professional development

Collaborative teamed up with UWW to provide planning and facilitation support as the CILL team developed a work plan. We worked closely with the executive leadership at UWW to design facilitated engagement with local United Way leaders as well as staff to build new workplans.  Our efforts include:

• Facilitating the CEO Summit and staff retreats
• Providing ongoing strategic planning design support
• Coaching overall effectiveness of senior leadership

Collaborative teamed up with EFCC to implement a comprehensive community engagement effort, called Connect Now, which included the following:

• Structure and facilitation of a steering committee representative of all key stakeholders.
• Design, coordination, facilitation and documentation of conversations among residents across all neighborhoods.
• Design, facilitation and documentation of cross-sector community-wide forums that build and solidify a community vision for public education.

Collaborative’s experience leading similar efforts gave confidence and support the leadership effort played by EFCC in creating and moving Connect Now forward.

Beginning in 2008, Collaborative supported the development of an Education Team at UWW. Through facilitation, strategic advice and strategic planning, we assisted this new team in crafting an overarching plan for UWW’s Education Initiative. We designed the make up of team, facilitated the articulation of the focus areas for work, defined the structure of the staff, and determined the most effective way for this team to support senior staff.

As the Education Team built its capacity, Collaborative provided ongoing support:

• Facilitation of Education Team and senior leadership planning and strategy meetings
• Leadership consulting and coaching
• Staff mentoring
• Research to support plan and strategy decision-making

Our approach was to create a series of promotional materials, Web site content, and implementation strategies that the ADE could distribute to a variety of prospective users.

Our first step was to create materials that demonstrate the benefits of IDEAS to district and school administrators. Once they understood the value of the online portal, they could then promote it within their district or school. We created a promotion plan and an implementation strategy that ADE staff could use to talk about and promote IDEAS with administrators at the district and school level.

Next, we developed an implementation plan for administrators, to help them introduce and promote IDEAS in their school or district. The plan is accompanied by supporting resources including IDEAS talking points, sample email language, a PowerPoint presentation and a promotional poster. We recommended all of these resources be available to administrators in a centralized location on the IDEAS Web site.

Collaborative looked at multiple indicators to identify potential expansion opportunities for NAF academies in California. We examined public education data, interviewed potential partners and identified existing support structures, to gain a clear picture of interest, need and support. We looked at how these indicators intersected and overlapped, to identify potential areas for academy expansion. We synthesized our findings in a written report that "maps" our recommendations.

In response to the need be able to update information and continue to explore new locations, Collaborative created the Community Readiness Assessment Tool, which helps to guide strategic thinking about a community's level of readiness to engage in the career academy approach. By capturing and documenting the process by which data can be used to inform decisions, Collaborative empowered NAF to continue its work in an effective and strategic way.