“Working with Springboard Strategy brought so many advantages to help us create and sell in a new long-term vision and actionable plan. We benefitted from her grounding in strategy, her inspiring process design thinking and her emotional intelligence.””
With a new leadership team, WABE CEO Jennifer Dorian needed to reset strategy, gain insight and alignment from her 75 person staff and deliver a compelling presentation to the Board of Directors. Our work resulted in a thoughtful, intelligent, and inclusive strategy reflecting input from the entire organization.
The Challenge
WABE recently expanded its executive team, adding a new CEO and several new leaders. This new team needed to chart the organization's future course and build a new strategy and plan. As part of this process, the CEO wanted feedback and involvement from the entire 75 person staff - to strengthen the project and bolster ownership and alignment. Finally, the CEO needed a polished presentation to communicate this final strategy to the Board of Directors for approval.
To accomplish this, Springboard:
Designed and facilitated ten one-hour virtual facilitated sessions, captured insights, and supported the leadership team to enhance the strategy.
Research synthesis, strategy development, writing, and graphic design of a 20-page board presentation
We served as leadership team Quarterback - assembling the pieces into a whole, compelling story.
How Did We Do It?
Our approach was unique and custom to WABE's needs. At Springboard, we believe in meeting the client where they are. In this project, the leaders had a solid draft vision, mission, and strategic direction. Building upon this foundation, we hosted a series of facilitated listening sessions to gather and synthesize feedback from the staff and intentionally engage in an open dialogue of the benefits and limitations of the strategy. Our approach deliberately included 75 staff members and spanned over five weeks. The result was a balance of bold strategic vision reflective of organizational readiness. The three significant outputs of this work: a visual strategic roadmap, board presentation, and a document that synthesized staff feedback and insights.
Seasoned in operations, strategy, and facilitation, we rely heavily on interactive workshops to build plans with all organization levels. In our opinion, investing in a strategic plan without alignment and buy-in throughout the experience is a waste of time and money.
What Did It Take?
Hearing all voices: Rather than a top-down authoritative approach, WABE chose a collaborative approach to building a new strategic direction. It was essential to the leaders to gather in-depth insights from all organization members around five vital strategic topics.
One piece at a time: The team's long-term plans were bold and expansive. Springboard took a storyboard approach in building a final board presentation and guided the team to focus early work to generate quick wins.
Focus and relevance: In building a final presentation, Springboard guided the team to ruthlessly edit and curate only essential insights that support their strategy.
It takes a village: Springboard is savvy at finding and bringing key players to deliver great work. We subcontracted with a researcher and designer on this project - keeping costs and complexity low for the client.
Learn more about the Public Broadcasting Atlanta at www.wabe.org