CREATIVITY @ YOUR ORGANISATION

We develop the powers of your organisation through leadership programmes, creativity training and coaching. We also facilitate strategic breakthroughs, branding shifts and idea generation. Choose the mode which will get you the best results.

Our way of working dissolves your personal, interpersonal and systemic blocks. Whether working with leaders at Price Waterhouse Coopers or campaigners at Oxfam, we apply the principles of adult action learning: we dig into live issues and current dynamics to tackle them at an emotional as well as an intellectual level.

Our focus on purpose rather than ego is provocative, but seems to reach the source of sustained energy and comittment. We call it values-based change. We build the capacity for creative leadership to flow dynamically around the organisation, rather as it flows round a football pitch. You see ideas starting to bubble up from all directions.

Some Stretch interventions take place in our mountain venues where time in nature triggers insight and transformative leaps in the group. Most programmes are arranged closer to home. Coaching and mentoring happens wherever you want it. Rosie Walford, founder of Big Stretch, may also be available to contribute to your in-house leadership development, social responsibility and creative development programmes.

Idea generation workshops and facilitator training
When your output hits a plateau, or your market conditions are shifting before your eyes, you need to innovate. You have the expert knowledge; we're the creative catalysts. We facilitate your people to think freely together so they resolve intractable situations with their own fresh ideas.

Together, your people will reframe the really pressing issues and direct energy towards avenues that they are motivated to work on. You will interrogate your challenge with 'wide eyes' - taking a global perspective and the participants' values into account. We then get people co-creating in an environment where there's clear communication and cross-discipline flow. It feels energetic and unpredictable, yet is focused to produce outputs in the form you can immediately go away and use.

Tell us the questions you're facing and we'll say if Stretch idea generation is apt. We've worked this way with Unilever, Safeway, Body Shop, Great Western Trains, World Development Movement and many more - usually in locations close to home.

We also offer training in the art of facilitating idea generation. Training clients include the BBC, Abbot Mead Vickers BBDO, Friends of the Earth, Research International, Random House Publishing.

“You can suddenly turn problems around into something positive, and then generate ideas which zig when others zag.” — SH, Director, Weapon7 Ltd.

The Big Corporate Stretch
When boards and senior teams want to change gear, they take a bespoke Big Stretch together in the mountains. In a supported space for strategic leaps, honesty and innovation, your communication and energy rise. Analysis merges afresh with imagination. The result is concrete new thinking, a strong sense of shared purpose and (perhaps most important), renewed personal and professional momentum.

The Big Stretch invites you to step back from immediate strategic issues; you take in the long view and engage with the societal trends of our time as a context for long-term success. The combination of intensive facilitation and mountain walking will lift the very best thinkers in your organisation to a level where they are aligned and visionary, planning your next phase from a state of expanded perspective.

Being in a leadership team on such a week is rewarding; members become more of themselves whilst in the group, rather than less. Participants say that it is a profound leadership learning process for all who participate, as well as an efficient way to plan.

"Rosie was great at understanding our big picture, helping us get perspective and seeing creative possibilities. It gave us space to breathe, think and just be. She drew our attention to potentially counterproductive behaviour based on limited assumptions and assertions. Now we have a clear roadmap for the distant future, and partners who are clearly motivated and committed to a common direction.." GK, Genesis consulting group

Leadership Coaching and Mentoring
Rosie - and some other Stretch coaches - offer coaching for leaders and mentoring on creative leadership. We work with individuals to resolve difficult relationships and act from a solid sense of purpose, finding win-win solutions to complex situations. Coachees learn to manage others authentically and problem-solve continually for personal effectiveness, a sense of integrity and growth long term.

Coachees include fellows of the Clore Leadership programme, owner managers, CEO's and managers in large companies and in NGO's. We work with clients worldwide with a mix of face to face sessions and phone.

Performance Stretch
This programme is for up to ten executives from one company or group of companies. In the face of rapid change and ambiguity, it provides a powerful space for important players to review their performance and sharpen their capacity to act authentically, effectively and creatively .

