Who are we?

We are believers in Open systems which contain the elements necessary for transformational change resulting in paradigm shifts that support our natural progression and ultimate enjoyment of life. A paradigm shift is a change in the way we understand and approach our world.

An open system assumes that there are supplies of energy that are in exhaustible and infinite. This applies to our ability as human beings, given the right conditions, to continuously create life giving experiences as opposed to limiting ourselves and others by continuing to operate within paradigms that no longer serve us. The 4C Center helps identify and work with those life-giving conditions that individuals, organizations and businesses need to survive and thrive in the ever-changing environment of which are all a part.

The 4C Center 4 casts changes that will help organizations and businesses to stay ahead of the curve in their ability to meet the needs of stakeholders and collaboratively design, plan, implement and reinforce the requisite future state. In doing so, businesses and organizations have seeming 4-tuitous experiences where they find themselves innovating within and across organizations boundaries. The 4C Center also helps organizations and business to become agile and responsive to change so that they continue to be an open system that is able to 4 see and proactively respond to change.

The 4C Center, uses universal as well as context specific competencies for collaboration as the starting point for designing change. Playforms for practicing these competencies are created to allow for experimentation and integration of these competencies well before any changes are formally launched. This prepares participants for the changes and moves them along a continuum towards embodiment of behaviors, attitudes, knowledge and skills needed to successfully implement changes.

The 4C Centre uniquely integrates Change, Collaboration, Complexity and Community in a process that responds to the demand for a co-creative process resulting in transformative change.

We bring together leading innovators, the latest methodologies and inspiring case studies to cultivate the changes needed in an increasing complex world. Rooted in uncompromising values for effective change, we work directly with people, places and organizations to transform complexity into opportunity and success.

The assumptions, on which most businesses and organizations were originally designed, are no longer valid and are no longer serving our needs. A dramatic shift is required in order to create systems that are relevant to today’s needs.

The risk of not changing means missed opportunities, lack of employee engagement, low morale, low employee retention, conflict, misunderstanding, misalignment of organizations and their leadership, wasted time and wasted resources coming from limiting perspectives and hard line positions which erode knowledge, relationships, possibilities, opportunities and economic potential.

Value Proposition

Our services and network allow you to transform complexity into opportunity.  Opportunity is achieved through our processes which:

• Increase your productivity – truly do more with less
• Offer potential transportability to other projects and initiatives
• Create more effortless and enjoyable employee/member/citizen involvement
• Discover a greater probability of achieving objectives
• Co-create a climate for shared leadership
• Attract the networks and clients you desire
• Achieve a collaborative change engagement product and system unique to your organization – allow for advancement and integration of the outcome both within the business or organization and beyond

By working with the 4C Center, you will accomplish far more with less expense and fewer delays, capture opportunities and build your capacity for the future.

We provide a means of efficiently and effectively managing specific complex business tasks by engaging teams with specialized expertise who work together to develop and promote best practices in their areas of responsibility. We create and apply best practices, competencies and subject matter guidance at the enterprise level and deliver a higher return on investment than traditional and often, out-dated approaches. In doing so, we:

• Address fragmentation across organizational departments, tool sets, and vendors
• Create a cohesive, enterprise collaboration strategy (versus on a case-by-case basis) by using a systems approach to optimizing collaboration in order to reduce or eliminate duplication of effort, reduce costs, and deploy a common set of tools that meet the needs of end users
• Assess enterprise collaborative change readiness and adeptness
• Engender a culture of collaboration across the enterprise to effectively implement collaborative solutions that resonate with end users, develop high uptake, and deliver concrete business value
• Properly equip stakeholders with the tools they need to get the job done in an age when the breadth and depth of collaboration tools is greater than ever before

Establish a distributed thinking, design, implementation and change reinforcement capability within and across enterprise(s) which creates the potential for innovation and advancement beyond what the enterprise has historically achieved.

Approach

• Provide values, principles, practices and competencies to assist organizations and businesses to shift from the competition model to a collaborative one
• Use these values, principles, practices and competencies to transcend and include individual identities within the system – amplifying the real challenges faced by people in an organization
• Attend and attune to our clients’ already present diversity and how we might work with it
• Address silo / us versus them thinking, breaking down the walls
• Engage authentically with others in the moment
• Focus attention on complex, interdependent challenges while “the world” values fixing discreet, independent problems
• Create more reliable and resilient organizations by focusing on sense-making and collective mindfulness when “the world” values individual accountability, predictability and hard evidence for decision-making
• Focus attention on messy paradox when “the world” values clarity and simple solutions
• Provide meaningful relational learning opportunities that bring great awareness of clients’ social context and individual needs
• Support the emergent development and capacity of people to be all that they can be
• Introduce work designs that tap into and unleash clients’ diversity and creativity in order to enhance quality of work-life
• Increase variability in learning experiences yet maintain coherence
• Enhance work-life agility and flexibility and promote the importance of interdependence
• Identify systemic disconnections and dis-functionalities and assist in the creation of a well- connected and integrated environment that can adapt and innovate as required to deal with change and complexity
• Facilitate opportunities for clients to create deeper and unique ways to exchange views and share experiences and utilize these exchanges as a learning opportunity to form an ever emerging, collective vision, systemic coherence and vitality
• Build trusting relationships and establish a safe environment in which clients have the freedom to explore opportunities to engage their workforce to find solutions to problems and issues affecting their work and to explore innovative paths
• Provide opportunities to understand the relationship between collaboration and change management and increase personal and organizational resiliency.

Competencies

Understanding of and ability to apply leadership principles that support a collaborative approach to change including the ability to:

• Build a climate of trust so that effective collaborative change can take place
• Collaboratively determine who will provide group leadership in any given situation by supporting work with others to enable effective client outcomes
• Advance interdependent working relationships among all participants
• Facilitate effective collaborative team processes
• Facilitate effective shared decision making
• Establish a culture and climate for collaboration amongst all participants
• Co-create a climate for shared leadership and collaboration
• Start with the assumption that collaborators are capable and will do their best to draw out ideas and information in ways that contribute to effective problem-solving and opportunity realization.
• Balance the need for discussion, information sharing, and story- telling with timely problem-solving, keeping focused on responding to action-oriented expectations of those engaged in common efforts
• Engage clients in sharing risk, responsibilities, resources, and rewards and to offer acknowledgments of those making contributions

The Benefits of the 4C Center:

• Seize your part of this movement of progressive, principled and successful leaders
• Accesses problem solving, revenue boosting, cost reduction and future visioning skills
• Be part of co-creating conditions and innovations within and across business & organizations.