Every choice—from organizational structure to process to incentive plans—can be designed to create the culture and impact you desire.

We’re here to help.

Every choice—from organizational structure to process to incentive plans—can be designed to create the culture and impact you desire.

We’re here to help.

Total nerds for

STRATEGIC PLANNING

Designing and facilitating a collaborative and effective process that makes your direction clear and aligns with your core values.

Inclusive Process Design Icon

Inclusive Process
Design

Workshop Facilitation

Workshop
Facilitation

Visual Communication Icon

Visual
Communication

Stakeholder and Community Engagement Icon

Stakeholder and Community Engagement

Client:

Monterey Bay Aquarium

What We Did:

With a new vision for the future of their organization, the leadership team at the Monterey Bay Aquarium needed to reimagine their traditional approach to annual planning. The Future Work Design team designed and facilitated a collaborative workshop to envision an innovative and more productive approach to planning. Together, we co-developed what their future process could look like, as well as built one-of-a-kind tools, templates, and guidelines to bring it to life.

Planning transformed from departmental to cross-functional and highly collaborative. Together we piloted and tested our new process, with Future Work Design leading the facilitation and change management over a one-year planning cycle. With key learnings identified we were then able to iterate and finalize the process based on varying needs of different departments. In the second year, we were able to step back into a coaching role where we focused on building capacity for our client partner to successfully run and manage the process autonomously moving forward. This engagement resulted in a collaborative annual planning process driven by a visual process map, playbook, digital tool adoption, and two annual plans.

Future Work Design Group of people looking at Strategic Planning
All in on

EQUITY & INCLUSION

Inspiring and advising your team through the transformational journey to place equity and inclusion at the forefront of your strategy, culture, products, and services.
Organizational Education Icon

Skill Building

Leadership Development Icon

Leadership Development
and Coaching

Employee Listening + Learning

Employee Listening
and Learning

Change Management Strategy

Change Management
Strategy

Client:

Oregon Department of Education

What We Did:

The Oregon Department of Education wanted to establish new ways of working throughout the organization that were centered around equity. They brought in Future Work Design to help them develop a coordinated set of agency wide, and office specific equity strategic plans. To discover meaningful opportunities for new practices across the organization, we brought together their teams for workshops and team coaching. Throughout the process of developing the equity strategic plans, employees practiced new ways of working, including framing their work through an equity lens and using a reflective and collaborative protocol to provide feedback on one another’s work.

Future Work Designed synthesized key insights and learnings from the collaborative work with each office to develop an agency-wide strategic plan, and aligned office specific plans. These plans provided clear strategies and work plans in the areas of internal capacity for innovation and organizational process improvement through an equity lens, as well as improved capacity for meaningful and equitable external partnerships.

Future Work Design Equity & Inclusion Case Study Image
Marcella Wentz
As a values-driven B corp agency, we were in search of a revitalized company structure that supported our culture and values that could scale to align with our long-term growth goals. The Future Work Design team delivered just that; they asked tough questions, facilitated meaningful and important conversations, and ultimately helped us walk out with an actionable, clear plan to implement.”

MARCELLA WENTZ
VP of Operations at MADFISH

Expert chops in

EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

Creating policies and practices that align with your culture and values and create more meaningful and inclusive experiences for your employees.
Employee Development Icon

Employee
Development

Performance Management
and Policy Audit

Human Resources
Coaching

Internal Communications and Storytelling Icon

Internal Communications
and Storytelling

Client:

Mad Fish Digital

What We Did:

Strong core values are at the core of Mad Fish but the team recognized that aspects of their employee experience were not aligned with their beliefs. They asked Future Work Design to evaluate their current job descriptions, structure, and professional development programs and design a two-day co-creation workshop to build the employee experience of the future.

Together, we designed a future system that connected their employees’ career pathways with their values and fostered equitable career growth. Throughout the work, the leadership team gained a clear understanding of their compensation philosophy and developed a clear narrative around what career growth looks like for their unique business. With an activation plan in hand, the Mad Fish team left with tactical next steps on how to update their systems and programs with their employees in mind.

Future Work Design Employees sitting at conference table
Appropriately obsessed with

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Understanding who your customer really is and what they want so you can innovate as a business and deliver products and services that matter.
User Research Icon

User Research

Customer Listening Icon

Customer
Listening

Experience Design Icon

Experience
Design

Customer-centric
Culture Change

Client:

Cambia Health Solutions

What We Did:

One of Portland’s leading healthcare organizations, Cambia, approached FWD to help their staff align around a clear and customer-focused way of working. They wanted to define a simple and unified framework that could succinctly bring together their human-centered design approach, lean process improvement methods, and healthcare-specific methodologies in their day-to-day practice.

To begin, we worked closely with their team to deeply understand their customers through key insights from 5+ years of consumer research and market trends. We helped the Cambia team internalize the research, and document it in a compelling set of stories, tools, and frameworks that could be leveraged in their products, services, and experiences. This included a State of the Consumer Book and a Solve for the Consumer Toolkit which we prototyped, tested, and validated with multiple internal groups across the organization. In the end, the team was equipped with tools that guided, inspired, and engaged their staff and showed them clearly how to apply customer centricity to their unique roles.

Future Work Design Customer Experience meeting
Working with FWD was transformative. They completely reimagined our compensation system and performance review program to move towards pay transparency and support equity.”

MELANIE WILLINGHAM-JAGGERS
Executive Director at GLSEN

Melanie Willingham

Dialed in to

ORGANIZATIONAL INNOVATION

Bridging business strategy and human behavior to design the tangible things (structures, processes, and experiences) that drive the intangible things (culture, performance, belonging).

Assessments

Assessments

Pivot Points

Pivot Points

Reimagination

Reimagination

Change Management

Change Management

Client:

GLSEN

What We Did:

GLSEN has been championing LGBTQ issues in K-12 education since 1990 and believes that every student has the right to a safe, supportive, and LGBTQ-inclusive education. FWD partnered with GLSEN to examine which existing systems and policies presented barriers that inhibited employee development and which could be amplified to further improve the employee experience. FWD’s internal assessments helped GLSEN prioritize an organizational restructure which mirrored GLSEN’s objective in prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion. With guidance and support from FWD, GLSEN executed difficult yet necessary internal changes to both its organizational structure and compensation/performance systems to position itself for continued success in serving its constituency.

The partnership between GLSEN and FWD resulted in the strategic hiring of a key resource to support internal changes, reforms to the compensation and performance management system, a communications plan for employees to be aware of internal changes and activities, a full policy audit and recommendations.

Future Work Design Woman coaching and tutoring girl