Welcome to 2021 and we hope you all had a happy Christmas and New year period. Last year was a tough and difficult one for many of us across the globe. For us at Cornerstone the Thinking Sprint sessions were a great way of maintaining contact with all of you who are important to our community.
 
We ran 16 sessions over the year with over 100 participants and we had some amazing contributions from you all with extraordinary insights over that period of time. 
 
Our plan for 2021 is to continue to do these sessions every two weeks, commencing with our first for the year on Thursday 11th of February. We would welcome your ongoing participation and would encourage you to invite any of your colleagues to attend.
 
To start us off we have recorded a podcast that summarises the insights  from 2020. We also consider what topics might be relevant for 2021 Thinking Sprints. Click play to listen to the thoughts of Cornerstone Directors John Eklund, Deborah Pascoe and Michael Griffiths as they share their experience of the 2020 Thinking Sprints

Cornerstone Integral Directors Deb Pascoe, John Eklund and Michael Griffiths, discuss the concept and genesis of our Thinking Sprints and the valuable insights that came out of our first series of Thinking Sprints, called Beyond COVID19 Calm or Chaos?

Cornerstone Integral Director Michael Griffiths discusses the upper right quadrant of the Integral Framework which focuses on Capability Mastery.  

The upper right quadrant is a lens into the key elements that can be measured and developed at an ‘individual’ level, including technical skill acquisition, interpersonal and emotional intelligence as well as leadership effectiveness and impact. Working in close conjunction with the other quadrants, Capability Mastery focuses on supporting leaders and their teams to incrementally develop strategically and culturally aligned capabilities and capacities to strengthen individual and collective responses to unprecedented organisational and societal challenges.     

Cornerstone Integral offers a number of programs and initiatives for leaders and organisations focusing on Capability Mastery. For more information, click here.

Over the past few months Cornerstone has been running our online series of workshops we call “Thinking Sprints". These give participants the opportunity to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organisational life. 

In this podcast our Michael Griffiths spends some time talking in depth with Annalise Jennings, who participated in our Thinking Sprint a few weeks ago. We felt it was valuable to get a greater understanding of the work she has done in an Indigenous community in the Top End and how she translated that work and applied it to the University of Southern California. Also we asked her to comment on what she felt was important for organisations to consider in this COVID-19 world. Annalise is a community and business strategist and runs her own consulting business.

Over the past few months Cornerstone has been running our online series of workshops we call “Thinking Sprints". These give participants the opportunity to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organisational life. 

We identified that a unique aspect of the crisis has been the impact on the younger generation. In this podcast our Michael Griffiths talks to Scott Duncan, who is currently in a Senior Strategy role at Linen House, his family business. He has also been involved in establishing Y Gap a non for profit designed to support early-stage social impact ventures. In this interview, Scott explores in detail the impact of the pandemic and how he believes young people in the workforce will have to deal with an uncertain future.

Cornerstone Integral Director John Eklund discusses the lower right quadrant of the Integral Framework which focuses on Systems Mastery.

The Systems Mastery quadrant is home to the underlying structures, systems and processes in a business, as well as the external elements (regulatory changes, shifting market trends) that inform an organisation’s strategic and business planning processes. Like the other quadrants in the Integral Framework, Systems Mastery is closely interwoven with the other three domains. In an ideal world, there’s strong alignment between an organisation’s strategy, structure and systems, enabled by an appropriate mix and depth of capabilities, supported by collaborative capacity and culture, and informed by up employee’s ability to deal with increasing levels of complexity.

Cornerstone Integral offers a number of programs and initiatives for leaders and organisations focusing on Systems Mastery. For more information, click here.

Cornerstone Integral Director Deb Pascoe discusses the lower left quadrant of the Integral Framework which focuses on Cultural Mastery.  

Developing a collective awareness about the different cultural drivers, enables leaders, and their teams and organisations to strengthen and (where necessary) transform their culture to provide environments that not only support individuals and teams to perform at their best but that fundamentally support the achievement of sustainable, successful organisational performance.  

Cornerstone Integral offers a number of programs and initiatives for leaders and organisations focusing on Cultural Mastery. For more information, click here.

Cornerstone Integral Director Mark Keily gives us an overview of the upper left quadrant of the Integral Framework which is all about Perspective Mastery.

Developing an understanding of the intangible aspects of ourself, our values, beliefs, mindsets and cognitive capacity is critical to strengthening leaders’ ability to navigate the complexities of their roles and lives more effectively.

Cornerstone Integral offers a number of programs and initiatives for leaders and organisations focusing on Perspective Mastery. For more information, click here.

If you’re interested in learning more about Lectica and the Leadership Decision Making Assessment (LDMA) and the Leadership Self Understanding Assessment (LSUA), click here.

In our first podcast, Cornerstone Integral Director Ron Laurie gives us the ‘big picture’ view of the Integral Framework (IF) and walks us through the different perspectives of each quadrant, the internal dynamics of the subjectivity and objectivity of perspectives and the intricate (and often complex!), underlying connections within and between each of the quadrants. 

Ron explains how the IF enables clients to make sense of the complexity they may be grappling with, within their organisation as well as in the broader industry and the wider VUCA world. 

For more information, check out Cornerstone’s Integral Framework (our primary sense-making and diagnostic tool) adapted to reflect the unique demands of organisational life.