Over the week, we provide mind-expanding coaching. Your managers reassess their positions in the wider human and global context as well as in the system of the organisation.They illuminate productive and unproductive patterns of behaviour, narrow down to a core issue and plan forwards with fresh ideas. At the same time they are learning creative problem solving skills.

Performance Stretch draws out individual performance strength by reminding people to use what is inside of them (creativity, integrity, intuition, cognition, emotional presence). It has lasting impact because it creates a cohort of individuals who can highlight real obstacles and unhelpful limiting beliefs - then tackle them creatively. It re-inspires people by helping them connect their activities to their values. Located in the mountains, it's also a reward, a physical wake-up and a total, restorative break.

“Made me feel bright and sparky and full of ideas. I love the way this approach heightens our flow of solutions to stuck old issues.” — DA, Manager, Christian Aid

Leadership Stretch
In 2009, The Big Stretch will be running its first open Leadership Stretch programme specifically for the heads of organisations.

This mountain programme is for leaders at that point in their career where they want to stand up and do what they believe is right and sustainable: leaders interested to see how they can use their ability, reputation and understanding for the greater good. It will allow you to examine your impact in the world and your ripples of influence. You'll pinpoint your purpose in the universe and reshape your contribution to -or through - the organisation as an expression of this. An advanced process for developing your legacy through deep creativity.


Creative Brand Stretch
Rosie specialises in strategic projects for Brands. We challenge your team to explore unusually diverse aspects of human motivation, competitor performance, category and global trends - then make a creative leap to pinpoint the emotive 'essence' - the brand's most powerful, evocative positioning for the future. This you express in condensed, communicable format for immediate use as the driving and unifying force for advertising strategy, service delivery and, often, wider management issues.

Our branding is WideAngle - it draws on the values of the people in the project team and on considerations of the impact of the brand on its stakeholders in the wider world. Happy clients include GlaxoSmithKline, Covent Garden Soup, Homebase, Mercedes, World Development Movement, Abercrombie & Kent.


Who are the consultants for Creativity@your Organisation?

Rosie Walford: is a psychologist by training, with an MA in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University. She specialised in brand planning at J Walter Thompson and Leo Burnett, rising to board level. She trained in creative problem-solving and creative leadership at the Creative Education Foundation, State University of New York and in group facilitation directly with one of the founding fathers of the field. She co-founded the agency's specialist creative unit, Innovations. She leads consultancy projects in commercial and non-profit sectors, coaches senior executives and teaches internationally. In parallel, she's a travel writer and photojournalist, chiefly for Daily Telegraph and Guardian, producing features on biodiversity, development education and sustainability, and published "Shelf Life - a Celebration of the World's Quirkiest Brands".

Darren Rudkin: took his experiences of a stellar marketing career at Unilever to become founding director of What If, the successful innovation consultancy. He's a respected speaker and top level consultant in leadership, organisational change and cultural dynamics. He sits on the board of More to Life, and is co-author of "Sticky Wisdom - How to Start a Creative Revolution at Work". He is developing The Alchemy System for Creative Leadership.

Eugene Hughes: runs a consultancy called PeopleBrands and works with businesses worldwide. He started his career lecturing Aesthetics before joining agency life at Impact FCA. At Cap Gemini he became Global Head of Branding, developing strong management consultancy skills coupled with hands on branding and marketing expertise. He developed several service innovations, including an award winning e-business solution. At Oasis Communications he set up a Planning and Strategy department, developing the business to become one of the UK's leading independent business to business agencies. Oasis was successfully sold to Saatchi & Saatchi in 2003.

Andrew Woodgate: began his career with Friends of the Earth, fell instantly in love with the voluntary sector and realised that the way in which organisations treat their workers has a huge influence on how those people feel and how productive they can be. With a Post-graduate Diploma in Voluntary Sector Management and a Post-graduate Certificate in Spiritual Development and Facilitation, Andrew has provided deep consultancy, organisational development, facilitation and management development with a wide range of voluntary and local government organisations in the UK.

...and others, depending on the needs of the project.


Next Step
Address your mail to Rosie Walford at info@thebigstretch.com

Rosie may be up a mountain or in workshops so please don't be offended if a few days pass before you hear back.