Our Approach
The Linchpin Approach
We work exclusively with organizations that are ready to empower their personnel to be the drivers of change. When individuals at every level feel ownership of the changes they want to see in their own work environment, improvements are more likely to be embraced and sustained. Simply put, people work together better when their concerns and ideas are heard and made actionable. We work with leaders and personnel who are ready to create a culture of trust and co-construct change.
We include three critical elements in our approach: Needs Assessment & Stakeholder Engagement, Training, and Strategic Planning. You’ve heard these terms before, but you’ve never seen an approach that works like ours. All our programs and consulting are built around our unique customers’ needs, drawing on an interdisciplinary tool kit and a cadre of world-class consultants, researchers, instructional designers, and facilitators.
In our approach, stakeholder engagement begins with the needs assessment process. Rather than engaging only with the top leaders in an organization, our process works from the bottom up as well as the top down. We gather daily workplace stories through focus groups, empathetic stakeholder interviews, written narrative prompts and other ethnographic research techniques which give a much richer set of data than culture or climate surveys on the market. We use Narrative Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, and a suited of automated Human Language Technologies to uncover and prioritize your organization’s most urgent pain points.
While uncovering areas for improvement, we communicate with all your stakeholders about the process, results, and next steps. Our approach builds a culture of trust and inclusion, resulting in better adoption and sustained implementation of changes.
Research shows that even the most dynamic speaker can only engage a passive audience for about 10 minutes. Outcomes are even worse for slide decks of mandatory training material where we click through as quickly as we can to throw guesses at the final quiz. Adults simply don’t learn well from these approaches, so we do something completely different.
Our approach incorporates the latest research and techniques from adult learning science, social theory, instructional design, and design thinking. Our cadre of professional facilitators guide trainees through introspective, interactive, experiential and discovery learning. They have the opportunity to actively apply new skills, learn from their peers, and tie new information to their rich lived experience and prior knowledge.
We minimize or completely eliminate time spent with one individual expert talking to a large group. Instead, trainees learn by doing and by taking responsibility for their own learning path. Our training helps students make their learning relevant, emphasizing clear connections between the training and their job performance.
No true and lasting transformation happens without a clear plan for how you will commit to changing your culture, programs, and policies over time. We co-author our strategic plans for change with all the stakeholders in your organization to maximize buy-in. We ensure ownership and responsibility for carrying out your plan is distributed across all levels of your organization. We set you and your personnel up for success with a Plan of Action and Milestones that work for you.
How we are Different
Our approach leads to changes in individual behaviors and organizational culture.
We don’t manage change. We lead it.
Our Needs Assessments engages ALL your stakeholders instead of limiting our interactions to the C-Suite or top leadership.
All our interactive training programs are built to suit with clear applications to improving workplace performance.
We build strategic plans alongside you and your team. Rather than using a stale template, we break the mold with each customer.
Our process is transformative. We change behaviors and norms for human systems and human beings.
