Your Sector.
Your Challenges.
Our Expertise.
We don't bring generic solutions – we bring deep understanding of what's at stake in your field.
Education Sector
Universities and colleges
- Do research on key issues of society and lead students pursuing degrees and diplomas.
- Long range strategic plans have to hold the tension between academic staff who want excellence for students and administrative staff who keep the institution running.
- Our work with the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education won the Gold Impact award from the International Association of Facilitators.
- Other work includes curriculum design for St. Michael’s University, strategic planning with Brock and Waterloo and program reviews with several others.
See it in action.
Read how ICA helped OISE / University of Toronto win the Gold Impact Award.
School boards and schools
- Help form the characters and minds of young people who are our future.
- They are often caught between evidence-based curriculum and provincial funding pressures.
- Our work with Peel, York and Halton and Cree school boards has coalesced into study guides and books like “The Art of Focused Conversation for Schools.” The Chinese translation of this book is a best seller in China, transforming how the education system interacts with students, parents and education partners.
Ministries of Education and Advanced Education
- Want public input and involvement to ensure sustainability of the system.
- They get caught in the emotionally triggering issues of the moment.
- ICA has lead conferences, focus groups and studies with Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Treaty 4.
Health Sector
Hospitals and Health Centres
- Provide essential, free-at-the-point-of-use care for 19 million emergency and acute inpatient visits each year.
- Staff experience the physical and informational silos that fragments health care and causes burnout.
- Our participatory planning in over 20 hospitals, often at the executive level, breaks down those barriers to create collaborative plans. At the University Health Network in Toronto, the Courage to Lead study program has been held twice a year for almost 7 years.
Health foundations and non-profits
- Support local medical and social needs and lead research that saves lives.
- The same volunteer spirit that keeps these groups moving forward often has no professional help to sustain that momentum.
- ICA methods and spirit of practical collaboration is often exactly what they need. The Alzheimer Association of Ontario created a strategy that combined the efforts of 27 local groups into a powerful plan. ICA Associates Inc has worked with dozens of such groups over the years.
Public health departments
- Ensure that society itself has the practices and protections to keep the population healthy and safe
- These practices often run headlong into a medical model that prioritizes one person at a time over society’s needs.
- ICA has created competency models for nurses and environmental health professionals at the national level so that every local practitioner can be confident in their work.
See it in action.
Read how ICA lead the City of Toronto Drug Strategy Initiative.
Pharmaceutical
- Suppliers want the population to be confident that what is available to the health sector is science-driven and safe
- Studies can be too limited to provide comprehensive guidelines to society.
- Thorough and detailed reflection on studies is a key.
See it in action.
Read how ICA helped create the Human Genetic Material Benefit Sharing framework between pharmaceutical companies and founder population and disease groups.
Municipal Sector
Regional Government
- Requires long range visioning that supports the economic and cultural growth of the region.
- They experience the competition between towns and the controls from provincial regulations.
- ICA’s participatory visioning and input engages entire populations in creating the motivation and consensus that propels everything forward.
See it in action.
Read how ICA helped the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation transform itself from a traditional hierarchy into a collaborative organization focusing on innovation.
Towns and Cities
- Want economic self-sufficiency, cultural self-identity, and shared leadership.
- Myriad local issues compete with each other and hamstring municipal initiatives.
- ICA has experience with national, regional and local campaigns the energize entire populations and launch local projects.
First Nations
- Demand recognition as owners of their land and equal partnership with other levels of government.
- Colonial oppression and racism has stacked the deck against them for hundreds of years.
- ICA has experience with dozens of communities and Treaties including a National Aboriginal Roundtable with the Prime Minister and Chiefs of First Nations.
See it in action.
Read how ICA helped Jame Bay Cree Communities develop values to negotiate with the Canadian and Quebec government.
Neighbourhoods
- Want families to live in safety and children and youth to grow up into responsible adults who care for one another.
- Role models are often overshadowed by local problems and political agendas.
- ICA’s whole system community development approach is well know in many nations and our sharing approaches that work methodology puts the spotlight on great initiatives.
Environment
Land and Nature
- Requires our human systems to be in balance with the systems of nature.
- We experience the terrifying tension of short term gain versus long term survival.
