Facilitated Collaboration.
Buoyed by AI.
What is the Covalent North Star?
Working together is often likened to a journey. We often need a star to steer us by, and the Covalent North Star can provide that direction. It is a way of navigating: an intentional direction that helps teams align, think clearly, and collaborate with purpose. The Covalent North Star asks a different set of questions:​​​​​​​​
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What if AI doesn’t just replace our employees, but helps them become more capable?
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What if meetings were designed not to share updates, but to generate shared clarity?
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What if human insight and machine intelligence could work together without diminishing either?
When used with intention, AI becomes a powerful collaborator—synthesizing diverse inputs, surfacing patterns, and clarifying what matters most. But its value depends on something only people can create together: the insights and breakthroughs that emerge through real human exchange. As automation removes routine tasks, what remains is the creative, high-value work of building on each other’s ideas and co-creating innovation. That doesn’t just require learning new tools. It requires teams to engage differently. In Covalent North Star sessions, AI supports real-time sensemaking—capturing ideas, reframing questions, and helping teams move forward with clarity. It doesn’t replace human creativity. It expands what’s possible when we think together.
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How We Help You Work Toward the North Star
Choose the model that fits your context. Each one is designed to help you engage AI, structure collaboration, and unlock insight—without losing the complexity or creativity of the human side.
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Guided Covalent North Star Sessions
AI-assisted, expertly facilitated collaboration sessions. Teams use structured prompts, reflection, and machine feedback to explore, align, and act.​
Use when: You need to make progress on hard problems with diverse thinkers in the room.​
What it looks like: Your team and our facilitator backed by our supported AI processes. We can walk your team through their challenges to define potential solutions. There is a basic technical backend that can be replicated in future meetings if you want. Covalent North Star sessions allow your team to see what is possible when they get out from behind their computer screens and start engaging with each other in real time, while being supported by AI.
​Team Training
We train your internal leaders and facilitators in how to use the Covalent North Star method. Includes prompt development, AI integration, and structured co-creation practices.​
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Use when: You want to build long-term capacity for smart, intentional collaboration.
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​What it looks like: Members of your team are trained to master AI supported facilitation so they can manage collaboration sessions for your team in the future. This can cover facilitation, approaches to innovation, and how AI can support it. You'll learn basic tactics built on traditional facilitation methods, and how to integrate AI into your team's collaboration sessions, or even daily check-ins.​
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Hybrid Support
Use Covalent Society tools internally, with the option to bring in expert facilitation or design guidance as needed.​
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Use when: You’re building capability in-house, but need help at key moments.​
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What it looks like: Your team uses our frameworks and AI integration tools independently, while retaining the option to bring in Covalent Society facilitators for launch, relaunch, or complex moments. This model gives you flexibility, lowers cost over time, and ensures quality at inflection points.
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We provide office hours, asynchronous design review, and ad hoc facilitation options to support continuity.
​Full-Scale Collaboration Design
For organizations launching coalitions, partnerships, or cross-sector initiatives, we help design the collaborative infrastructure. That includes governance, shared sensemaking, stakeholder engagement, and long-term alignment systems.​
Use when: You’re designing something complex that needs to last—and adapt.​What it looks like: Covalent Society guides your team through a structured, six-stage collaboration lifecycle. Read more here.​
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Awareness – Clarify internal challenges and recognize the value of external partnerships.
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Alignment – Develop a shared understanding of the problem and co-design the approach.
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Agreement – Establish clear commitments, roles, and success metrics.
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Deployment – Transition plans into action with defined systems and responsibilities.
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Delivery – Manage ongoing work, adapt to changes, and maintain alignment.
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Improvement – Reflect, iterate, and evolve the collaboration to meet emerging needs.
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Throughout this process, Covalent Society provides facilitation, strategic frameworks, and AI-supported tools to enhance coordination, decision-making, and adaptability.​​
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Signal Sparks
Signal Sparks are Full-Scale Collaboration Design that start with structured invitations to collaborate. Each Spark frames a shared challenge, surfaces key questions, and highlights early areas for joint action—designed to activate diverse perspectives around a common concern. They’re meant to gather partners around a table, with a lead facilitator and AI in a new supporting role. The brief is just the beginning—a focused, accessible entry point into a larger co-creation effort. Each Spark includes clear starting points for collaboration and prompts designed to spark dialogue, alignment, and next-step planning.​
Use when: You need to bring people together around a complex issue, frame the conversation, and buildshared ownership of what comes next.
​What it looks like: Signal Sparks are dynamic, research-backed briefings that evolve through three stages:
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Prototype – Initial insights based on desk research outlining emerging challenges.
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First Iteration – Refined through surveys and interviews, incorporating diverse perspectives.
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Kickoff Edition – Tailored content developed with participants, setting the stage for collaborative action.
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This process culminates in a virtual convening where participants engage in structured discussions, informed by the Signal Spark, to identify shared priorities and potential collaborative pathways. Post-convening, Covalent Society facilitates the formation of working groups or initiatives to co-create solutions. Read more here.
​Why the Covalent North Star Matters
In the next five years, AI will change how we do business, work together, identify opportunities and adapt to create solutions. But AI shouldn’t replace people—it should help them go further. Covalent North Sessions show your teams what can be possible with AI, and how people are still central to its success. We provide a framework and the backend technology for your teams to integrate AI into the conversation and allow your teams to focus on the facilitated innovation they need to bring to the challenges you are uncovering. The Covalent North Star is here to help you navigate collaboration in a world that’s only getting more complex, and more interconnected.​​
Take the Next Step
Whether you're launching a new initiative, realigning your team, or exploring how to integrate AI into human-centered work, we can help.​
Schedule a discovery call. Request a Signal Spark sample. Download the method overview.​​​​​