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Impact Stories

Identifying the Big Story

Kresge Foundation

Challenge

As they were ending a multi-year, multimillion-dollar investment, leaders at the Kresge Foundation wanted to gain a “balcony view and line of sight going forward”: they wanted to know the Big Story of the work and how to share it.

Solution

Thaler Pekar & Partners deployed a proprietary collaborative process to guide 75 grantees and partner organizations in sharing and reflecting on stories and distilling the emergent narrative.

The narrative emergence celebrated individual and collective success; inspired a deep sense of community; and created and strengthened alignment.

The Foundation heard many stories for the first time, and participants reported that the process will help them be more intentional about the stories they share.

Accelerating Change

Novartis

Challenge

Novartis was eager to accelerate adoption of a new global approach to compliance and integrity, while decreasing the time and money required for institutionalization.

Solution

Thaler Pekar & Partners worked with a cohort of senior leaders around the world, directing them in finding, refining, and delivering their own stories of compliance and integrity. By focusing on stories with both the attributes of integrity and the absence of compliance, the leaders were able to efficiently and effectively demonstrate the expected norms and behaviors.

A global audience was invited to imagine themselves in culturally appropriate situations, behaving with similar integrity, accelerating compliance around the world.

TP&P developed a customized booklet for each leader to provide ongoing support in sustaining a culture of easily understood, internalized, indisputable, and implementable values and behaviors.

Strategic Planning

Grass Foundation

Challenge

Prior to undertaking a strategic planning process, The Grass Foundation wanted clarity around the organization’s past and present so that it could authentically move forward into the future.

Solution

Thaler Pekar & Partners gathered oral histories of current and former board members, beneficiaries of the foundation, and colleagues.

Through recorded oral histories, we connected the past and present to the future of the Foundation.

TP&P analyzed the interviews for contradictory and complementary emergent patterns, motivations and values; tensions; assumptions and aspirations; and other narrative aspects. We also teased out the Foundation’s own solution stories for further development and application.

Our analysis and reporting are shaping the strategic planning process. The Foundation has videos and transcripts to add to their archives. Bolstered with the confidence that comes from a shared sense of history and purpose, board members are adopting new and creative ways of moving forward.