What We Value

+ Innovation

Bringing creative, promising, and potentially novel/superior ideas and approaches to complex challenges. There is a persistent myth that innovation must be “disruptive,” requiring a cataclysmic break from tradition. In fact it is often iterative, building upon past efforts; seeking insights from unlikely analogous situations; valuing the undervalued wisdom of communities or practitioners; or developing unexpected hybrids of established methods. Lastly, innovation may not always be what is needed.

+ Systems Perspective

Developing a rigorous and externalized understanding of the context related to a particular challenge, allowing a change agent to identify more impactful and viable interventions and prevent unintended consequences. This includes examining relationships between elements and entities, feedback loops, stocks and flows, drivers of change, forces maintaining the status quo, and others. Even in undertakings where formal systems diagrams are not produced, we apply this mode of thinking in the form of an appreciation for interconnectivity and root causes.

+ Sustainability

Aiming to achieve and maintain a balance between multiple forms of value: economic, social, environmental, and potentially others (e.g. aesthetic, cultural, spiritual), and to consider the needs and ensure the welfare of future generations.

+ Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ)

Executing our methods with the aim of unlearning inherited behaviors and norms that demonstrate implicit power asymmetry, privilege, and supremacy, and ensuring that the outcomes of our work strive to dismantle white supremacy, ableism, and other systems of oppression, and enable self-determination for those who are historically and currently marginalized.

+ Collaboration

Tying together complementary skills, perspectives and capacities to achieve outcomes that are difficult to achieve through singular efforts. This mindset is driven by understanding power and wisdom reside in multiple parts of the system, and that progress often hinges on collectively forged approaches.

+ Holistic Interventions

Committed to approaches that demonstrate appreciation for the full complexity of interconnected elements, and do not isolate individual problems from their broader context, in order to address root causes and maximize the potential of the people and elements involved.

+ Multidisciplinary Approaches

Recognizing the most meaningful transformations often come from integrating and synchronizing multiple capacities.

+ Excellence of Service/Product Delivery

Pursuit of high standards for quality that more than "adequately" meets the potential of a particular challenge. This includes methodological rigor, adherence to project principles, and consistent, transparent standards for execution of deliverables.

+ Continuous Learning

A commitment to humility and the recognition that we are not "experts," but must remain curious. This includes ongoing iteration and improvement of our methodology as well as individual and collective skills.