Tools
Creating the conditions for success.
Clearpath builds tools to clarify issues and strategies and to help people run processes …to deliver results. Each tool provides a place to start. All build on previous work and create a comprehensive framework for future work. Working with teams, we quickly adapt the tools to represent the unique needs of the organization today and the desired outcomes tomorrow. We integrate the tools, as appropriate, with education, worksheets, references, and software.
Our tools help team members do their work, have effective conversations, and stay focused on their purpose and direction. The value of any tool is not only in the deliverable, but also in what the team and culture gains from using it. Each tool is designed with a purpose and science to clarify root issues, see useful patterns, recognize key leverages, and create the conditions for a path to measurable success. Every tool is developed and adapted to consistently ensure a focus, balance conversations, leverage knowledge and human energy, and quickly optimize results.
Connecting our tools in a systematic and meaningful way makes it easy to see how everything fits into the bigger picture. As a part of a discovery mindset, each tool actively facilitates innovation, yet assures the convergence needed for results and accountability. When the process is well-facilitated, we find that valuable and often surprising results are achieved in a fraction of the time.
Below is a summary of our primary visual tools. For more information, download our Tools overview.
Visual Tools:
- Strategy Map – A visualization of an organization’s strategy, on one page. Clarifies priorities and connects efforts/investments, based on principles of strategic leadership and the Balanced Scorecard. Focuses on a framework of key Financial, Customer, Infrastructure, and People initiatives – to bring Mission, Vision, and Values alive and achieve the greatest leverage of resources.
- Experience Storyboard – A display of information and images structured by Chapter, Scene, and Stage of a Customer flow, to clarify what makes up an experience. Used to design and help synthesize more purposeful experiences and assure more positive outcomes. Defines processes, systems, behavior, and measures to create meaningful “stories” that relate to customers and staff. A quick “snapshot” version is used to assess present conditions.
- Master Process – A tool representing the best “organization way” of doing business. It describes how efforts and systems should connect to deliver operational and customer value. A broad, future-looking view of the critical inputs, relationship, and measures needed to proactively achieve the desired outcomes of an enterprise. It is a valuable tool for organizational innovation and orienting every team member on how they and their detailed roles related to customer “moments of truth” and fit into the big picture. Often useful prior to, and may defer the need for, traditional “Process Improvement” methodologies.
- Readiness Assessment – An interviewing process and charting of the Capability and Maturity of an organization, how ready it is for meaningful change. It summarizes the seven factors critical to every organization and clarifies where investment should be made to catalyze improvement and gain the energy needed for contribution.
- Roadmap for Implementation – A timeline of activities and milestones, describing how key resources (people, money, and other assets) are used to achieve challenging goals. Provides an easy perspective of progress, priorities, and context for management, communication, and motivation. A clear path of the right things to be done, by the right people, in the right order, to achieve the right outcomes.
- Strategy Canvas – A chart comparing the strength of one strategy to deliver value versus another, measured against key market factors. Provides insight into how to differentiate (by creating new, strengthening, reducing, or eliminating) to stand out in a meaningful way.
- Relationship Map – A high-level diagram of the universe of assets and relationships needed for an enterprise to perform in its market. It uses the context of four primary factors: external drivers/trends, markets, constraints, and resources. We apply this picture to discuss assumptions and how they affect the performance of a project or operation. It provides insight and realism to what should be done operationally to address priorities, risks, and opportunities.
- Assessment Ladder – A chart used to discuss, compare, and discover options using a set of predefined criteria. Each option is rated against the criterion with a description that records the basis for a decision. The option with the best total rating is the preferred option. This provides transparency and facilitates the time to explain and document decisions. This approach often leads to discovering new or better combinations of choices.
- SIPOC – This chart is a framework showing Suppliers and the Inputs they provide to a Process, which leads to creating Outputs for a set of Customers. It defines the most fundamental context for a process. It has the ability to clarify critical issues, scale, flow, participants, accountabilities, and terminology.
- Personal Styles – An exercise that clarifies the uniqueness of each individual in his/her three ego states (Instinctive, Social, and Rational). This introduces how to appreciate personal differences in a group and helps each person more naturally contribute to an effort or operation.