Human-centered processes generate plans that center people in the work and harness strategic and cultural strength. By committing to care for and understand the priorities of stakeholders, constituents, and organizational leaders, we support clients to make informed and intentional choices about who and what we prioritize (and when and how). By promoting cultural humility and understanding across identity and group cultures, new and incumbent organizational cultures, and broader communities of practice, our clients will develop a plan that demonstrates their care, discernment, and commitment to mutual impact. Our methodology draws on universal design frameworks, design justice principles, and mixed methods for qualitative and quantitative research, including story-based interviewing.

It is highly improbable (and usually impossible) to drive change without a strong sense of return on the effort it takes to change. That return can be value-driven (e.g., opportunities to be gained) and/or values-driven (e.g., impact to be created), but it must be projected, tracked, and reported if it’s going to stick. We help flesh out detailed measurement and accountability aspects of your final plan by intentionally surfacing considerations and dependencies during our facilitation and strategic design process.

Einstein was on to something when he said, “if I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Not only is an ill-defined problem very hard to solve, the best ideas about solutions typically come directly from those who know and talk about the problem in detail. Our methodology includes not just interviewing constituents but designing research instruments that unearth instructive stories and surface latent assumptions.

We pay attention to the tensions. While an organization or collaborative benefits from a harmonious set of leading voices to move the group forward, it does not need everyone to agree on every song selection. We need to surface the important, divergent possibilities and then agree to converge to advance the choices we make as a group. We design an efficient and generative structure to facilitate discussion and consider possibilities. We then bring the group together to make an action-oriented decision. Our methodology includes using tools for facilitating commitment, including liberating structures, “microstructures that enhance relational coordination and trust” (Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless).

Our plans are only as good as the meaning we make from them. Without clarity, the firm will underperform its shared potential and/or nurture rogues who are not on a shared journey. Once a team is truly clear, we can build internal and external communications and actions for a variety of audiences that will carry that clarity forward. Without an emphasis on shared meaning, we lose our messages in translation. To advance clarity, our methodology includes exercises and tools to agree on meaning to design, create, and measure results that will be clear and useful.