Case Studies
Team and Organizational Health
TEAM HEALTH ASSESSMENT
A 13-person department within a nonprofit had gone through significant staff turnover, and the leadership team wanted to understand and improve team operations and culture.
We created a tailored assessment to quantify how the team was doing, then collected and analyzed the team’s quantitative and qualitative data. We brought the team together for a workshop which included discussion of the results and an iterative exercise to brainstorm and elaborate on concrete solutions. At the end of the session the team’s leadership committed to take action on several ideas. The department loved the results and converted the scorecard and workshop to an annual event with us. The following year, the ideas that came out of the workshop were highly rated by the team, and nearly every metric on the scorecard had improved.
ORGANIZATIONAL REDESIGN
At a healthcare nonprofit with 130 employees, cross-functional teams were not meeting business needs, and communication across groups was insufficient, nonexistent, or tense. The impact: many issues were not getting resolved, and senior leadership was so busy fighting fires they didn’t have time to focus on strategic priorities.
Danielle developed and facilitated a new organization-wide meeting cadence that brought directors of product teams together with cross-functional partners for issues resolution. With a structured agenda to keep the groups on task and a clear process for escalation to leadership, the cross-functional partners were able to have honest conversations about their capabilities, and the product teams were finally able to address long-standing issues and move the business forward. For senior leadership, they gained visibility into what was happening across the organization, without needing to get involved in the details.
“Thanks to Danielle's exceptional expertise and thoughtful approach, the Team Health Check has become an invaluable tool for assessing and improving our performance. With her guidance, this annual activity not only provides actionable insights but also fosters a culture of accountability and collaboration.”
— MARCAIL, MANAGER, WORKFORCE TRAINING NONPROFIT
Vision, Mission and Strategic Planning
STRATEGIC INSIGHTS
A masters program at a major public university wanted to understand why one of its programs was seeing declining enrollment, despite high satisfaction ratings from current students and alums.
We performed a competitor and market analysis and identified several major opportunities for the school; we then mapped these opportunities in terms of both feasibility and level of potential impact on enrollment, to help the team gain the most value from their investments. We provided a set of recommendations on how to revamp the program to meet the changing expectations and needs of today’s graduate school applicants. The school is now seeking significant external funding and internal approval for a full revamp of the program in line with the recommendations.
ORG-WIDE STRATEGIC PLANNING & IMPLEMENTATION
A wellness center was suffering from low membership after the pandemic, and wanted to determine how to grow as well as make their operations more efficient.
We started with a visioning and strategic planning process with the board and executive leadership, conducting several workshops to help them connect their inspiring future vision of the organization to a concrete strategic plan with measurable objectives. Then we assessed current organizational practices and researched and gathered insights from comparable organizations across the country to inform a final report with recommendations for increasing organizational effectiveness and engaging new members.
Staff Training
BURNOUT PREVENTION FOR HEALTHCARE WORKERS
Washington state’s 50,000 long term care workers were stressed, underpaid and overworked - and this not only affected their mental health, it impacted their ability to effectively care for patients and stay in the job.
After a successful pilot, Danielle was brought on to build and scale a statewide mindfulness program. Danielle designed a multi-week program, led branding and collateral development with a marketing team, hired instructors, and secured continuing education credit so caregivers could be paid for the training time. The results (published in research journals) far surpassed expectations: caregivers were less stressed, more compassionate in their care, and better able to balance work and life. Thousands of people have benefited from this program since its inception.
STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS TRAINING
A research team’s leadership identified that their staff were struggling to build relationships across the organization and make their recommendations compelling enough to convince operations teams to implement them. We designed a custom four-month training program that included training workshops, skills practice, mock presentations with feedback, and new easy to use templates. The training series was highly rated by staff; one participant shared that “having tangible takeaways like the templates and cheat sheets was extremely useful.” Team leaders shared that the training and new templates had significantly improved staff communications with outside groups.