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.
Good things happen when people are heard & understood.
Teams are more effective, audiences are more receptive, and visibility and influence are heightened.
Communicating
Our trademarked communication processes focus on intention, invite engagement, and strengthen influence. We work with you to align your team on what to say and how to say it so it’s understandable, repeatable, and actionable across platforms and audiences.
Listening & Being Heard
Hear what needs to be heard and avoid missing what matters. Our listening programs strengthen trust and resonance, so teams listen better to each other and to customers, and learn to apply discovered insights.
Narrative & Story
Discover the through line—the narrative—connecting your vision, strategy, and impact. We guide you in how to best communicate the overarching narrative and supporting stories of your institution, product, or campaign.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot on her oral history of The Atlantic Philanthropies
Oral History & Story Collection
Tap the value of your richest resources: your employees’ knowledge, your institutional heritage, and your customers’ experiences. We gather your exclusive content for marketing, advocacy, and sales and for celebrating and leveraging legacy.
Gay and Lesbian Refugees in South Africa: ‘We Thought You’d Accept Us'”
Multiplatform Visual Storytelling
Through our award-winning media, we develop and produce stories that move people to take action. Our team works around the world to capture compelling stories and commanding images.
Executive Coaching
We partner with visionary leaders who strive to be credible, influential, and approachable—and who must be heard and understood across a growing number of outlets. Our team guides you in clarifying your story and vision, and in applying those insights throughout your institution.
Related Resources
Impact Stories
Identifying the Big Story
Kresge Foundation
Challenge
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.
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