Our Approach
The ALF Insights Model: Emerging and Building the Dialogue
We know, through many years of working with diverse groups, that the creation and maintenance of relationships is critical for the success of any impact-based organization or team. In order for members of a group to begin to engage with the work at hand, they have to be able to successfully take risks with each other in order for the ultimate products to have full buy-in and be responsive to the organization’s and the community’s needs. The ability for members to authentically share their personal and professional value propositions, and to seek common ground, is inherently connected to the quality of relationship within the team.
ALF Insights appreciates that the needs in our community are high and the urgency is real. We seek to address the question: If change happens at the speed of relationships, and the urgency of the need is true, how do we create a process that allows for relationships and product to be complimentary and not mutually exclusive? In order to achieve this, ALF Insights works to design a highly personalized program that will move both relationships and impact forward. It is important to note that this is not a linear process as vigorous, generative social-impact teams are a picture of evolving social relationships AND a robust platform for sustained production and impact.
Along with developing the team’s ability to have productive dialogue, ALF Insights centers in this work a lens of race equity through an analysis of power and education on root cause analysis. We work intentionally with an organization to grasp where they are at in their understanding of race and equity. This happens through the use of dialogue coupled with various readings, teachings, and exercises. This is not a teaching seminar but a highly participative process of layering historical and current contextual nuances on the thread of authentic dialogue, lived experience, and purposeful learning moments.
The work of emerging and building spaces for high-quality dialogue within an organization is not a linear process but a cyclical one.
The process of learning, creating, implementing, evaluating and iterating should become a cultural norm for an organization or network. When this process is built into the day to day ethos of an organization, it allows for growth, flexibility, nimbleness and responsiveness to the needs of employees, those served and the larger community.
Deepening Relationships
A vital cornerstone of this work is the building of relationships and the creation of authentic dialogue and risk taking. The work here is to create a container that is “stretchy” enough to handle productive tension and discord.
Building Knowledge
ALF Insights will work with the organization to develop knowledge and understanding of team culture, practices for effective dialogue, processes for managing and leveraging tension and the creation of impact.
Creating Together
ALF Insights will assist the organization in thinking together about how the wisdom gained and the relationships built can be leveraged into new structures, processes and systems for the organization.
Ongoing Learning
ALF Insights will work with the organization to establish a structure of on-going learning and development. Maintenance of generative teams is on-going and emergent work. It is critical to have structures in place and natural leaders identified so that the organization can evaluate, learn and iterate as needed.
Implementing & Evaluating
ALF Insights will work with the organization to create a process of accountability at the staff, board and partner level in order to ensure fidelity to new structures.
“Working with ALF Insights has been invaluable for Educare California at Silicon Valley (ECSV). Through engaging ALFI for our community discovery work, we gained invaluable insights about how our community wants us to step up and provide improved support and services. We also learned what to keep doing, and where we're adding value."
— Shawn Gerth, ED Educare Silicon Valley