Based on our initial conversation and possibly bringing additional members of your team and/or stakeholders into the conversation, I'll ensure there aren't any blind spots, and I have a full understanding of what we're working to accomplish. This will result in a scope of work and timeline proposal that, if agreed upon, will guide the work we'll do.
The WORK
My Process
Initial Consultation
1
2
Scope Planning
3
Do the Work
In music, as with people, teams, and organizations, sometimes you need a key change to transform impact.
I stand on the shoulders of giants in this work. I learned from those who led me masterfully, studied and read the work of others, and adapted what I've gained to meet my needs and now yours.
We'll talk through your reasons for reaching out, identify the specific challenges you're facing, and ultimately determine whether the work is a mutual match and whether I can support.
4
Evaluate and Collect Feedback
We always have room to grow. It's important to evaluate impact and collect honest feedback to inform my (and hopefully our) future work.
Regardless of the type of work and the scope, we'll work closely together with regular updates and feedback to ensure we're on the right path.
Leadership and Principal Coaching:
Ongoing Sessions
Organizational Consulting:
Cross-Functional Collaboration
We recently watched Mufasa with our daughter, so this has been on repeat in my head...
"If you want to go fast, go alone. There's the road. Off you go!
If you want to go far... We go together."
Easier said than done, for sure. What I can offer is the systems and structures, but more importantly, being your Rafiki in implementing the adaptive leadership necessary to manage the process and ensure your team and organization experience the lasting benefit.
The following can be adapted to meet your organization's specific needs.
Building a Cross-Functional Leadership Team
How do I set the foundation for such a team? How do I ground in purpose, co-create team norms, and substantively build team culture?
How do I build a meeting agenda and structures that match my team's purpose and priorities?
What other structures do I adopt to meaningfully support consistent communication and collaboration?
How do I effectively and consistently implement a decision-making structure like RAPID?
How do I ensure we're taking advantage of all opportunities for collaboration?
How do I leverage team retreat strategies to re-ground in purpose and norms and strategically plan for our future?
Leading Collaboration
How do I train my team and broader organization on effective collaboration, purposeful listening, productive disagreement, having difficult conversations, and more?
How do I manage the transition and address resistance to collaboration?
Communication Structures and Mindsets
How do I make sure I'm getting the right input from the right people?
How do I make sure the flow of information and the waterfall of decision communication supports our efforts?
In the same way that it's the landing and not the fall that hurts, It's not the change that unravels an initiative, it's the transition.
What I can offer is the lived experience of managing complex, large-scale, multi-stakeholder transitions like a merger from exploration to preparation, to implementation and integration. I've lived the hard-earned lessons so you don't have to.
This framework applies just as well to launching small-scale initiatives as it does to those that shift an organization's identity.
The following can be adapted to meet your organization's specific needs.
Preparing for the Change
What framework should I use for change management?
How do I make sure everyone on my leadership team is on the same page and well-equipped to manage change?
How do I prepare for the three phases of transition?
What do I say, and when do I say it? How do I communicate about the change?
Supporting the Letting Go Phase
How do I effectively frame and communicate the change?
How do I get everyone to have the same shared understanding of the change?
How do I hold space and acknowledge what is being lost without holding us back?
Leveraging the Neutral Zone
How do I frame it as an opportunity?
What's the right amount of input and feedback?
Launching the New Beginning
How do I paint the picture for everyone of how our new beginning should look and feel?
How do I reinforce what's new and avoid backsliding?
How do I address resistance?
As a teacher, I was in more bad PD sessions than good ones, so when I started leading them, I worked hard to ensure my PD was engaging, interactive, and, most importantly, effective. I planned meticulously, gathered countless pieces of feedback, and reflected endlessly.
Most of these sessions can be facilitated as a single - albeit abbreviated - session, as an extended - and more detailed - session, combined to form a single or mult-day retreat, or facilitated as a longitudinal series over a quarter, semester, or year.
Sample Session Topics
Adaptive Leadership
Transformational Coaching
Building Effective and Efficient Cross-Functional Teams
Change Management
Effective Inquiry-based Learning Cycles
Building a Growth Mindset in Your Classroom or Conference Room
The Strategic Planning Process:Setting Goals and Priorities (with a Plan to Win at Them)
As a stand-alone engagement or paired with any consulting initiative, leadership coaching that builds from a foundation of knowing self, digs deep into challenges, and works to align not just action, but the underlying beliefs and ways of being, only then does true transformation happen and unlock your full potential for leadership and impact.
We can also use our coaching as an opportunity to step back and get meta, uncovering transferable lessons for your own leadership.
Organizational Consulting:
Change Management
How I can help?
Professional Development
Strategic Conuslting
The world is constantly changing, and so must your strategy. Strategy Planning isn’t a moment. It’s iterative. It’s something that happens every time you face a challenge. For many of us, however, the need only becomes obvious when we face a major challenge, sometimes even an existential one. I’ve been there.
I don’t have all the answers. You know your organization better than I do. What I can do is facilitate a process, adding my perspective as needed, and most importantly, I can teach you to do it after I’ve gone.
Good strategy is a series of choices that lead to a simple, actionable, and coherent plan.
Strategic Planning Process
Choice 1: Choose your challenge.
What's our ambition, and is it still the “right” target?
What are our core values/norms, and are they serving our work?
Are we "winning"? If not, how do we know?
What challenges are we facing, and how are they stopping us from accomplishing our mission?
What data and information do we have on the underlying causes?
What is the highest-leverage challenge we are trying to solve?
Choice 2: Choose your lane.
What can we do better than anyone else?
What's our angle, our value proposition?
What are our constraints?
Who do we ultimately need to be serving, our "clients"?
Who should and shouldn’t we be competing against?
Choice 3: Choose your game.
What are we going to prioritize?
How will we measure our progress on this priority?
What specific actions do we need to take to win this priority?
How will we measure those actions?
Choice 4: Choose your tools.
What skills, systems, structures, and bandwidth do we need to win?
What will break or slow us down as we implement these actions?
How will we capture measurements towards our progress checkpoints?
How will we ensure consistent and effective implementation?
Choice 5: What's next? Return to the top to evaluate and evolve.
Testimonials
Nathan Patton,
Head of Academics at Once
Joddie Iyalekhue
Director of College Access and Success & Coachee
"Keith is very skilled at building coalitions. He listens well and models humility to foster collaboration. He's masterful at engaging in the slow work of bringing people along with him in change-management situations that can often be culturally fraught. He's also creative and shrewd when it comes to designing complex systems."
"Keith pushed me in so many ways and in so many different areas. He helped me lean into my discomfort and dig below the surface to make shifts that ultimately meant I could build and then leverage some often challenging relationships to develop a more cohesive team. He's also great at coming up with innovative ways to solve problems and helped me know my team well enough to pull on others' strengths to execute the solutions."
