Desired growth begins with the conditions you create.
Growth Scaffolding™ is the discipline of intentionally creating the conditions that enable desired growth.
Rather than beginning with a predetermined solution, Growth Scaffolding helps leaders understand what the desired future requires, and what must be strengthened, learned, connected, built, tested, or adapted to move toward it.
OVERVIEW / WHAT IT IS
Organizations rarely struggle because of one isolated problem.
Growth Scaffolding provides a way to look across the interconnected conditions: people, capability, learning, relationships, decisions, systems, technology, participation, that influence the desired future.
It is not a formula. It is a disciplined way to understand what the future you want to create requires and intentionally strengthen the conditions that make movement toward that future more possible.
GOVERNING PREMISE
This is the central premise of Growth Scaffolding™.
Leaders cannot command complex growth into existence. But they can influence the environment around it, strengthen capability, create opportunities to learn, improve how decisions are made, build relationships and design for adoption.
Growth Scaffolding focuses on those conditions, because meaningful, enduring growth is rarely the result of effort alone.
SEVEN INTERCONNECTED DOMAINS
Growth Scaffolding works across seven interconnected domains: Cognitive, Organizational, Relationship, Decision
AI, Community, and Research
No single domain determines growth.
Together, the domains help reveal the conditions, capabilities, relationships, decisions, knowledge, systems, and external context influencing the desired future.
GROWTH SCAFFOLDING™ PRINCIPLES
01
Capability is developed through practice.
Real capability is built by doing, learning and gathering experience under real conditions.
02
Learning increases capacity.
Learning expands what people and organizations can understand, decide and do.
03
Change succeeds through participation.
Participation builds understanding and ownership.
04
Relationships expand what is possible.
Connections create accfess to knowledge, resources,capability and opportunity.
05
Design for adoption, not just deployment.
Real value comes from useful, integrated, and sustained adoption.
06
Build for enduring value.
The work should leave something stronger behind, capability, relationships,systems, and the ability to continue adapting.
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WHERE THE WORK BEGINS
Clarity before commitment
Before deciding what to build, change, fund, deploy, scale, or pursue, leaders need enough perspective to understand what the desired future actually requires.
Growth Perspective™ clarifies the desired future, identifies opportunities, examines the conditions required to move toward it, surfaces constraints and possibilities, and helps determine the most appropriate pathway forward.
THREE PATHWAYS. THREE DISTINCT JOBS.
See Differently. Expand What’s Possible.
Growth Expedition™ expands what leaders can see, understand, and believe is possible through experience, action, and sensemaking.
Perspective • Experience • Possibility • Sensemaking
Build the Conditions. Strengthen the Capability.
Growth Architecture™ strengthens the conditions and capabilities required to move toward the desired future.
Conditions • Capability • Structure • Adaptability
Build it. Learn from it. Carry it forward.
Supports complex change as it is built, learned, adapted, adopted, and increasingly carried forward by the organization itself.
Transformation • Iteration • Adoption • Ownership
GROWTH SCAFFOLDING™ IN PRACTICE
Spark Growth applies Growth Scaffolding across: Emerging Technology & Dual-Use, Market Expansion & Soft-Landing, Federal & Defense, AND Cross-Sector Innovation. Different environments require different conditions. The work may involve technology transition, organizational capability, partnerships, decision systems, market relationships, stakeholder participation, adoption, or ecosystem structures. But the underlying question remains:
What must exist for the desired future to become more possible?
Let’s explore what growth could look like, and the conditions to make it real.
In-person training and workshops are currently suspended to ensure maximum compliance with COVID-19 safety precautions. Check out our social media channels for updates on virtual training and our COVID-19 response portfolio.
What can you really do? You can change the world! That may sound scary, but it starts by showing up, taking action, making your voice heard.
At Spark Growth – we start by showing up. It’s funny how much success in life comes simply by showing up. If you don’t show up, you don’t get to play.
We take action. Thinking big doesn’t mean you have to start big – by starting small and building trust, you can do bigger things. You may have heard the old adage, “How do you eat an elephant?” And the answer is, “One bite at a time.”
Read our post on 5 Often Overlooked Issues That Can Keep You from Reaching Your Goals.
We participate in the conversation. This is the conversation of collaboration, asking “What Could We Do Together?”
By thinking big, you can reach for your ultimate. Your Massive Transformative Purpose is the higher, aspirational purpose of your organization. With your MTP big enough to rally around, it inspires and it moves people and hearts. Start small, build trust by doing little things, and move forward toward BIG!
A Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) is the higher, aspirational purpose of the organization, capturing the hearts and minds of those both inside and (especially) outside of the organization. (Don’t miss this video about MTP)
“Most people overestimate what they can do in two years and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” Bill Gates, entrepreneur and philanthropist
After years of working across business, technology, education, funding, community, government, arts and non-profit sectors; we at Spark Growth aren’t constrained by the silos that many people live and work in. Our global context and consortium of thought leaders provides us with a unique vantage point for creative problem solving. At Spark Growth we Think Big, and we can show you how too.
