City Year Tulsa needed to re-envision their organization design and relationship management strategy. Since its founding 10 years ago, City Year Tulsa has partnered with schools to deliver their Whole School, Whole Child program, with teams of AmeriCorps members supporting students’ academic and social emotional learning, helping to create learning environments where all students can fully engage in their learning. More recently, City Year Tulsa has adapted from running this single program model to offering a  holistic menu of supports - often running more than one program, managed by more than one City Year point person, in a single school. For example, they established the Network for School Improvement program, rooted in continuous improvement science to build strong matriculation of students to high school. They launched an Early Warning Indicator Program which marries data, observation, and Tier II student support strategies to identify students who are off track towards graduation and move them back on track. Over the past decade, City Year Tulsa has served 22,372 individual students. Looking ahead, City Year Tulsa plans to further scale the reach and impact of their menu of supports. In order to do this, they needed to answer two key organizational design questions: (1) What is the next best organizational structure to operate multiple programs effectively at scale? And (2) What relationship management strategy might they adopt? 

Leadwell leaned on our signature approach of deep listening and strong synthesis to answer these organization design questions. Over the course of three months, Leadwell Co-Founder Christina Patick engaged in a collaborative approach, reviewing City Year Tulsa’s current strategy documents and role descriptions, interviewing City Year Tulsa staff, summarizing trends and priorities, and facilitating team input meetings. Leadwell used an iterative process to produce an aspirational organizational chart for City Year Tulsa at scale. It became clear that a prescriptive “one owner” relationship management model with their school partners would not meet organizational needs. Instead, Leadwell helped design an adaptive model, relying on a set of shared mindsets to build and sustain school and district partnerships. 

City Year Tulsa moved quickly towards their new organizational model and became invested in launching the adaptive relationship management strategy. Upon completion of this project, City Year Tulsa:  

• Promoted from within to fill newly-created Executive Leadership Team roles

• Aligned around an organizational structure that solves for capacity and sustainability, positions the team for program growth, and accelerates their ability to design a coherent program vision 

• Started testing adaptive school relationship management strategies to manage multiple programs within schools  

City Year Tulsa is widely recognized within City Year’s national organization - with locations in 29 cities across the United States - as an innovator in program design and delivery. Their re-envisioned organizational structure and relationship management strategy position them for continued innovation in service of students.  

What is the next best organizational structure to meet our clients’ needs? The Danielson Group (DG) works “to create a just and flourishing society by promoting teaching that is joyful, humanizing, and focused on equity.” In the fall of 2021, about to embark on publishing its third edition of its Framework For Teaching, the Executive Director wanted to ensure the organization was structured to meet the needs of its clients. With a desire to reduce unnecessary redundancy and confusion about roles, and to create a bench for soon-to-be-retiring leaders, DG engaged with The Leadwell Group (Leadwell) to design an updated organizational structure.

With a background in Change Management and Organizational Design, Co-Founder, Jodi Akst led this project in three phases. In Phase 1, Jodi led DG through a process of documenting the current state organizational chart and roles by interviewing all full time employees and a subset of DG’s part-time contractors. In Phase 2, Jodi created and shared a gap analysis with the leadership team. This showed where there was unnecessary overlap between departments and roles, and where there were gap areas based on client demand. With clear themes emerging, the project moved into Phase 3, designing the future organizational structure. In partnership, Leadwell and DG’s Leadership Team aligned on the following objectives: Create a structure that…

• Leans into being a teal organization

• Addresses the highest priority gaps in the current structure and doesn’t create new gaps

• Allows for growth

Leadwell presented four organizational structures to consider, and the project team measured each one against the objectives, landing on two structures as the front runners.

To ultimately land on the future organizational structure, Jodi co-facilitated an in-person retreat with Karla Oakley, a coach and advisor to DG. Members of the leadership team and two “bench” leaders spent two days working through who DG wants to be and how DG wants to operate. They aligned on DG’s values, assessed multiple organization structures against DG’s values & objectives, and drafted initial accountability for practice areas and organizational oversight. Upon the conclusion of the two days, DG had a working version of the future organizational chart.

Lastly, Jodi worked with the Executive Director on an implementation plan to transition from the current structure to the future structure anchored by the retirement of one of DG’s leaders. Using a thorough and inclusive process, DG emerged positioned for the future.