Use the Innovation Strengths Preference Indicator® (ISPI™) and it reveals a hefty trove of otherwise invisible data about individuals, teams, and organizations – it’s like seeing personalities at the atomic level.
In our ICS work, we delve into the granularity of the data to precisely understand the obstacles and positive potential of the organization with more acuity than the organization’s own management may have.
This is why founder Bob Rosenfeld calls the ISPI a periodic table for people, for its taxonomy of the elements of an organization. It’s extremely rich data, yet we acknowledge most of our clients neither want to, nor need to, do that kind of deep dive. They want a more macro view.
Not long ago, in describing the intense granularity of ISPI data to our contact for a military client, he exclaimed, “I can’t take this to the General!”
We get it. The General didn’t need all that data for his job. Management needs us to zoom out for the most easily actionable metrics. Why analyze H2O, when you study water? Remember, atomic elements also form molecules and compounds. So does ISPI data. Let’s say, you want to really study water. You can look at the molecule or the atoms, hydrogen, and oxygen but that may not tell you what you need. But if you want to understand and predict what water will do, pour some of it into a container to be heated, frozen, or sprayed and observe what it can do in different states. Analogous to studying water, we’re able to create overlays that frame ISPI’s minute data as information that is most easily observed and most relevant to the client’s requirements.
If you’ve taken the ISPI, you’re probably familiar with your Totem (figure A) that details a vast amount of information of your mindset and work style. But our “compound overlays” are a few steps above this. This is how we zoom out to focus on the most vital and actionable information for what the client organization needs. And that’s how we appeal to the General…or the CEOs or boards of directors. Those at the top usually only need to know broader behavioral trends, such as:
• Overall organization strengths and blind spots
• Predisposition for where the organization is most comfortable innovating along the Innovation Continuum.
• Predisposition of the organization for imitating change or accepting change.
• The changes the organization needs to undertake to meet its future goals.
We dive deeply and deliver the dashboard information you need to lead your organization. And the ISPI provides latitude to just about any organizational metric you may need.
Are you ready to take your organizational understanding to the next level? Do you want to make data driven organizational changes? Do you want to strategically make staffing decisions? If you answered yes to any of these questions, it’s time to utilize the tools developed as part of what is called the ISPI Suite.