Abstract

This report tells the story of my project with a small youth mentorship nonprofit. The title, “An ironic encounter with engagement” symbolizes my experience as a process consultant attempting to understand the organizational dynamics that impact engagement in and commitment to an organizational change effort. The organization’s staff and board had grown apart and there was no longer a clear sense of how their work was connected or what their shared vision was for the future. My design plan focused on using a whole system change approach to help the organization’s staff and board teams explore and define how they wanted to work together. When the board decided to not participate halfway into the project, I was left questioning the process I took with the client and how I could have misinterpreted the client system’s readiness for change so remarkably. Keeping in pace with my learning goals of maintaining simplicity, building confidence in my decisions, and improving my timing I changed the focus of the project quickly and decisively. The rest of the project focused on improving collaboration across the staff team, comprised of hardworking and mission-driven young people who wanted to make a difference in their students’ lives. The steps taken, methods used, and discoveries made are discussed throughout the report and woven into my own experience as a human systems intervener navigating a complicated organization.