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Ready for Innovative Solutions? Take Three Steps.

  • Writer: Deborah (Ellen) Wildish
    Deborah (Ellen) Wildish
  • May 20
  • 4 min read

Take Three Steps

Have you ever experienced frustration following steps to assemble furniture to discover the screw holes misalign? Cinder to Flame’s three steps aim to overcome any confusion and misalignment between expectations and deliverables.


Cinder to Flame’s brand promise is to help Corporations solve complex challenges with strategic services that energize people, fuel a healthy corporate culture and ignite major innovation.

Large, complex challenges have interconnections that span multiple systems and sectors. They are unsolvable with continuous quality (process) improvement because a set of processes does not exist; nor can numerous, simultaneously moving parts be fully captured. (Perhaps in the future, with Generative AI.)


Today, people are fueling time, energy and money into “band-aid solutions” and emergency measures. The risk is that complex challenges will continue to grow without sufficient, timely and sustainable solutions. Cinder to Flame offers a strategy to swing the pendulum to generating more innovative solutions to complex challenges to keep pace with change and maintain momentum forward.


Are you ready to take three steps?


Step #1: Think about one complex challenge you want to solve.


Studies report the leadership tendency to simplify a complex challenge so that it can be solved with the single best solution (i.e. a reductionist approach to problem solving). The pitfall is that ignoring complexity misses influencing and contextual factors along with opportunities. A complex challenge cannot be solved with a single best solution. A set of innovative solutions can more rigorously address multiple dimensions of a complex challenge.


A complex challenge interacts or overlaps with other complex challenges. For example, one single best solution for the housing crisis is to increase the supply of more affordable homes. However, it takes years to build homes. And even heroic efforts cannot keep pace with the projected increase in future housing needs. (More innovative solutions are required, with attention to those that can be implemented more readily.)


Lack of affordable housing impacts food security. People prioritize housing over food. Food banks and other community initiatives deliver an emergency response, but these are not sustainable solutions. The incidence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke are higher for people who struggle with affordable access to safe housing and healthy food. These two social determinants of health impact the health of communities, increase health care usage and exacerbate the health care crisis.  


Traditionally, leaders are tasked with maintaining stability. Picture stable ships of employees, sailing in the same direction. Entering a storm (the chaos of complexity) is not a leader’s desired destination (where major innovation lies) and the compass for solutions sticks comfortably close to home. Similar to ancestral captains, the preference is to look through a telescope where the land (solution) can be seen and the direction is clear or easy to navigate. However, generating an array of innovative solutions entails disruption to the status quo, characterized by a paradigm shift in thinking and action.


Primary accountability for solving a complex challenge (that spans systems and sectors) can be ambiguous. Hence the tendency to pass accountability to others (e.g. a different level of government or another service or industry sector). The intent is not to infer blame or a lack of leadership empathy.


Transformational leaders exercise courage, assume the lead and champion a complex challenge across systems and sectors through expansive networking, collaboration and partnerships. This requires an inventive mindset and casts a wide net of accountability that spans public and private service and industry sectors.


Let’s reframe step #1 in two other ways:


What keeps you (as a leader) awake at night? Now switch your perspective. Imagine walking in the shoes of people your Corporation serves. What keeps your customers, clients, and people within your municipality or community awake at night?


Please note: at the end of this article, a link is provided where you can review a list of complex challenges that are tailored for your specific corporate sector.


Step #2. Review Cinder to Flame’s 10 service deliverables: 


  1. Specialized Operational Review (baseline)

  2. Culture Metrics Report

  3. Business Strategy & Action Plan

  4. Program Logic Model & Gantt Chart

  5. Inspirational Keynote Presentations

  6. Activities for Skill Building & Culture Change  

  7. Management, Leadership & Team Coaching

  8. Inventive Tools for Team Application  

  9. Innovative Solutions Canvas™

  10. Specialized Operational Review (summative)


Cinder to Flame offers different service options, such as a customized workshop or a comprehensive program (that includes all 10 deliverables). The specialized operational review includes an Inventive Mindset Inventory™ that explores multiple facets of a healthy corporate culture to align people for major innovation. The findings are translated into a culture metrics report and in collaboration with the leadership team, this is translated into a business strategy and action plan. Presentations coupled with applied activities cover topics relevant to building individual and corporate capacity for creative thinking and major innovation.


Cinder to Flame has designed a System of Systems Approach™ that is tied to an Innovative Solutions Canvas™ to help generate more innovative solutions for your specific complex challenge. Note that even the customized workshop is focused on these tangible deliverables.


Step #3. Book a free strategy consultation to discuss your complex challenge and match your Corporation’s specific needs with the required deliverables.


Are you ready to generate more innovative solutions to solve your complex challenge?  Navigate to “take three steps” with the link that best fits with your corporate sector.


Municipalities and Government:


Health Care:


Private Sector Corporations (who share the vision for sustainable, quality living):


© Deborah (Ellen) Wildish, Cinder to Flame 2022-Present. All Rights Reserved.


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