Are you hoping to attend the Visual Thinking Workshop in September, but need to get professional development funds to cover it? We are here to help!
Even though XPLANE likes to wear our Great Place to Work badge with pride and love to brag about our consistent 4.25+ out of 5 employee satisfaction rating, we still face a lot of the same challenges that our clients in organizations of all stripes face as the landscape evolves. When departments are stuck working in silos, employees are feeling anxious, and the overall company culture is in a slump, how do we turn our organization around?
Mark your calendars!
XPLANE is offering two immersive learning experiences for individuals this fall.
Visual Thinking 101: The Foundations
Thursday, September 21, 9am - 5pm
Visual Thinking 201: Applying it to your Org
Friday, September 22, 9am - 5pm
After more than 15 years of operation, touching every part of the digital economy, a global non-profit found itself in need of a robust organizational strategy. Inextricably linked with the growth of the Internet, they were keenly aware of how rapidly the digital, political, economic, and social landscapes were shifting. As a non-profit with just a few hundred staff but thousands of stakeholders around the world, they also faced unique challenges gathering input and building consensus. Despite these challenges, they realized it was time to update their strategic planning process, to start creating coherent visions of how the organization needed to evolve, rather than just operational plans.
Many traditional organizations are now driving away both potential employees and new business by not putting their users (employees, customers, and partners) first. They’re caught in a web of outdated processes and old technologies. They favor the traditional way of working instead of following the lead of their customers. They just can’t keep up.
Recently, XPLANE has received some notable recognition. We were awarded the When Work Works award which highlights our efforts in creating an effective workplace for our employees. We are thankful to the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) for the award, but more so to our employees for saying such amazing things about us. We have been really fortunate to add this recognition to the list of workplace awards from Oregon Business Magazine, Great Place to Work, Fortune Magazine and others.
Big businesses need to rethink the way they work if they want to avoid extinction. Now, winning companies are ones that can quickly respond to market changes, adapt to business fluctuations, and ensure that the entire org is all moving toward the same goals. To provide companies with these skills, our partners at Rackspace are proud to announce their newest venture: Global Solutions and Services.
As Rackspace’s Vice President of Global Solutions and Services, Rachel Cassidy says it, “IT transformation is critical for companies that want to stay ahead of disruptions while accelerating growth and innovation, but it’s not easy. Rackspace is here to help as little or as much as our customers need at any point along their cloud journey, including up-front planning, assessment, design, migration, management, and continuous optimization.” Many companies don’t currently have the skills available to dedicate to this type of transformation, the experience and lessons learned from doing these types of transformations every day, or the tools and methodologies to help streamline processes and provide best practice support for this type of transformation. Rackspace’s new professional service package helps businesses begin their transformation.
An Interview with Innovation Junkie Saul Kaplan
Over the past year I’ve been learning more and more about business model innovation through the masters, Business Innovation Factory (BIF). It has changed the way I see business innovation, differentiation, and competitive advantage. In hopes of sharing this view with our community, I interviewed BIF’s Founder and Chief Catalyst, Saul Kaplan.
This month, XPLANE founder Dave Gray was interviewed on the Fjord Fika podcast with Andy Polaine discussing the corporate push toward innovation. How do large companies create a culture of innovation and successfully make it stick? The innovation lab trend of Silicon Valley might be a good start, but most of the time it doesn’t address the real barrier to innovation: the mindset of your people.
Here are my four takeaways from Dave and Andy’s discussion to get your team on the right path and in the mindset of corporate innovation.