Boost your capacity to innovate!

With the Stauffer Iterative Thinking Assessment (SITA)

Developing People

SITA is your catalyst for personal transformation. This robust tool is based on the simple premise that the way we view the world and interact with it is primarily a matter of personal choice. Therefore, it’s vitally important that we fully understand those choices and recognize their implications.

The SITA approach takes personal attributes that are often perceived as innate or beyond our conscious control and gives us the ability to adjust them, so they align with our objectives. With SITA, we can choose to be more creative. We can choose to be more mentally agile. We can choose to be someone who drives innovation and productive change. We can choose to be more personally effective in our work and relationships, and as a leader.

SITA is a unique research based instrument designed to provide personalized feedback on an individual’s mindset—that is the assumptions and beliefs—that influence personal growth and effectiveness. That includes our ability to be creative, solve problems, learn from feedback and face novel challenges—the same skills and attitudes that drive success on a team and for an organization.

Other assessments measure unchanging personal attributes. SITA identifies the often subconscious — yet discretionary — attributes that guide our actions. By making these explicit, it gives us powerful new insights and choices…and the freedom and increased effectiveness that comes with that expanded self-awareness.

Developing Organizations

SITA enables you to assess the innovation capacity and change readiness of your team or organization. Then, based on those insights, it provides a path to enhancing those capabilities. So you become more agile, more innovative, and more able to adapt and change quickly, with less conflict and greater effectiveness.

In other words, SITA charts a course to high performance, on the part of individuals, teams and your entire organization.

SITA has been used in for-profit, non-profit and government organizations to reach a wide range of objectives that include.

Accelerated change
Greater innovation
Smoother and more efficient career and organizational transitions
Leadership development
Problem solving and decision making
Conflict management

How It Works

SITA is web based and takes about 10 minutes to complete, yet produces a robust personal profile. Individuals receive personalized results, and aggregate results can be used to generate a culture scan assessing the adaptability and innovation capabilities of a team or organization. The assessment results and the opportunities for growth that they identify are normally delivered as part of a seminar, with the option of further leadership development, team building and coaching.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Who is a good candidate for SITA?

While anyone can benefit from taking and applying SITA, it has its greatest value for highly motivated individuals who are actively seeking to improve themselves and increase the value they provide, and for organizations who want to attract, encourage and invest in those promising individuals.

What am I supposed to do with the information I gain from SITA?

SITA provides feedback on what roles you are likely to assume within a group, what strengths your mental models represent and what risks they pose. It also offers some suggested steps for further personal development, as an individual, as a team member, and as a leader. These recommendations provide a variety of options for you to undertake a personal enhancement strategy.

What do mental models have to do with job performance?

It may be helpful to think of mental models as analogous to the individual “files” that combine to create a personal “operating system” or mindset. As with a computer, this operating system functions in the background largely out of sight, yet it affects how effectively and smoothly someone’s personal “programs” perform. A clear understanding of a computer’s operating system is helpful in keeping it running at peak performance…and so it is with people.

Does SITA categorize people?

No, SITA categorizes mental models, not people. SITA’s primary objective is to enhance personal development. Putting a label on someone (as many assessments do) makes change more difficult. That’s because what we see about ourselves and what others see in us is shaped in part by that label. A large body of research demonstrates that such labels tend to become self-fulfilling.

What can SITA tell me about a group?

SITA provides the same information about groups that it provides on individuals However, unlike most culture scans, the results are not based on questions about the group, but rather on combined responses from members about themselves. This can provide some very useful insights into the mindset of the group as a whole, and therefore the group’s ability to adapt and innovate.

How do groups use feedback from SITA?

Group members gain some shared insights and the vocabulary to talk about them. That understanding enables the group to enhance group collaboration, communication and decision making, while reducing conflicts accelerating change and building an innovation friendly culture. Just the awareness of their mental models and their impact enhances communication and collaboration.

How does SITA impact leadership?

SITA provides an excellent foundation for developing a highly effective leadership style, one that leverages influence and engagement rather than relying on command and control; a style that encourages creativity, adaptability, accountability and resourcefulness—the same innovation friendly mindset and behaviors that SITA helps individuals cultivate in themselves.

Innovation is the imperative. SITA is the solutions.

To arrange a demonstration or pilot assessment

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