I have supported a national, fully remote, mission-driven organization in designing structured ways to engage staff around recurring internal questions.

Over time, leadership noticed that certain themes kept resurfacing in all-staff conversations—particularly around strategic direction and their use of emerging technologies.

Rather than responding with repeated top-down messaging, we developed a participatory structure: one that could surface staff thinking in a productive way while still allowing the organization to move forward.

Turning Recurring Internal Questions into Co-Created Clarity

We created time-bound, opt-in working groups focused on specific organizational priorities and persistent staff wonderings. This model has now been used across multiple recurring themes, including the organization’s strategic direction and use of AI in their work.

Each iteration follows a consistent structure:

• Clear purpose and scope

• Defined (and limited) timeline

• Structured dialogue formats

• Optional staff participation

• Direct engagement with leadership’s draft thinking

• Explicit pathways for how input informs future decisions

These were not open-ended forums but rather intentionally designed containers with a beginning, middle, and end—built to convert dialogue into direction. This allowed staff to:

• Engage with one another across teams

• Surface real questions and tensions

• React to and refine emerging strategy

• Provide structured feedback

• Help shape future decisions

Translating Insight Into Action

Throughout the cycle, I synthesize staff input into themes and decision-relevant insights for leadership. This step ensures the process is not just about participation, but about contributing to the shape of the organization.

Working Groups Build Capacity

These groups not only contribute to the organization’s direction, but also build capacity for participants.

In one working group, after just a month of weekly sessions, pulse surveys showed improvement across four areas for respondants:

• I can identify new opportunities for AI to advance our mission

• I can think of ways generative AI can be used beyond chatbots

• I can identify potential AI risks

• I can identify ways to mitigate AI risks

This is accomplished through peer-to-peer learning, with participants sharing their expertise with one another. This builds the overall capacity of the group in the topic at hand and also provides organic leadership opportunities for staff.

Ongoing Cross-Team Connection

In addition to topic-specific working groups, I designed an additional lightweight recurring structure to address team silos within a department.

Team members had expressed a desire for:

• More time together

• Greater visibility into each other’s work

• Informal opportunities to learn from each other

I developed a small-group, low-effort format that could be facilitated internally on a recurring basis. This structure created consistent cross-team exchange without adding significant operational burden.

My work on this project included:
Working Group Design, Facilitation, Synthesis & Insight Translation, Evaluation Design, Tool Creation

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