A large human-services nonprofit engaged Wills & Martin in a multi-phase, whole-systems partnership to move from fragmentation and fear toward clarity, cohesion, and durable leadership practices. Over the course of a year, the engagement rebuilt culture and trust while directly strengthening strategic execution and organizational capacity.
The challenge
- A mission-driven regional nonprofit serving multiple communities was experiencing rapid leadership changes, unclear decision pathways, and eroding trust across levels of the organization. Departments had become siloed, psychological safety was low, and staff reported burnout, communication breakdowns, and escalating conflict around accountability and roles.
- These dynamics were not the result of poor intention or incompetence but of an organization that had outgrown informal structures, creating a widening gap between stated mission and day-to-day experience and putting retention, engagement, and stakeholder relationships at risk.
Strategic approach: multi-phase culture rebuild
- Leaders recognized they needed more than a one-time retreat and partnered with Wills & Martin to design a three-phase, multi-year culture rebuild that integrated organizational psychology, legal and policy fluency, and data-driven insight. Culture, strategy, and operations were treated as inseparable, ensuring that shifts in behavior and norms directly supported decision-making, communication, and long-term sustainability.
- The engagement moved intentionally from deep diagnosis to facilitation and implementation to sustained accountability, sequencing interventions so that awareness, new practices, and habits could take root and become the organization’s new normal.
Phase I: Discovery and reset
- Wills & Martin conducted a confidential culture assessment using surveys, qualitative interviews, and narrative listening to surface root-cause dynamics, psychological safety levels, and priority risks. Cross-level sessions with staff, executives, and divisional leaders helped name current reality, articulate a shared vision, and begin resetting norms and communication agreements.
- Findings were synthesized into a preliminary report that highlighted patterns, blind spots, and leverage points, framed through what was important to each stakeholder and what was essential for the organization’s mission, viability, and growth. This report provided a roadmap for Phase II interventions and clarified the leadership behaviors needed to model the desired culture.
Phase II: Facilitation, coaching, and implementation
- Wills & Martin led intensive facilitation, including a multi-day, cross-functional gathering where staff used assessment findings as a mirror to name previously unspeakable issues, reconnect to shared values, and co-create new team norms and communication practices. These sessions were deliberately designed to build psychological safety, empathy across silos, and a shared language for conflict and change.
- In parallel, the firm provided targeted executive and senior-leader coaching focused on trust-building, decision transparency, and conflict navigation, while translating insights into concrete structures: clarified roles and decision authority, new meeting cadences, feedback and accountability processes, and cross-departmental coordination mechanisms. A comprehensive report captured revised processes, a shared vision statement, and recommendations for ongoing leadership development and culture work.
Phase III: Sustaining the shift
- Over the next 6–12 months, Wills & Martin supported implementation through bi-weekly executive coaching, supplemental coaching for key leaders, and quarterly alignment sessions that brought cross-functional leaders together to review progress, troubleshoot breakdowns, and recalibrate practices. Regular “temperature checks” through pulse surveys and structured conversations tracked engagement, psychological safety, and trust, feeding real-time data back to leadership for course correction.
- Culture work was integrated into strategic planning, performance expectations, and succession planning so it would not be a side project. The engagement concluded with a transition plan and a repeatable internal framework for culture stewardship, enabling future leadership transitions and strategic shifts without re-traumatizing the system.
Capabilities Wills & Martin applied
- Wills & Martin brought integrated strategic business consulting and vision execution to align culture change with the nonprofit’s mission, growth goals, and operational realities, helping leaders move from reactive crisis management to values-anchored, system-aware decision-making. Organizational psychology and team-development expertise shaped high-trust environments, psychologically safe facilitation, and coaching that expanded leaders’ capacity to listen, coach, and respond effectively.
- Data-driven insight and change-management methods connected narrative and metrics, sequencing interventions across phases and using breakdowns as data for learning rather than signs of failure. Legal, policy, and communication fluency ensured that new practices, structures, and messaging were ethically grounded, operationally sound, and aligned with stakeholder expectations.
Results: from strain to cohesion
- Follow-up interviews and surveys reflected significantly increased trust in leadership, clearer decision-making pathways, and greater willingness among staff to speak up, ask questions, and surface problems. Cross-departmental collaboration improved, reactivity decreased, and teams reported a more consistent, shared language for addressing conflict and navigating change.
- Retention stabilized, new leaders became effective more quickly, and key strategic initiatives that had stalled began to move forward as culture work became the foundation for execution rather than an add-on. The organization emerged with sustainable systems, embedded practices, and internal leadership capacity to carry culture work forward without ongoing consultant dependence.