Reports & Whitepapers

Co-creating VUCA Learning in the Food Bank Context

This consulting report describes a leadership development program we created for a national consortium of food banks. The learning design was cutting-edge in many ways: we used a unique assessment of adult development, taught participants a experiential learning model they could apply themselves, invited participants into co-creating key aspects of the curriculum, and used dialogical and emergent designs, among other features. Most remarkable is that the curriculum was able to self-transform in response to COVID-19.

Flat and Vertical Learning: Robust Leadership Development at Minimal Cost

This research report compares flat learning and vertical development. Supporting vertical development is the best way to increase leaders' ability to handle complexity, a crucial skill in the modern world. And the best way to support this growth is through the use of a radically effective new kind of tool: formative developmental assessments.

Figuring Out What's Going On For People: Simple Qualitative Analysis

This concept paper explains why it is so important to find out what is going on for your staff, and offers a practical way to do it, by tapping the power of online surveys and simple inductive thematic qualitative analysis. Sounds complicated, but it ends up being manageable and fun. 

Will Kempe’s Players: A Sociocratic Case Study

This case study, undertaken in conjunction with Collum Goff of Unicorn Grocery, assesses the implementation in a spunky performing arts nonprofit of a radical new way of organizing people to do work--Sociocracy--that promises to help people be inclusive and fair and also get things done efficiently. 

Embedded Consulting, the Music Academy, and The Three Identities.

This consulting report chronicles work we did with a small nonprofit specializing in non-traditional music education. We designed a survey with a particularly important "deep values" component, used qualitative analysis of survey results to get at core identities in the organization, identified several organizational challenges and strengths, and advised on ways to address those challenges.