Overview

The premise for Eagle Learning Center's group session Opportunity Mapping is, "All answers are within the team." In a highly interactive format, participants are able to initiate their ideas, feelings, and insights anonymously. This is structured to encourage participants to think divergently without being judged or without retribution. As an option, computerized voting and rating is available.

Participants also learn a process for planning strategies to accomplish any outcome including bringing a corporate mission or vision to life. Strategies are evaluated from an opportunity perspective versus a problem solving perspective (something we want but don't have versus something we have but don't want).

The Opportunity Mapping session begins with the purge, a process for getting at all the barriers and weaknesses that are in the way of the group accomplishing its stated outcome. It then moves to the right on process in which the group identifies the strengths and assets that will be called into play to accomplish the outcome.

In order to encourage both honesty and ownership by all participants, the Opportunity Mapping session utilizes a pair weighting and performance evaluation process that gives participants a clear roadmap to not only accomplish their stated outcome, but also where to spend the group's time and energy in the next six months. This process can be computer assisted or administered via paper and pencil. The Opportunity Mapping session varies in time required depending on the needs of the group but is generally one to two days in length.

Objective

• Relearn your inherent creativity skills and breakthrough thinking 
• Clarify the "outcome statement" for the session 
• Discover the strengths and weaknesses of the group in accomplishing the outcome 
• Generate strategies for accomplishing the outcome 
• Create individual and group ownership and support for the key opportunities identified by the process

Outline

• Creativity skills lecture 
• State and reframe, if necessary, the outcome 
• List the barriers (purge) þ List the strengths (right ons) 
• Generate 12 to 15 strategies that will result in the accomplishment of the outcome 
• Pair weight and assign a performance factor to each of the strategies by computer 
• View and discuss the four areas of the Opportunity Map, the givens, the overkills, the gripes, and the opportunities 
• Action plan the opportunities