A happy strategy is a human-centered strategy. “Happy” speaks to the emotional quality of the work that we do. We want to help you see work not as a place of dread on Monday mornings, but as something that is meaningful and gives you energy instead. “Strategy” speaks to the crucial element of planning required to make this happen: it takes preparation, action, and diligence.

Here’s what we don’t mean: ping pong tables, forced happy hours, or team-building retreats. When we talk about work culture, we’re referring to the key elements that make or break a business: 

• Alignment of core values, mission, and vision across your company 
• Leadership, coaching, and mentorship 
• Internal communications
• Internal systems/processes
• Learning and development
• Employee engagement and wellbeing

As a creative culture agency, we use a design-driven approach to co-create novel solutions that improve work culture. Our work focuses on the six key areas of business culture: core values, leadership, internal communications, systems and processes, learning and development, and employee engagement and wellbeing.

Your business may be thriving in some of these areas and struggling in others. That’s normal. We can pinpoint the areas in which your business is not functioning as well as it could be, and design interventions to get you to the next level. For example, if your business is struggling with systems and processes, we might help you implement a new project management system that suits your needs and design better workflows for your team. If you are struggling with managing a team, we’ll focus on mentorship and coaching. If your business feels like it’s moving in all directions without any compass to guide you, we’ll help you develop core values to use in decisionmaking.

It’s the combination of cutting edge research, creative problem solving, and creating space to try new things that makes our process unique. Learn more about what we do here.

First of all, here’s what we don’t mean: we are not talking about empty positivity and meaningless fluff. Nor are we talking about ping pong tables or superficial interventions to make work seem “fun.” We’re talking about finding meaning and purpose in everyday work, knowing that your time and energy are helping to build something greater than yourself and feeling like you are contributing to a team that supports you. True happiness at work comes when we know our energies are being put to good use.

“A truly forward-thinking business sets out to be the best place for its employees to make a contribution to a greater good,” writes Carol Sanford in The Regenerative Business: “The work design, itself, rather than amenities or human resource programs, motivates people to become part of the organization and to take on more and more challenging work because they feel themselves to be part of a future that they want to help create.”

Psychologist Carol Dweck coined the term “growth mindset” to refer to the concept that your “most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point.” This is in contrast to the dominant view in many organizations that abilities are fixed and you either have them or you don’t. Developing a growth mindset leads to a passion for learning and a deeper resilience for dealing with challenges. When you and your colleagues are dedicated to continuous improvement, the effects on the organization can be profound.

Generally, no. We’re beginning to see a shift into “people operations” in competitive industries, but most HR programs are still operating under outdated models and mindsets that are there to protect the company, not the people. Traditional HR handles payroll, benefits, and sometimes interpersonal issues like conflict resolution, but rarely do they specifically focus on developing human potential or teams. And in many small and medium-sized businesses, human resources departments are under-resourced, under-supported, or nonexistent.

And HR departments generally don’t focus on improving areas of business culture that affect day-to-day experience and business performance but fall outside the traditional “employee experience” domain, like core values, systems and processes, communication and leadership.

Our goal is to be a support system for anyone, from business owners to HR departments, who believes that their people are their company’s biggest competitive advantage. 

While our work deals with a lot of intangibles, we try to make everything as actionable as possible. The first thing we always do is talk to you and as many people within your organization as possible and use those insights to form a plan for solutions to implement.

These take many forms, including:

• Holding workshops to identify pain points and brainstorm solutions to key challenges
• Facilitating conversations to address the “everyday experience” challenges that frequently get pushed to the backburner
• Creating customized toolkits and processes for hiring, onboarding, project management, and communications
• Crafting, clarifying, and communicating roles and responsibilities
• Developing individualized growth plans
• Coaching employees at all levels through difficult conversations
• Developing team resources and a plan for testing and improving them
• Guiding teams in a structured way for improving internal communication and processes

We believe that organizational change happens at the ground level. We generally work with individual teams or departments because we’ve found this can have the biggest impact by causing a ripple effect throughout a larger organization. When we work with small businesses, we can work with the organization as a whole or with just a specific team. We work with larger organizations over a longer period of time and with individuals at all levels of a larger organization. No matter the situation or size of the organization, we would be interested to see if working with you could be a good fit. Get in touch with us to find out! 

More and more, people are choosing jobs based on culture and quality of life issues—even over money and perks. If you want to attract and retain people who are right for your organization, you need to offer them a supportive environment that provides them with ways to continue to grow and learn. The people and businesses that will survive and thrive in the future are the ones that can adapt and shift as employee expectations and ways of working shift. It’s all about sustainability.

• Download our free resources as a starting point and share them with your colleagues
• Talk to us about individual coaching, where help you talk through what you can and can’t control, and whether you are in the right place to try to change the culture as an intraprenuer, or if another path would be better for you
• Reach out to us to see how we might be able to reach the decision-makers at your organization
• Sign up for our newsletter for a monthly spark of inspiration

You would be surprised how many times we’ve been asked this question. The short answer is no. We believe that everyone has the capacity to develop and every leader has the ability to improve their coaching style. We’ll work with you and your team to articulate clear expectations and best practices. We will help you with hiring processes, onboarding, getting to the root of the issue, and making sure your team has what they need to succeed and that you have the energy to help them get there. We’ll provide you with a structured path so you have everything you need to support your team, and we’ll coach you through how to have that difficult conversation if it is required.

• Teresa Amabile, The Progress Principle
• Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• Carol Sanford, The Regenerative Business
• Tim Brown and Roger Martin’s research on how design thinking can be used for change management and inspiring action
• Francesca Gino’s research into work cultures, performance management, and organizational behavior
• Adam Grant’s research on how we can find motivation and meaning at work and live more generous and creative lives
• Marcus Buckinham and Ashley Goodal’s research on how the most-engaged teams work together within organizations

We offer an array of services that can work within your budget. We like to think of an initial investment the equivalent of sending your team to a conference—but instead of listening to presentations while checking email, you and your team will be getting hands-on coaching and customized solutions for your business.

You could call us consultants, but we hope you don’t. We’ve seen the traditional consulting model fail time and time again. Why? Because your employees already have the answer. They just need time, someone to take the lead, and your support to make an impact. Traditional consultants come in, tell you what to do, take your money and leave. We work hand-in-hand with you to create sustainable solutions that will grow as your business grows. Want to learn more? Here are all the ways we are different from traditional consultants [[link]].