Our Services

This chapter describes our work for others regarding:

1. Long-term developments
2. Critical and urgent changes
3. Joint Learning Endeavors
4. New communication concepts
5. Special interventions
6. Our engagement principles

 

1. Long-term Developments

 

This section outlines our accompanying of:

1. Community building
2. Network building
3. Leadership development
4. Strategic planning and business development
5. Institutional strengthening
6. Social capital

Community building

We structure multipart community growth throughout its various stages - including preparatory partnering, group forming, communal tasking, self-governance and communal identity. We accompany the specific tensions and crisis at each stage and help to address the radical dilemmas that may surface, including, for example, private vs. open house, fluidity vs. form, belonging vs. participating.

Applied examples:

• Indigenous communities in the Southern Andes relating to global contexts
• A micro-credit initiative as a community strengthening tool in marginalized urban zones
• Corporate social responsibility network
• Community outreach of a movement in art for social transformation
• Unearthing exclusivity traits in community 'building' projects
• Team building within an organization, company or institution
• Religious value-based community in a multicultural metropolitan area
• Inclusion barriers in political reform initiatives

Network building

We initiate structure and accompany network building efforts throughout its various stages, mapping the concrete challenge to develop beyond conventional forms, including:

• Network learning - sharing vs. generating knowledge
• Network architecture - building around knots vs. building on flows
• Shadow of power - network leadership vs. leading network
• Shadow of exclusivity - kindred spirits vs. transformation

Applied examples

• Art & Social Transformation network - creating true public spaces in society and reaching beyond closed-shop lobby temptations
• Community leaders' network - struggling with righteousness and notions of 'moral supremacy' of partners (and themselves)

Leadership development

We work with you in developing the particular leadership suited for your undertaking - mapping the subsequent stages of emerging leadership and its respective tensions and specific challenges. We consider the cultural and social leadership conceptions relevant in the context of your undertaking with the dual intention of creating critical awareness and of creating integral developments.

Applied examples

• Transition from leader-dependency to collective leadership in an international institute, a social company, an urban area development initiative
• Navigation system for leadership growth in micro-credits and a cooperative

Strategic planning and business development

We consider your strategic development - evaluations, planning and the training in strategic planning - an opportunity to broaden known visions, to include novel territories and to test hitherto unknown options. We initiate, design and guide the process with the intention of you and the stakeholders of your concrete undertaking becoming able to develop their own navigation maps in the future.

Applied examples:

• An international institution seeking to address the underlying dynamics of its associates in multilateral organisms, multinational business and national governments in order to design a sustainable growth strategy and service portfolio
• A business men's community building endeavor in an urban slum seeking to integrate the multi-ethnic myths and longings of its beneficiaries in the long-term development strategy
• A nation-wide social company in marketing indigenous rural art production seeking to develop new value-chains outside the conventional market channels
• An NGO in the area of social transformation addressing the challenge of strategic expansion from ground work operations into international 2nd grade dimensions
• Business executives in multinational corporations seeking to reconcile their desire to engage in social developments with the corporate growth strategy and key-account relation management

Social capital

We explore with you practical ways to engender community value in your undertaking. For that purpose, we invite you to critically challenge the conception of 'capital' related to human relations, in order to avoid the pitfalls of an un-reflected and unconscious proliferation of 'capital' notions possibly detrimental for integral developments. We map together with you the various 'capital' concepts and their underlying parameters in your and other areas - including, for instance, 'intellectual capital', 'human capital' or 'social capital'.