Create and Execute Strategy

Some organizations create solid strategic plans but suffer from “binders that stay on the shelf,” resulting in failed implementation efforts. Others excel at execution but could improve the upstream thinking into developing plans. At Polarity Partnerships, we realize it’s critical to leverage this Planning and Implementation Polarity to achieve your strategic goals.

Part of good planning is making well-informed decisions. So we’ll work with you to engage key stakeholders in creating a broad-based commitment to the strategy and actions needed to translate it from words on paper to success in the real world.

Implementation is all about action. Focus on implementation, and you’ll enjoy the benefits that come from following through on plans you’ve developed and commitments you’ve made. Implementation efforts that succeed are based on clear accountability AND strong support. Get both of these right, and you’ll see the results you envisioned when you first developed your strategy.

Do you win by developing a smart strategy and implementing it well? Our answer at Polarity Partnerships is yes!

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Build Capabilities in Individuals And Your Organization

For most, Individual Development and Organizational Development are separate but connected elements to pay attention to if you want sustained success. They are a critical polarity that needs to be leveraged well over time if you hope to succeed. When you make organizational changes because of new strategies, business processes, or culture, your people need to be prepared to take full advantage of these changes. Unprepared people = unsuccessful change effort.

In the same vein, new capabilities in the organization need to be fully leveraged with new skills and knowledge. People become frustrated when they can’t use what they’ve just learned or when the organization makes it hard to do so.

Leverage this Polarity well, and you’ll get the best of both worlds: people and an organization that support one another in ensuring your organization’s sustained success.

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Learn to navigate D&I tensions and SOAR above them to positively impact relationships, decisions, and performance.

What are D&I Polarities?

A Polarity exists when two pathways, positions, or value systems appear to be in opposition, but they need each other over time to achieve a greater purpose. D&I polarities often underlie the tensions related to ensuring JEDI/A/B (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belonging) or JEDI+ for all. Below are some examples of JEDI+ pain points and potential underlying polarities that we can help you address:

Conflict Resolution

Address conflict, build engaged thriving teams and enhance performance.  Based on Polarity Thinking, the SOAR approach will transform the way you navigate complex tensions.

What is SOAR?

SOAR is a Polarity Thinking™ based process that empowers individuals and teams to redirect the major tensions that often underlie conflict to ultimately create inclusive high-performing environments.  SOAR creates safe spaces for crucial conversations that result in people being able to be vulnerable, authentic, heard and understood. SOAR increases individuals’ ability to have open, honest dialogue and enhances collaborative creation across diverse minds.  During the SOAR process individuals and teams will:

·     Share Intent

·     Own Impact

·     Affirm Alignment and

·     Restore Relationships

Organizations that create a SOAR culture can become known for being innovative, diverse and inclusive and can exceed performance goals with engaged thriving teams of employees.

How does SOAR Work?

The SOAR approach involves being willing and able to explore the Polarity tension that is often at the heart of conflicts, disagreements, and challenges.  The Intent AND Impact Polarity forms the basis of the SOAR process that reveals how misunderstandings occur when actions with an underlying positive intent, result in an unanticipated, disparate, or feared impact.  The simplest version of SOAR involves a conversational mapping of the positive intentions and negative impacts experienced by individuals, teams, or organizations. Once all viewpoints and experiences are shared and heard, a connection is navigated around their shared objective or a higher purpose.  The engagement closes with commitments to actions that support positive intentions, while simultaneously avoiding any negative impacts and will ultimately restore their relationship.

Learning to SOAR is about:

• Anticipating, Sharing and accepting positive intentions without fearing, blaming, shaming, or seeking to identify an evil source.

• Being willing to Own the reality of unintended negative impacts that emerge when there is an over-focus on one set of views or value systems, without carefully considering a seemingly opposing set.

• Affirming alignment around a shared over-arching desire such as caring for and including all.

• Take crucial actions to Restore relationships, build inclusive cultures, and stop flipping the script.

A SOAR Culture Transformation involves building individual and organizational capability to use the SOAR framework and tools to build trust, engage and navigate difficult conversations, and lead diverse teams to success amidst tensions. Learn to:

• Normalize conflict by empowering resolution

• Create safe spaces to SOAR across the organization

• Build competency and commitment to SOAR at all levels

• Assess and monitor engagement in SOAR cultural transformation

  Click Here to Experience a SOAR Conversation

Coaching Through a Polarity Lens

Coaching leaders through a Polarity Lens provides a unique approach to this personal development work. Follow it, and you won’t get stuck in the common trap of “From-To” counsel that assumes that there are problems you need to solve (what you need to move “From”) and solutions to be implemented (where you need to move “To”).

A Polarity-based approach recognizes that an “Either / Or” mindset to coaching only deals with one half of reality. For example, say you get feedback that you are too Rigid and need to become more Flexible. An “Either / Or” mindset sees “Rigid” as the problem and “Flexible” as the solution.

A Polarity Thinking™ approach recognizes that Rigid is the downside of “Structured” and Flexible is an upside of “Adaptive.” There are benefits to being Structured (clear, organized, etc.) and costs of being too Flexible (confusing, disorganized, etc.). We believe the modest gains some people experience with even the best coaches can be traced to this “Either / Or,” approach to a coaching relationship’s “Both / And” dynamics.

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Police and Community Relations

BRIDGE Addresses:

• Police Department performance

• Police/community relations

• Essential connections to a supportive community

BRIDGE Applies:

• A breakthrough approach called Polarity Thinking®*

• Guidance to deeply polarized groups to become collaborative communities of action

BRIDGE Accesses

• A larger network of BRIDGE communities

• A multidisciplinary resource team

Connect with BRIDGE

To further discuss whether The BRIDGE Project is right for your community, please contact:

Wanda Savage-Moore
BRIDGE Project Director & JEDI Advisor
(703) 407-8281
Wanda@PolarityPartnerships.com

Bipartisan Solutions

FROM POLARIZED TO OPTIMIZED

The Thriving USA Initiative is an effort to encourage our elected representatives, to include And-thinking in support of our legislative process. This initiative and the Polarity Thinking on which it is based can help reduce polarization and resistance to change, which increase the speed, impact, and sustainability of legislative efforts.

I recognize that governing is much more complex and demanding than can be effectively addressed by a simple ‘solution’, especially coming from those of us who have not spent our lives in the trenches of representative politics.  What is also important to understand is that the more complex the system, the more useful is the message: Not all difficulties are problems to solve. Some are inherently unavoidable and unsolvable. They are interdependent pairs I call polarities. Treating polarities as problems to solve results in polarization and resistance to change. Polarity Thinking can help you reduce both.

The resources below offer three depths of insight into Polarity Thinking and the power of And, from awareness and political context (videos) to foundational understanding and applications (PDFs and the books).

We encourage you to share this website and content with your elected officials, and connect with us for additional information and support. • www.PolarityPartnerships.com/thrivingusa • ThrivingUSA@PolarityPartnerships.com • (415) 323-6624

~ Barry