Where I've Done This Work

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The Situation: For nearly two years, the School of Public Policy operated without a permanent Director - the equivalent of a Dean. 

During that time, three different interim leaders held the role. Simultaneously, senior University leadership was undertaking a structural review that created uncertainty about the School's future direction. 

The implications touched everything - research funding, stakeholder relationships, staff morale, and the careers of the people closest to the work.

What Made This Particularly Complex:

Organizational uncertainty at the highest level - With no permanent Director and a structural review underway, there was no clear future to rally around. Staff and faculty were navigating real ambiguity about the direction of the institution they'd built their careers around.

Three different leaders in two years - Each interim Director brought a different style, different priorities, and a different relationship with the team. Adapting to that kind of leadership churn while maintaining consistency for staff required constant recalibration.

Research funding - External funders and stakeholders invest in organizations with clear leadership and direction. An extended period of uncertainty made it harder to secure and retain the research relationships that were core to the School's mission.

How the Leadership Team Responded: As part of the four-person leadership team during this period, I helped navigate one of the more demanding professional experiences of my career.

We made a deliberate choice to keep communicating - honestly and often. Staff didn't get spin. They got as much transparency as we could responsibly offer, and consistent reassurance that the day-to-day work mattered regardless of what was happening behind the scenes.

We kept stakeholders engaged and continued demonstrating the School's value at a time when its future was being weighed. We kept morale from collapsing - not through false optimism, but by staying present, staying steady, and making sure people felt seen during a period when it would have been easy to feel forgotten.

And we kept doing the work. Research continued. Programs ran. The organization functioned - because the people closest to it refused to let uncertainty become paralysis.

The Outcome: The School retained its independence following the University's structural review. Permanent leadership was established and the organization emerged from the transition intact.

Most notably - during nearly two years of genuine organizational uncertainty, staff turnover held at 2.38%. In an environment where people had every reason to leave, they stayed. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens when people feel informed, valued, and led with integrity.

The Situation: A growing academic unit was running on scattered documentation, a monthly newsletter with low readership, and an operations team spending too much time answering the same questions. Information existed - it just wasn't easy to find.

Three Problems We Needed to Solve:

Outdated documents in the wild - Staff were working off old versions of expense forms, hiring guides, and policy documents saved to personal desktops. Every discrepancy created rework for the ops team and the employee.

A newsletter that arrived too late - By the time the monthly update was published, the news was stale. Readership was low and engagement lower.

The same questions, over and over - Answers existed somewhere on the University website. But "somewhere" isn't good enough when you're trying to get work done.

The Solution: I designed and built a centralized SharePoint intranet - a single hub that housed everything employees needed in one place. Templates, handbooks, hiring guides, meeting minutes, event calendars, directories, FAQs, benefits information. All of it current, all of it searchable, all of it replacing the scattered files and outdated desktop saves that had been creating friction for years. 

The newsletter was retired and replaced with a live news feed updated in real time, giving staff information when it was actually useful.

The Results

• Employee engagement with the news section increased by 800%
• Redundant questions to the operations team dropped by 70%
• The ops team redirected their time from chasing information to higher-value work
• This saved time, money and increased employee sanctification

The Situation: A large national law firm was struggling with engagement in one of its key offices. With staff spread across eight floors and a natural divide between lawyers and support staff, people felt disconnected - from leadership, from each other, and from the firm itself. The office ranked second lowest out of eleven locations in the firm's employee engagement survey.

Three Problems We Needed to Solve

Employees didn't feel heard - Feedback was being collected but disappearing into a black hole. Staff had no way of knowing whether their input was being considered, ignored, or acted on.

Lawyers and support staff weren't connecting - The physical reality of eight floors and the cultural divide between legal and support functions meant most people only interacted with their immediate team. There was no real sense of a shared office community.

Leadership wasn't visible - Senior leadership was busy and often behind closed doors. Employees had little day-to-day contact with the people making decisions about their workplace.

The Solution: As part of the office leadership team and Chair of the Employee Engagement Committee, I helped lead an 18-month initiative built on one foundational principle: listen first, then act visibly.

We started by actually talking to employees - not through surveys alone, but through informal one-on-one conversations that gave people a genuine chance to be heard. Feedback channels were expanded, and critically, suggestions received a response. If we implemented it, we said so. If we didn't, we explained why. Nothing went into a black hole.

We introduced short, informal connection events - 30 minutes, low commitment, genuinely fun. An ice cream bar in summer. Coffee and pie in the fall. Small enough that busy lawyers and staff actually showed up. Big enough to start breaking down the floor-by-floor silos.

The managing partner began a daily walkabout - moving through all eight floors so that every employee, lawyer or support staff, had regular access to senior leadership in a casual, approachable way.

We also improved internal communication and expanded training opportunities, giving people more reasons to feel invested in the office and the firm.

The Results

• After 18 months, the office moved from second lowest to the highest employee engagement score across all 11 offices
• Meaningful connection between lawyers and support staff increased through consistent informal programming
• Leadership visibility became a cultural norm rather than an exception