- ICA’s focus on local involvement helps neutralize the paralysis felt by young and old alike.
- ICA facilitated the public consultation launching the Rouge Valley National Urban Park.
See it in action.
Read how ICA lead the Land Resource IT Cluster consolidate geospatial information across four ministries.
Climate
- Forces humans to act and requires a toll of innovation from us all.
- Our creativity is stretched far beyond ethical boundaries we can barely imagine.
- Large collaborative responses are the only way for us now, and are the way for us now.
- ICA Associates Inc. is very proud of ICA-USA’s Uptown Decarbonization Collaborative in Uptown Chicago, a large network of commercial and residential LEED buildings across Chicago.
- NRCan engaged ICA to help the Wind Energy Technical Advisory Group increase interactivity to more fully promote Wind Energy.
See it in action.
Read how ICA lead the Ontario Endangered Species Act review, the acknowledged gold standard of endangered species legislation.
Civil Society
Capacity Building
- Remains the best way to enable civil society organizations to be sustainable and accelerate their impact throughout society.
- Their generally unlimited motivation can face depressive burnout from the sheer scale of society’s needs
- ICA links all our tools to methodology, then on to process, values, philosophy and lifestyle. We are licensed to use and transfer all of the ground-breaking intellectual property of the Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs, generated and growing over a 50 year history
See it in action.
Read how ICA helped launch the Micronutrient Initiative an international NGO promoting Vitamin A and Iron in food production in many nations.
Global Scope
- Leverages success in any country through ICA’s global network and ICA International with consultative status Category II with the United Nations.
- We have worked with organizations in Ukraine, Korea, Japan and China to strengthen their outreach and assistance to vital projects in Africa, South America and India.
- We work with governmental, intergovernmental, and NGO initiatives, including national and international work where bilingual or multilingual facilitation is an asset.
Business
- Creates a vibrant society that is stable and creative
- Wants financial stability over the long term in order to thrive and grow
- Develops a culture that rewards employees.
- Ramps up innovation and creativity from competition.
See it in action.
Read how ICA Associates Inc. helped Mackenzie Financial invigorate a trust revolution among their staff and stakeholders.
Enterprise IT
Corporate teams—especially in growing businesses and enterprise IT environments—often face challenges such as:
- Leadership teams that meet regularly, but struggle to make and sustain decisions
- Functional silos that limit collaboration across departments
- Tension between business units and internal service teams (e.g., IT, HR, Finance)
- Managers promoted for technical expertise who need to lead people and teams
- Strategic priorities that are clear at the top, but difficult to translate into coordinated action
These challenges can result in repeated conversations, slow decision-making, and loss of momentum across initiatives.
How ICA helps
- ICA uses participatory facilitation methods, including the Technology of Participation (ToP), to help corporate teams think, decide, and act together.
- Improves the effectiveness of leadership meetings with structured processes that move groups from information sharing to clear decisions and action.
- Bridges silos across functions facilitating sessions that surface assumptions, clarify interdependencies, and build shared ownership across teams.
- Strengthens leadership team alignment with retreats and working sessions that help leaders operate as one team, with shared priorities and clear ways of working.
- Turns strategy into coordinated execution with participatory planning processes that connect strategic direction to team-level actions, with clear accountability.
- Builds internal facilitation capacity by developing facilitation skills in managers and team leads—enabling more effective meetings, stronger collaboration, and sustained results over time.
Mid Size Business
In one organization, two leadership groups were working at cross purposes. Resource managers focused on optimizing people and capacity. Account managers focused on delivering value to internal clients. This created ongoing tension, unclear priorities, and frustration on both sides. ICA’s Technology of Participation helped
- Surface how each group defined success
- Explore how their work contributed to overall organizational outcomes
- Map the relationship between resource allocation and client value delivery
- Build a shared understanding of their interdependence
- Aligned resource and account management teams in a corporate environment
Results included
- A clearer, shared sense of purpose across both leadership groups
- Improved collaboration and reduced friction between teams
- Better alignment of priorities and decision-making
- Greater focus on how each team contributes to overall business outcomes
Where this applies
- IT departments within large organizations
- Mid-sized businesses scaling their leadership teams
- Cross-functional leadership groups navigating growth or change
- Organizations seeking to strengthen collaboration between business and internal service teams