bringing an organization back to its strategy

A national foundation had launched their new strategy a year and a half prior, and many of the people now working there had joined after it was rolled out. Leadership wanted a moment for the whole organization to come together, align around the strategy, and rekindle the energy to carry it forward. SYPartners was hired to design and support a three-hour all-staff gathering for 80 people, and we had under two weeks to build the tools the session needed.

We designed the morning to move from looking back to looking ahead. A gallery walk showed what the strategy had already made possible, the CEO regrounded everyone in where the organization stood, and then for ninety minutes cross-functional teams worked on the gaps the staff survey had surfaced. Two principles shaped the technology. People should see their own ideas on the main stage that same morning, and they should leave knowing their input would go somewhere.

We built the tools in Replit so that our strategist, our designer, and I could work in the same running app from the first day, rather than passing mockups and notes back and forth. Five days in, the client's core team tried a working prototype of the pitch tool. Underneath, it is one React app with four views (the stage deck, the table iPads, everyone's phones, and a facilitator dashboard) on an Express server and a Postgres database. The deck's position lived on the server and every screen followed it, so the presenter's clicker moved the whole room.

The tables were deliberately analog. Each team worked on a printed worksheet with post-its, because we wanted them gathered around something they could all reach and write on. The iPad at each table handled the clerical work. It walked the team through the exercise on a timer, then asked them to photograph their worksheet. Gemini read the handwriting and the post-its and drafted a pitch slide, which the team could edit before sending it to the main stage.

During the pitches, phones offered two reactions: a heart to show an idea some love, and a raised hand to say you would personally help make it happen. Keeping enthusiasm separate from commitment gave every idea a list of people ready to champion it. Voting came next, in three categories (most useful right away, most impact in the longer term, and crazy enough to work), so a practical idea and a bold one could both come out on top.

The day ended with a commitment moment to capture ambition for the strategy going forward. We also built a recap site that pulled from the day's database to summarize pitches and connect people who wanted to collaborate on those that had the most energy in the room.

The session ran without a hitch. Ten teams pitched, and the client's core team noted that nine of the ideas directly addressed the same cross-team problems that leadership had surfaced. Days later every attendee received a personal recap of their commitments and the ideas they had backed. The day ran so smoothly that the client asked us to show them how it was built so they could run something similar, and the app is now a reusable kit inside SYPartners' firm.