Culture Building
The Role of Culture in Effective Youth Development Organizations:
Culture building has a pivotal role in shaping the growth and development of great teams and effective youth development approaches. Inspired by the wisdom of spyhopping, we incorporate culture building into our youth development organizational approaches and quite frankly, it’s our favorite way to engage with teams! We understand that a strong cultural foundation nurtures resilience, confidence, and a sense of belonging not only for the young people we serve, but also has a critical role on within high functioning teams that serve them. Our culture work is anchored in the following principles and weaves through all service components offered:
Deepening Connections: Just as spyhopping brings whales closer to the surface to connect with their surroundings, culture building brings people together, fostering deeper connections and a shared sense of purpose. At its core, culture is the fabric that weaves individuals into a united and harmonious community that can do consistently impactful work for communities.
Shared Exploration: Spyhopping often involves multiple whales in close proximity, underscoring the significance of shared experiences. Similarly, culture thrives when experiences are shared, celebrated, and cherished as a collective. Through traditions, rituals, and collaborative efforts, culture emerges as a tapestry woven by many hands and this work can be architected into organizational systems.
Communication and Understanding: Whales engage in spyhopping to observe their environment and communicate with one another. In culture building, effective communication and mutual understanding are essential. When individuals communicate openly and empathetically, they foster an environment where diverse perspectives are valued and harmonized. The social and emotional work of youth development is often
Strategy Actualization
Everyday-systems that support research-based practices are key to assuring strategy becomes reality when working with youth and communities. We work with organizations to develop culturally relevant systems and tools to link vision and strategy to research-based practices to realize impact.
Quality System Building
One of our favorite jams is working with organizations to build quality systems that support sustained high impact work. Meg’s approach to setting up these systems is to quickly move beyond compliance (a sure fail strategy) to staff ownership and celebration. Our infectious excitement for quality is sure to inspire consistently effective work with youth and communities.
Management Coaching
Got a rock star staff that just need an extra level of support and coaching-Operations and management staff will leave these sessions stoked to lead their teams to greater impact as they sharpen their leadership tools and youth development expertise.
Measurement Strategy
Your staff’s favorite activity may be playing with data by the time we finish developing your organization’s measurement strategy. Deeply embedded in the belief that the people the data is about should play a key role in strategy development, this process will include mining relevant data, streamlining processes, elevating voices that often are overlooked and assuring your measurement strategy both sings the story of the impact your organization is having in your community as well as position your organization for continuous improvement.
Facilitation/Training
High quality youth development; data utilization; program strategy planning; leadership/management; designing employee onboarding systems; select spots available for in-person fun!