An Expanding Horizon

Dear friends of A Cause Greater,

As many of you know, my Process Consulting practice has adapted and innovated as I’ve served and helped Clients thrive.

Nearly fifteen years ago my practice began at Design Group International by focusing on helping leaders raise financial resources to meet the call set before them by their organizational visions. This created space to grow many Client’s philanthropic capacities & competencies. These endeavors drew additional consultants to Design Group International who helped further develop the Process Consulting approach to fundraising and donor engagement helping more Clients flourish and live abundantly.

Many leaders began asking for help in crafting transformational strategic plans to guide their organizations forward towards their visions and to help them fulfill their missions with renewed passion. These conversations led me into many for profit and non-profit boardrooms to help them create space to have open and vulnerable conversations with each other. Within these brave spaces, leaders continued their journey towards a more connected and shared governance of their organizations.

Together we began to craft Governance Covenants that supported a collective understanding of their roles in organizational leadership, especially during a season of leadership transition. Because of the significant value received by Clients when their roles are clarified and more fully lived into, this work continues to occupy much of my Process Consulting practice.

Design Group International's work in these areas attracted additional experienced professionals to join our growing Community of Practice bringing their expertise and passion for helping Clients develop transformational strategic plans. All of which expanded our Client's horizons through new learnings, iterative and adaptive processes and tools, and as always the humble inquiry approach to helping others.

As we've supported Clients in each of these ways, I’ve continued to learn from them and what will be truly helpful as they live into their desired futures. These learnings drew me back to one of the foundational elements of human and organizational development:

An organization’s culture impacts everything

So many times we believe that we must first start by focusing on our mission, vision, and values. Indeed we do AND we must also realize as leaders that the culture of our organization impacts everything, including those very same missions, visions, and values.

Over the past several years, this work led me to develop a relationship with Ed and Peter Schein. Two wonderful people who literally wrote the book on organizational culture. Not only are they (Ed died in early 2023) scholars, Peter and Ed are also practitioners in the field. Together they have helped many organizations and their leaders gain clarity on their organization’s culture and how to evolve it.

Ed's early work at MIT defined and established the field of Process Consulting in our world. This humble inquiry and process approach has underpinned Design Group International's posture of helping Clients for over 25 years.

Ed's thought leadership, teachings at MIT, and early work with Clients began to create learnings that populated many books including Organizational Culture and Leadership (linked above), Process Consultation Revisited, Humble Consulting, and Helping. All definitive guides on this very different and counter cultural approach to helping others. 

Peter joined Ed in this work, which created a powerful yet humble pair. Through their scholarship and work with Clients, Peter and Ed continued to provide thought leadership in the field creating additional and helpful resources including Humble Inquiry, Humble Leadership, Career Anchors, and Culture Change Leadership. 

In 2022, our Founder Mark L. Vincent, wrote Listening Helping Learning: Core Competencies of Process Consulting, which advanced Ed and Peter's work by providing a practical guide for practitioners to master the twelve underlying competencies needed to be in the Process Consulting mindset.

Today these texts are utilized around the world by those who seek to better understand and develop their skills in relationship building, leadership, human & organizational development, culture change, process design, and other necessary capacities in guiding today's organizations and the humans that occupy them.

In 2024 Peter joined Design Group International as a Strategic Partner. Through our work together, we continue a long history of helping Clients gain clarity on their organization’s culture, create plans to evolve it, and walk alongside them along their way.

Today, Peter and I are launching Culture Change Leadership, a biweekly publication available here for you to subscribe. Through the Culture Change Leadership newsletter, we offer perspective on how to think about, visualize, and evolve your organization’s culture. We will be sharing real-world stories and experiences we have had in walking alongside Clients.

As my practice continues to evolve and expand its horizon, we look forward to working with you on your organization’s culture. In today's volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and anxious (VUCAA) world, we seek to help you understand culture, see culture more clearly, and develop plans to evolve and improve culture.

Peter and I hope you enjoy Culture Change Leadership!

Best,

Lon

Lon L. Swartzentruber

Design Group International

Managing Partner

PS: If you would like to talk about your path ahead, please give me a call me at 616.516.9870, or schedule a 30-minute discovery call, or simply email me at lons@designgroupintl.com.