Vision and Mission Alignment

Do you and your team share the same vision? How will you know when you’ve achieved your mission? Do you need to refresh or recommit to your vision and mission as the world continues to evolve? Agreement on and understanding of your shared direction is fundamental to your ability to move forward.

One of the ways we gain alignment on an organization’s vision is by designing an in-person or virtual retreat. Check out our deep dive on retreats to learn more about how we approach convening teams.

Team Culture Assessment and Workshopping

Is your culture explicit, healthy, and effective at supporting your team to advance your mission? Does your team agree on and actively support the culture they want to see? Have you defined the culture that is most important to your work and your goals? Ensuring a healthy culture and cohesive team is at the heart of your ability to advance your vision and mission.

Strategic Planning Processes

Do you have a multi-year plan to achieve your vision and mission? Do all of your stakeholders (board, staff, community members, funders, etc.) understand their role and actively participate in advancing your strategic plan? Do you have a clear focus and guidelines for how you make decisions to take on, let go of, or adapt your work? A deep strategic planning process can help you answer all of these questions.

Check out our deep dive on strategic planning to learn more about how we approach strategic planning projects.

Organizational Development

Do you have the infrastructure you need to achieve your vision? Are you exploring organizational unification or other internal restructuring to better execute your plan and reflect your values? Do you have healthy and effective systems to plan and execute your work? Do the people on your team - your board, your staff, individual departments, etc. -  understand their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? High functioning teams are critical to achieving your mission, and the strategy of how we work and on what we work is essential.

Team Building

Are your board and staff equipped to lead? Is your team culture healthy, productive, and reflective of your organizational values? Are your board and staff, leadership and front-line staff, or other permutation of your team, working in partnership to advance your mission? Team building ensures that all parts of your team are working efficiently and effectively together to advance your strategic plan.

Internal Change Management & Interim Leadership Services

Are you trying to adapt your organization or team to internal leadership shifts? Are you looking for someone to guide - or step in and lead - your organization during executive leadership transition(s)? These times can be extremely tricky for organizations to navigate, and they can also provide opportunities for an internal refresh, directional shift, or culture or systems upgrade. I have deep expertise in coaching interim board or staff leadership and coming on board to be an interim or co-interim executive director, deputy director, chief of staff, or other senior leadership roles. When taking on an interim project, I conduct an assessment of the organization and team to understand how best to support them during a time of transition and work to prepare the board, staff, and programmatic work for a new leader to take the helm and thrive in their role.

Coaching and Supporting Leadership

Are you looking to level up your leadership skills or to explore how you can more clearly articulate your vision to your team or your stakeholders? Are you feeling isolated and need a partner to share and work out confidential and complicated situations? Do you just need to vent about your work and need someone to listen to your frustrations or test out your assumptions? One of my favorite pieces of my approach is the deep work I do with the leadership of the client. Whether I’m working with an Executive Director or CEO, board chair, executive leadership team, or front-line staff, I’ve been in their shoes many times, so I understand what they are going through. I’m often the external person with whom they can finally share confidential, internal developments and concerns.

Work Plans & Execution

What tactics will you employ to achieve your mission and advance your strategic plan? How will you decide what work best drives your plan and will result in your desired outcomes? If you are adopting a new strategic plan, what programs will you continue, what programs will you create and launch, and what programs are no longer working for you? Who owns what tasks and how do you articulate or delegate those responsibilities and expectations? How are you holding yourself, your peers, and your team accountable to agreed upon expectations? My approach will assist you in creating clarity, monitoring progress, maintaining accountability, and crafting a work plan that works for you and your team.

Coalition Building

Are you working in coalition with external partners? Do you have agreements on expectations, goals, and shared outcomes? Would it be helpful to codify or refine how you work together? Do you need support in conducting joint planning? Could mediation or meeting facilitation better support your coalition’s communication and improve your efficacy? I can design a plan that will help you navigate the finer points of coalition building and working with multiple teams while maintaining the integrity of your mission.

Workflows & Systems

How are you and your team actually getting the work done? Are there pain points in how you track, manage, or execute your work that, if alleviated, would allow your team to move forward more effectively and efficiently? Is information flowing within or across the team to ensure folks have what they need to perform their duties? Would new or better integration of internal communications systems or project management software revitalize your team collaboration and support your desired team culture? Together, we can create a roadmap to success for your team that will keep information flowing and ensure that everyone has what they need when they need it.

Productivity Coaching

Are you preventing or addressing burnout? Are you and your team managing your time effectively? Is self-care and balancing work and your personal lives a cornerstone of your team’s culture or would you like it to be? Could new tools or a refreshed approach to productivity jump start your team’s energy, expand your power, or deepen your impact? I can help you and your team determine where your time is best spent to maximize your effectiveness and further your mission.

Trainings

Are there additional skills that you, your team, or your network need to succeed? Do you need to craft and deploy educational programming to engage and mobilize your base? Do your managers need support to effectively lead their staff teams? Let’s build a training and craft a curriculum that sets your team up for success. I can help you envision, plan, and execute short-term or ongoing training and development programs. In addition, I can coach managers to effectively lead their teams while embracing core values such as transparency, direct communication, providing real-time feedback, and celebrating individual and team accomplishments.

Convenings

Do you need to convene your team, your partners, or other stakeholders as part of your implementation plans or to monitor progress on your strategic plan? Let’s plan a convening (now in virtual series mode) that energizes, engages, and deploys your team to advance your mission, win your campaign, and change the world.

Funder Strategies

Do you need to strategize about how to build buy-in for your plan with funders and other external stakeholders? Do you need to translate or connect your vision and strategic plan to a funder or a set of funders who all have different theories of change, priorities, funding approaches, communication styles, and expectations? I’ve been there - many times. Let’s put our heads together and explore funder engagement opportunities and strategies.