No two teams are identical, and we've been known to skip the whole process altogether for specific groups or programs, but here are the steps we generally follow:
Connect & Learn
Every company is different, and we start by immersing ourselves in your company's mission, plans, and culture. From there, we learn about the performance and culture you're hoping to build so we can design with that as a shared goal.
Listen & Repeat
We spend time listening to your team. We want to hear directly about what they consider important and meaningful. Sometimes this is as simple as a survey and a few 1:1s, but it can also be helpful to go deep with focus groups for larger teams. We summarize and share our takeaways transparently and proactively across the team.
Design & Experiment
We like to work fast, so we work on frameworks and prototypes immediately to get a feel for what works and makes a meaningful connection for your teams. We collect a lot of feedback and rapidly try different ideas and approaches. After some time-bound experiments, we pick a path and finalize the design.
Develop & Improve
Your people programs are like the users of your products. You have to design around their unique needs. We start with small, meaningful changes and then iterate based on your feedback. We iterate quickly at first before establishing a more disciplined change process.
Sustain & Improve
Finally, and perhaps the most important step, we'll work with you to build and launch a plan to sustain and improve the programs. When possible, we'll work to cross-train members of your team to help bring and keep the new expertise in-house.