Our team worked with an Oakland non-profit to identify operational challenges and create a strategic toolkit for making improvements. The organization had been very successful in establishing itself and had grown rapidly in its first two years of operations. However, with its success came the challenge of establishing systems, processes, and roles to ensure that the organization would be able to continue offering its members a high level of hospitality.
After completing site observations and interviews with staff and clients, our team presented the organization's leadership with recommendations in three key areas:
My personal contributions to the project included:
- Sustaining Strong Internal Relationships - differentiate and clarify staff roles and responsibilities, establish quarterly interpersonal feedback circles, reinforce cultural values
- Nurturing a Thriving Membership Community - create a handbook to communicate community benefits, norms, and expectations; offer clear and consistent pricing
- Provide Excellent Hospitality to the Broader Community - ensure that staff are welcoming, knowledgeable, and helpful to visitors; the first touchpoint with the organization should be a positive experience
My personal contributions to the project included:
- Employee Interviews: I conducted one-on-one interviews with employees in order to understand their individual challenges and identify opportunities to implement operational changes to address these challenges.
- Site Observation: At the client organization's facilities, I observed processes, interactions, and resources in action, in order to assess what was working and where pain points existed.
- Strategic Communication: I kept the voice and values of our clients at the center of our work - ensuring that our recommendations, even when challenging, were positioned to work with and not against the organization's community values.
- Content Authoring: I co-authored the report and presentation outlining the context for our project and our team's findings and recommendations.
- Client Relationship: I co-led interim status updates with clients, as well as presenting our final recommendations with my colleagues
[Project for Operations & Strategies, MBA in Design Strategy, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, 2015]