Unlocking an executive team’s creative thinking and co-creating a new strategy
with The Center for Health Design
The Center for Health Design’s leadership team engaged the ILN to foster more executive alignment, deeper exploration, and authentic participation during a strategy refresh.
Debra Levin, the President and CEO of The Center for Health Design, was excited for their strategy refresh to take shape and launch. To make that happen, she also knew her executive team needed approaches to unlock their creative thinking and strategic lens.
The ILN facilitated a series of workshops and retreats over several months to coalesce their vision into a strategy that was responsive to their market and leveraged their unique talents.
The ILN first helped the group understand the customer’s core needs and the organization’s unique strengths. This effort exposed a mismatch in resources and time, ultimately pushing the team to realign their products and services to better align with customer needs.
During the project’s second phase, the ILN led an exploration of gaps between the current strategy and emerging future state from phase one. The executive team explored each gap and together sketched how to cross the gap successfully. This exercise deepened the team’s understanding of the work ahead.
In the final phase, the group focused on one internal process to “cross the gap” and reimagined it to better meet customer needs with greater internal transparency. This exercise sparked deep conversation about who owns different pieces of the process. It also exposed many connection points—often hidden—needed across the organization to accomplish its goals.
Across all phases, the ILN also provided formal and informal leadership coaching to bring out their unique talents and wisdom. Using appreciative inquiry and human-centered design techniques, leaders become more clear on their approaches and confident in delivering.
“I've been fortunate to work with Chris in various capacities over the last decade-plus. His knowledge, wisdom, and ability to provide insights into whatever issue we're trying to solve continually impress me. He has a deep set of tools and skills at his ready. He's adept at facilitating groups large and small and pushing participants to think in new ways.
He's currently working with our nonprofit on strategic planning. We would not have gotten as far as we have and with as little conflict as we have had without his involvement. I hope to work with Chris for many decades yet to come.”
Debra Levin, President and CEO of Center for Health Design
The Center for Health Design is the preeminent professional organization in the healthcare design industry advancing the use of an evidence-based design process to improve health, safety and business outcomes.