For Organizations
Some organizational problems span departments, leadership levels, and time. These engagements focus on strategic direction, how people enter the organization, and recurring problems that require coordinated action across the organization.
The Standard Behind the Work
Organizational work is built from relevant theory, peer-reviewed research, the evidence available inside the organization, and the realities of the setting. I do not begin with a favorite model and force the organization into it. The work starts with what we know, what we still need to understand, and what the evidence supports doing next.
The numbers behind the work
of U.S. employees strongly agree that they feel connected to their organization’s culture.
of employees strongly agree that their organization does a good job of onboarding.
of people who left voluntarily said something could have prevented their departure.
say clear, honest, consistent communication from leaders is missing from their work experience.
Strategic priorities, leadership communication, and orientation all signal what the organization expects people to pay attention to. When those signals are weak or inconsistent, people fill in the gaps themselves.
Strategic Planning Retreats
A facilitated retreat where organizational leaders decide where the organization is going, what matters most, and what the plan will require in practice.
We just finished the last strategic plan. Most people could not tell you what was in it, and now we are supposed to decide what goes into the next one.
What this includes
A new planning cycle should start with what happened during the last one. Leaders look at what the previous plan actually changed, what went unfinished, what lost attention, and what the organization learned along the way. From there, the group makes choices about the next period and turns those choices into priorities people can understand and act on.
This is organizational strategy—the direction itself. The Leadership Strategy Workshop begins after that direction exists and focuses on how an individual leader carries it into their own area.
Orientation Redesign
Redesigning the first day or first week so new employees learn how the organization works, what it values, and how people are expected to work together.
We spend a full day orienting new employees, but very little of that day tells them what kind of organization they just joined or how we expect people to work here.
What this includes
Orientation is one of the first places an organization can make its culture visible. Before employees have learned the informal rules for themselves, the organization has an opportunity to establish how people communicate, work across roles, raise concerns, ask for help, respond to mistakes, and learn together.
The redesign focuses on the employee’s entry into the organization—from the messages surrounding the offer and arrival through the first day or first week. The experience can use a conference-style structure: a purposeful opening, shared organizational sessions, interactive breakouts, guided connections, practice, and a clear close.
The goal is to make orientation an intentional organizational-socialization experience that introduces employees to the expectations, language, relationships, and ways of working they will encounter after orientation ends.
The first day does not have to look like eight hours of PowerPoint. Treat orientation with the attention and production logic of a good conference: a strong opening, organizational stories or cases, interactive sessions, facilitated connections, practice, leadership visibility, shared language, and purposeful transitions throughout the day.
Learning Before the Next Failure
A customized simulation created from the organization’s own warning signs, recurring problems, and prior events.
The same issues keep coming back, incident reports are climbing, and the same situation gets handled three different ways depending on the department.
What this includes
Organizations often already have evidence of where they are vulnerable. Near misses, repeated complaints, recurring findings, workarounds, and other warning signals can show where a larger problem may be developing.
Deidentified information from the organization is used to create a fictional scenario that unfolds over time. Participants receive information, make decisions, coordinate across roles or departments, and see how the organization responds as the situation develops.
For an organizational audience, the emphasis is on whether information gets connected across the organization, when separate events should begin to look related, how decisions move across departments, and whether the organization learns from what happens.