Our Flagship Product - the Challenge Dialogue System (CDS)™

The Challenge Dialogue System™ (CDS™), the flagship program of the Innovation Expedition, is a flexible but comprehensive performance improvement system with a proven record for helping diverse stakeholders to collaborate and innovate to accomplish complex tasks and to build high performing organizations. CDS is offered to business firms, government agencies, research centres, knowledge networks and nonprofits for use in four different major applications.

• CDS works – When used for Challenge Dialogues, CDS matches its claim: it creates results – often Action Plans – that are outcomes of a co-creative process that has engaged a diverse group of stakeholders, who often do not collaborate regularly, to address a complex problem or opportunity.

• CDS can be learned easily. For many consultants, the fundamentals of CDS are easily learned – the process and tools. The principles are easy to relate to and grasp initially. They become understood more deeply and become more automatic and behavioural, over time.

• CDS is highly flexible and is scaleable to the problem at hand. With regular use and after 1-2 years, there are few projects where different segments of the process and various tools cannot be applied. Its use increases efficiency and creates higher value products for clients. CDS can be applied to small scale problems (mini-Challenge Dialogues), to routine complex Dialogues (Standard Challenge Dialogues) or to large, multi-level / stage Dialogues (Complex Dialogues).

• The principles of CDS are fundamental and serve as powerful reminders to the applicant of CDS (e.g., the Affiliate) and the client team.

• CDS can be paced to fit the situation. Challenge Dialogues can be accomplished in less than 3 weeks, in 2-3 months or can evolve over the course of 18 months or longer. Situations that need to generate quick results – e.g., an action plan to address a just-announced funding opening – can be accommodated. Exploratory type initiatives that need to evolve can be accomplished through progressive cycles of Dialogue. For example, you might have an initial Dialogue with a small group of Champions and the Organizing Team (e.g., 10-15 people), then a Dialogue with the immediate community of practice (30-40 people) and then a more open Dialogue with stakeholders and the public (50-150 people).

• CDS can be matched easily to the technology situation.  Challenge Dialogues can be accomplished with pen, paper and a fax; with a computer, email and attachments; or, with the process being undertaken almost entirely via internet-based facilities. You can easily match the degree of information technology use to the client / stakeholder circumstance.

• CDS can be easily used with clients remotely.  The structured process and tools allow you to engage clients easily and effectively via telephone and email (and sometimes SharePoint). The physical location of the client is seldom a barrier. Using the principles, processes and tools, you can launch projects quickly with clients, identify and engage the Organizing Team efficiently so that everyone knows what is going on and what their role is, and solicit feedback from stakeholders easily. Further, you can capture the feedback, consolidate it and synthesize it, all without having to necessarily meet face-to-face with the client. In preparation for the workshop you can undertake much if not all of the design and generation of the Workshop Workbook virtually. While it does not occur often, you can even conduct the “face-to-face” workshop via a teleconference, as long as it is supported by a Workbook.

• CDS allows you to leverage your skills and secure larger projects.  As a consultant, you may be a natural facilitator or a natural analyzer, synthesizer, integrator and writer. You may be a good project manager. With any of these strengths, you can often leverage a prospective piece of work into a larger, more complete end-to-end solution for the client. You can turn a simple — “we need a facilitator” (2-3 days of work) inquiry into a full fledged Challenge Dialogue project (of many days or weeks worth of work) to address the whole problem. Dialogue projects can also lead to longer term mentoring assignments with the teams helping them to implement the work, address new challenges, and/or to learn new performance improvement skills.

• CDS allows you to expand beyond your traditional domain area.  Many (but not all) consultants tend to specialize in particular domain areas – health, energy, forestry, education, etc. CDS provides a “bridge” for allowing you to take key organizational learnings in one discipline area to another and in so doing, opens up your potential client market. For example, experience gained from a Challenge Dialogue to develop a forest research strategy and action plan can be easily generalized and applied to food research, energy research, agriculture research, health research, etc. CDS causes you to see more quickly the commonality of these challenges and then bring workable solutions from one domain into another. Some clients like to introduce this kind of “outside” expertise, particularly if it is packaged with a more neutral roles (i.e., facilitative). In other cases, you can bring-in the process – CDS – and then collaborate with a domain expert; perhaps one preferred by the client.

• CDS allows you to work with more senior people and on bigger problems.  Because CDS forces you to take a more comprehensive, holistic view of a problem it often leads to the need to engage more senior directors and executives in the organization. This exposure helps you to be seen and positioned as a consultant that operates at higher more strategic level and one who is able to grapple with some of the bigger challenges facing industry, the government and society. CDS’ scalability also makes the “escalation” of your expertise much easier.

• CDS does not put all the onus of a project’s success on your shoulders alone.  Because Challenge Dialogues engage collaborative teams as a fundamental element of the process, everyone is clear on their respective roles and responsibilities. The recognize that, in aggregate, it is the high performance of the whole team that will lead to the project’s success.

Click here to see the Bulletin "Introducing the Challenge Dialogue System™"

Click here to see Examples of where CDS has been used