To create the proper context for the perspectives gained through our network of multi-faceted experts and thought leaders, Toffler Associates’ approach to transformation design is a proven, rigorous combination of the analytical and the creative. Placing your underlying needs and desires at the center, it provides multiple layers of useful insights for improving executive decision-making as you face a variety of possible future environments.
Place your cursor over each of our seven steps to learn more about our approach.
Clarify
Every consulting engagement begins with understanding exactly what you as a client want or need for enduring success, which often can be obscured by the pressures of the present. What’s the business problem? Where’s the opportunity? What has changed (or may change)? We work to clarify and reframe the fundamental question at hand until we both recognize the true issue and opportunity in the context of both the future and the present. We also identify the metrics by which success will be measured so that the goal is clearly in sight
Discover
With so many factors influencing your business environment, identifying the data about what really matters most is vital to help you avoid surprises and identify the key drivers of change. We start with the end-users and look at the world through their eyes. We observe what people do, how they think, what they need and want (even if they don’t yet realize it themselves). We don’t just do research and collect facts; we also draw on our network of thousands of the world’s smartest, most connected and influential people to discover the critical features of the current and future environments. Together with you, we apply these insights to answer the question and choose the right path forward.
Ideate
As we insert the client in the midst of everything, we seek to build creative-strategic solutions to their underlying needs and desires. We involve many people in the process, looking to connect seemingly disparate thoughts and views to create potential answers. The net result is a creative yet orderly approach to the path forward.
Frame
With this foundation of insight, we can “know” the future using many of the same methodological tools others use to “know” the present and past. The key is figuring out how these features influence one another to form the drivers of change that are unique to your organization. We’re careful to distinguish between conditions of change and the actual drivers, both of which will be significant causes of or contributors to success for your organization in the future.
Too often, preparing for what the future will demand is hampered by assumptions that tomorrow will be much like today. We challenge such biases and help you to do the same by identifying and describing the extremes that bound the range of possibilities in the present and future environments. Standing at the edge of those bounds, we help you look back from that vantage point to plot a clear, smart path ahead, unencumbered by the limitations of what one might have assumed was possible for your organization.
Prototype
Prototyping is an all-important component, allowing us to test the frameworks and hypotheses we’ve generated against a diverse group of people. Throughout each engagement we push ourselves and you to identify what must be true about the environment of the future. Next we use research, rigorous analysis and dialogue with our global network of experts to make or break these hypotheses about how present or planned behaviors could lead to: (a) inappropriate positioning or surprise, or (b) the enduring success you seek. Often we’ll try out alternative premises and work through which ones best fit the “features” of the future and offer the greatest benefits tomorrow and today.
Implement
The implementation phase seeks to initiate, align and seat the shifts in behavior, function and form necessary to achieve transformative change. Nontraditional solutions will often require significant adjustments to people, systems and organizations, but we work alongside you to engineer the experience, design a communication strategy that makes the business case, spread the word . . . and, above all, to help you succeed in your efforts.
Learn
No effort is complete without insightful feedback turned into positive future action. Through data collection, interviews and performance measurements against the goals and success metrics originally set, we determine areas of improvement and lessons learned that should be applied against future efforts. It is this ongoing iterative cycle of prototyping, testing and refinement that ultimately matches vision with reality.
While each client engagement is unique and draws from a wide range of specific techniques, we pride ourselves on following this core approach in everything we do.
Creating the future is about making informed choices today about how we will “pre-adapt” to tomorrow’s environment. So no Toffler Associates engagement is complete until we’ve identified the strategically salient issues on which you must make decisions and take action. Sometimes we tee up imperatives that need to be addressed without delay because they’re vital to success in any future.
Sometimes we outline alternatives that you can examine and choose among at some point along the path. In every case, we give you actionable counsel that highlights the opportunities and risks our work has identified, and help you implement that counsel with the confidence and clarity of purpose that can come only from a firm command of what lies ahead.