  Agriculture Extension Collaborative in Alberta
  

• Climate Leadership Lab with ReThink Red Deer and as a facilitator for The Natural Step Canada
  

We call these initiatives social innovation labs and, although they apply to the field of social innovation and social innovation labs, the processes can apply equally as favorably within a single organization as an innovation accelerator.

Social innovation labs are a unique combination of service, experiences and action-learning that produce:

• breakthroughs in alignment and engagement across stakeholder groups;

• focus and commitment to those breakthroughs translating into collaborative initiatives; and,

• learning and action designed to accelerate real outcomes

Hosting multi-stakeholder innovation and collaboration (i.e. social innovation labs) is one of our “superpowers”.

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCERS

We tend to be tremendously curious about what is forming in the next wave of leadership, organizational development and strategy in theory and practice. We learn from a wide variety of sources and have real experiences about what is really going on, what is coming next, what is needed now, and how to catalyze better ways to address that. 

We have a great deal to share in response to Wayne Gretzy’s famous quote - “skate to where the puck is going” - and pass this on in our partner engagements. We integrate credible evidence and the best of peer-reviewed research into our partner work to improve quality, provide better results and help sort out the signals from noise.  

We are proud that our partners and our projects work with the leaders of leaders.
Often there are complex problems to be studied in more formalized research designs. The Arete Initiative team is equipped to design and undertake rigorous (doctoral-level) research processes to respond to a partner's needs, including producing and sharing new knowledge. Examples include: How can we effectively deliver our product to our customers, including facilitating positive change for them? What is our unique model for categorizing our member database and what is the unique value proposition for each? What is our role in managing an innovation ecosystem? How can we practice business model innovation in our rapidly growing organization? How does our organization collectively define leadership?

Lastly, the Arete Initiative team incorporates knowledge transfer moments in our work including offering learning resources where appropriate (e.g. online courses, workbooks, etc.). This also includes training programs.