Creative solutions can be challenged and defended in the pursuit of profitability. But first, creativity must be demystified. A process that targets innovation provides leaders with just such a problem-solving approach. The goal is to produce high-quality ideas that are appropriate to the task—which means groups and organizations can implement them with less risk. Work with the targeted innovation process consists of activities in five areas: stating the problem in a way that encourages creative problem solving, learning and understanding different problem-solving styles, learning and understanding creative pathways and their relationship to problem solving, generating ideas, and evaluating those ideas. Targeted innovation reconciles creativity with management. Managers can use it to solve problems that meet their organization’s call for innovative answers to current challenges.

A Letter from the Authors; Visual Explorer Quick Guide; Introduction; Using Visual Explorer; Preparing for Visual Explorer; Conducting a Visual Explorer Session; Visual Explorer Applications; References and Resources; Visual Explorer Worksheet; FAQ; About the Authors

Innovation work is risky, stressful, and emotionally draining, and the only way to span this innovation gap, and address the needs of innovators, is effective leadership. By trusting your innovation team, keeping them focused on the purpose of their work, and becoming a partner rather than just a boss, you can provide the support your team needs to create great innovations.

What future forces will affect a leaders ability to lead in the next year, 5 years, 10 years?

The Leadership Metaphor Explorer Facilitator's Guide provides a facilitator with helpful instruction to use the Leadership Metaphor Explorer Tool - a compact tool for enabling creative, insightful conversations within and among groups of people.

This fieldbook aims to put many of the skills and insights gained by participants who have attended management programs through the Community Resource Exchange (CRE). The strategies offered here will provide nonprofit leaders with approaches to their challenges that shift their perspective on things or stretch their current repertoire of practices and competencies. Applying these approaches are developmental experiences, enabling nonprofit leaders to supplement or deepen their leadership talent. By implementing the suggested approaches, nonprofit leaders will learn by doing, a key ingredient in adult learning.

Nonprofit organizations need to depend on mission-oriented, motivated, and committed leaders who have a mix of social awareness, programmatic expertise, operational knowledge and skills, strong relationship capacities, and sound judgment to deliver results in an environment in which they must function and fulfill their missions with very limited resources while simultaneously demonstrating the impact of every dollar they raise.Community Resource Exchange, a management consulting firm that works with nonprofit organizations of all sizes, delivers leadership and management programs designed to build the competencies of nonprofit leaders. This fieldbook aims to put many of the skills and insights gained by participants in CRE's cohort learning programs into the hands of more nonprofit leaders.The strategies offered here will provide nonprofit leaders with approaches to their challenges that shift their perspective on things or stretch their current repertoire of practices and competencies. Applying these approaches are developmental experiences, enabling nonprofit leaders to supplement or deepen their leadership talent. By implementing the suggested approaches, nonprofit leaders will learn by doing, a key ingredient in adult learning.