We start with you. What do you need? To learn more about what your clients and stakeholders value most? Get better at optimizing solutions? Get relentless about your focus on delivering what people need and evaluating your impact? Or sometimes a team just needs some time to work through a difficult issue or figure out how to work together better.
Our services range from identifying organizational challenges and helping your team work through them to strategic planning, building and assessing organizational practices, and coaching through challenges. We can start on whatever aspect is most critical now. And the tools your team learns in the process will help you approach any challenge to get better-targeted, more consistent results for your clients.
Three key elements are typically part of our process: Discover, Design, and Deliver.
Discover
What do your clients, funders, board and staff really want? How do you know?
We work with you to design a series of qualitative explorations for an in-depth understanding of stakeholder needs, what's working, and what's not. We align that knowledge with your internal culture and capabilities to ensure that you don’t waste time on solving the wrong problem or undertaking strategies that aren’t a good fit.
Design
How could you explore ideas that stretch beyond traditional solutions?
Too often we pick what’s safe over what’s truly innovative. Or we get attached to ideas before we’ve really tested how well they meet our needs or our clients’ needs. We work with you on creative idea development and low-fidelity testing to get quick, inexpensive feedback on a range of ideas.
Deliver
What matters most? How do you stay on track?
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the myriad details of running an organization. Whatever your challenge, we help you establish clear goals and metrics and a systematic way for the team to track progress and monitor effectiveness. We also offer ongoing coaching to jump-start the process.
“Alison has a natural talent and concrete skills to create spaces where everyone’s inputs are valued and appreciated. She is exceptional at grasping the essence and commonalities across people’s inputs and synthesizing them in such a way that even in the most complex situations, our team sees the way forward.”
“The mix between the traditional and cutting edge is what is exciting for me. I like how you were not predictable. Sometimes consultants come in and follow the script we give them. You took some unique approaches that helped us see things differently and bring different perspectives.”