Organizational Storywork
Much like people, institutions carry stories. They inherit them, embody them, create them, and play a powerful role in shaping our individual and collective stories.
Our institutional Storywork invites organizations to examine the stories embedded in their structures, cultures, practices, and relationships—and to bring how they work into deeper alignment with who they say they are and what they hope to create.
With this in mind, our offerings include:
Assistance in developing wholeistic institutional structures, cultures, and processes, grounded in the understanding that how we create determines what we create.
Facilitation of mission development, program planning, and conflict resolution, with attention to the ways organizations can unintentionally reproduce within their own structures the very conditions their work seeks to transform.
Working with healthcare institutions—including clinics, hospitals, insurance companies, and advocacy organizations—to create patient-centered, culturally responsive organizational systems and practices.
Trainings exploring race, gender, sexuality, immigration, and trauma competency as they shape institutional and interpersonal experience.
Support for healthcare and non-healthcare organizations committed to cultivating balanced, generative, wellness-centered, just, and equitable cultures and communities.
How We Work
Initial Consultation
Our work begins with a detailed needs assessment—an opportunity to understand not only the articulated needs of the organization, but the stories, patterns, structures, relationships, and practices that shape how it functions.
This is followed by a period of information gathering, which may include conversations and interviews with stakeholders, review of relevant documents, observation, and other forms of inquiry. The number of sessions required for this chapter of our work together is determined by the needs identified, the size and complexity of the organization, the number of stakeholders involved, and the volume of material to be reviewed.
I then bring what has been gathered into conversation, looking for patterns, contradictions, strengths, possibilities, and places where greater alignment may be needed. From this, I develop a written assessment of findings and a proposed plan for moving forward. The assessment and plan are submitted for organizational review and revision, and once we have arrived at a shared plan, we move into the next chapter of the work together.
Follow-Up
What follows is shaped by what we uncover. The nature, scope, and duration of our continued work together are determined by the needs assessment, its findings, and the action plan we develop from them.