Case Study 2:
Alignment at EBCLC
How might we create greater alignment and collaboration between East Bay Community Law Center’s different departments?
Partner: East Bay Community Law Center
Project type: Organizational Capacity Building
Services:
Equitable Co-Creation
Field Research
Timeline: Summer 2017
Challenge
The Economic and Security Opportunity program (ESO) is composed of three departments all designed to provide holistic services around economic justice. However, the three branches of the program were operating independently rather than collaboratively, due to a lack of understanding and processes around how to work together.
Our Approach
Through initial conversations and shadowing, we identified an understanding of the challenge and its opportunity for the program. By creating a shared narrative around how the different departments work together, we could facilitate teams in designing solutions to collaborate.
Key Activities:
Field research to understand the challenge and opportunity
A day long workshop retreat to create alignment around what unites the departments and design solutions to improve collaboration
Outcomes
By the end of this day long workshop, the three branches of ESO had unified around the nuance of the values that brought them together. This shared understanding and its documentation became a center-of-truth for how they tell their story when applying to grants, as well as how they understand their relationship internally. From this, ESO designed internal tools to systematize their collaboration across the three branches with equity at the center.