Colorado Animal Welfare Conference Session

No Solution Lasts Forever: How Social Innovation Can Help Us Get Unstuck To Accomplish Magnificent Things

General Session

A truth: people, organizations, and communities are constantly changing. Cultures and economies shift, staff come and go, new trends emerge and others fade… The uncomfortable result of this constant change is that even your very best ideas, programs, policies, and solutions… will eventually stop working as intended.
Sometimes, we don’t even notice. Other times, we can’t bear to start over or change something that is really entrenched, or beloved, or bound up with our identity or ideology. That’s when we get stuck. Being stuck is stressful and it keeps us from accomplishing the magnificent things we all want for animals and our communities. For me, the practice of social innovation has become a reliable path out of this kind of “stuck-ness.” In this keynote and Q&A, we’ll talk about a few key practices of social innovation and how they have helped me move past what no longer works to accomplish some magnificent things for animals.

Little Changes, Better Ideas: How To Unlock Your Team’s Problem Solving Potential

Leadership

At some point, your team, department, or organization will need to innovate. You’ll need to come up with a new solution to a problem, or create a better process, or fix something that isn’t working as intended. Some groups seem to be naturally great at this. It’s easy to think it’s because they are just smarter or more creative than other groups. But all groups can get better at innovation and problem solving. Sometimes, all it takes is small adjustments in how we structure the gatherings where we do this work: who’s in the room, how the room is set up, how the time is divided, who speaks… These small elements usually get very little attention, but they have a surprising impact on the quality and results of your meeting, brainstorming session, etc. In this active, experiential workshop, we will learn by doing two “Liberating Structures” that you can take back to work to unlock your team’s problem solving potential.