What We Do

Our Work

All of the work that Superior Design + Planning does is grounded in the belief that how we see the world (worldview, perception, narrative, and framing) influences and determines what we see, who we are, organizational values, visions, goals, and practices. Below is a listing of the work we do, and all of it includes understanding worldview and applying it to the task at hand.

Values and Narrative Based Strategic Planning

A Strategic Plan is a document that uses the touchstone elements of vision, values, mission, and goals to achieve a desired future in a specific period of time. Typically a Strategic Plan is for a period of 2-3 years.

Superior Design + Planning works as a facilitator with you to develop a strategic plan by asking:

  1. Where have we been, who are we now, and what challenges face us?
  2. Where do we want to go?
    • Our core organizational values
    • Our vision
    • Our mission
  3. How do we get there?
    • Goals, strategies, and outcomes
  4. And, along the way, asking if we are getting there or need to change direction:
    • Evaluation

Superior Design + Planning works collaboratively with organizations and teams by providing a planning process tailored to the needs and goals of the organization. We believe you have the knowledge, skills, and commitment to accomplish your work, and we provide facilitation and a process to accomplish a strategic plan.

Superior Design + Planning incorporates organizational narrative and narrative change in its strategic planning work.

Superior Design + Planning has worked with numerous nonprofit organizations focused on a wide variety of areas:

  • cross-system initiatives
  • environmental issues
  • health care challenges
  • social services  / social justice and equity
  • juvenile justice reform
  • community based needs / centers
  • comprehensive community plans

Transitional Planning

There are many reasons why a group or organization may want to develop a transitional plan:

  • moving from an informal to formal organization and incorporating as a nonprofit
  • changing the direction and focus of your work
  • leadership changes / succession planning
  • significant expansion in programming, funding, structure

Superior Design + Planning works collaboratively with groups, organizations, and teams by providing a planning process tailored to your needs and goals. We believe you have the knowledge, skills, and commitment, and we provide facilitation and a process to accomplish transitional planning.

The size and scope of a transitional plan is determined by the situation.

Narrative Change Work: Personal Narratives, Prevailing Public Narratives, Alternative Narratives

Personal narratives are what we tell ourselves about how we see the world – worldviews. Our stories combine many of our worldviews. Worldviews are driven by constantly (often unconsciously) taking our experiences within all of the cultures we live in, sifting and sorting them through our personal values, life experiences, and spiritual and ethical values. We bring these narratives to the work that we do.

Prevailing public narratives are those stories that consciously and unconsciously provide a dominant view of our collective world, society, community, or group. These narratives often describe the “who, what, when, where, why, and how.”

Just as our personal narratives are grounded in our worldviews, so are our public narratives. In the public narrative, there is a collective worldview that is associated with the messaging.

Organizations may focus on the immediate needs by resolving some issues or crises and/or focus on long-term transformational work that addresses the dominant narrative and therefore creates an understanding and long lasting change.

Superior Design + Planning works with organizations in narrative development because we believe that this work will result in transformational changes for communities and organizations.

Superior Design + Planning works with narrative change through a process that helps organizations recognize the dominant public narrative, how that narrative affects their work, and helps them to create alternative public narratives.

Organizational Development and Capacity Building

Nonprofits are dynamic organizations. They move through stages of development over time and with that their needs change. Superior Design + Planning has successfully worked with many nonprofits to tailor our work to assess where they are at and what they need at that stage of their development.

Areas of capacity building include:

  • Building sustainability
    • Leadership development – Board and Staff
    • Identifying the organizational narrative / new narrative development
    • Resolving structural issues
    • Identifying programmatic strengths and challenges
    • Developing tools to increase sustainability – fundraising, marketing, nonprofit accountability
  • Embedding equity into the workplace
    • Developing an organizational narrative that reflects equity as a value
    • Developing strategies that embed the value of equity throughout the organization
    • Comprehensive organizational training plans

Workshops

“How Could Anyone Think Like That?”— Building Teams and Organizations

Superior Design + Planning provides an experientially based workshop that focuses on transforming conflicts and building teams and organizations. Superior Design + Planning’s workshop “How Could Anyone Think Like That?” focuses on worldviews, metaphors, frames, and narratives.

Facilitative Leadership

Facilitative leadership can be defined as an act of leading through others. Facilitative leadership is a process of helping build a group’s capacity to accomplish its goals through learning and using process tools. It is collaborative, relational, people centered, and balances logical with emotional wisdom.

This workshop looks at leadership through the lens of conflict, culture, and worldviews.

Responses to Conflict

Conflicts among individuals, be they on a team or simply occurring in the workplace, can be responded to in a number of ways. Each type of response to a conflict results in various outcomes. This workshop explores the various responses to conflict situations. These responses to conflict include: Escalating, ignoring, managing, settling, resolving, and transforming. The workshop then focuses on resolving conflicts.

Superior Design + Planning’s experiential workshop provides tools and insights for responding to conflict on these various levels.