What We Do
Our team specializes in improving systems, engaging communities, and strengthening teams to create equitable and lasting change. Our work includes an array of services for organizations, schools, and districts across the country.
Improvement
Supports
Workshops
Design
Sprints
Team
Building
Improve Systems
We teach, coach, and support human-centered continuous improvement mindsets and methods so that organizations can tackle complex problems.
We’ve helped educators:
- Strengthen belonging and inclusion
- Align pre K-12 systems
- Improve professional learning
- Improve college and career readiness
- Increase attendance rates
— and more —
Engage Community
We transform how organizations engage youth, families, and community to understand problems and design stronger solutions together.
We've helped organizations:
- Strengthen and sustain community engagement strategies
- Co-create racially affirming spaces
- Increase belonging and inclusion
- Build engaging and affirming classrooms
- Implement student-powered improvement
— and more —
Strengthen Teams
We help teams grow, navigate change, and reach their goals.
We’ve helped teams:
- Build a culture of improvement
- Strengthen belonging and inclusion
- Improve team collaboration
- Navigate change
- Build human-centered leadership capabilities
— and more —
Improvement support
Organizations hire us to train, coach, and advise teams on a problem-specific improvement journey. We help teams develop the tools, mindsets, and processes they need to understand a problem, design and test solutions, and sustain success.
To a professional, our people were energized and brought into the processes you facilitated. They were prepared and motivated to expand attention on their root cause analysis, community engagement and short-term wins.
— District leader
Workshops
We design and facilitate engaging, immersive workshops where participants learn, practice, reflect, and grow. Topics may include:
- Human-centered continuous improvement
- Systems change
- Community engagement methods
- Empathy interviews
- Student-powered improvement
Each workshop is customized for each unique context and can be delivered in-person, online, or hybrid.
This has been one of the most relevant training sessions for my work that I have had recently. Thank you! Please continue to host more of these.
— Improvement coach
Design sprints
Organizations, schools, and companies hire us to facilitate engaging, creative, and fun design sprints where teams use elements of liberatory design and design thinking to explore a problem, iterate solutions and design prototypes to test. From a single day to multiple months, sprints are customized to meet each team’s unique problem of practice, context, and timeline.
Design camp was a safe space where student's voices were heard and represented and it was fun to feel a part of something bigger than just myself.
— High School student
Customized toolkits and protocols
We design toolkits and protocols to help ensure the sustainability of new practices. For each customized product we build – from step-by-step listening session protocols to entire guidebooks for continuous improvement – we aim to center the needs of the users.
CDP’s content, expertise and flexibility to meet our needs has been great. They pull good examples that are applicable to our work and help us translate the learnings to our network.
— Network Director
Team building and team retreats
We help strengthen trust and cohesion on teams by designing meetings and retreats that foster supportive environments and open communication. We facilitate activities that promote active listening, empathy, joy, and collaboration without resorting to superficial exercises.
Thank you for being an amazing facilitator, leader, and knowledgeable in the topic that you are leading. Our team is so lucky to be able to learn from you and grow from your coaching and guidance.
— District administrator
Lead
with
values
See
your
system
Take
Action
Expand
and
grow
Identify
your
why
Explore
the
possibilities
Reflect
and
adjust
Human-centered continuous improvement combines mindsets and tools from liberatory design, improvement science, and systems thinking. We value this approach to work with partners because it allows for a responsive and adaptive approach to each context, rather than following a prescriptive methodology. Our team can support implementation with integrity, rather than fidelity. Regardless of where in the process our work together begins, we lead with values.