Bringing Change, Work, and Life into Harmony: Outside Angle’s Practice Areas

Over the course of the last year and a half, our team at Outside Angle has explored and refined both our identity as an organization and the specific work we are most unique and effective in helping our clients to do. Two things emerged as consistent realities that we hypothesized were related but rarely considered together—and yet both related to the persistence of the challenges we described earlier this week.

First, change is ubiquitous and constant, yet people are generally ill-equipped to navigate it and in fact seem to push back against it in favor of maintaining the status quo. Second, people seem to struggle with work, regularly feeling overwhelmed, excessively busy, and constantly trying to fend off the impending imbalance of work overtaking life.

We see these two challenges as two symptoms of a broader challenge: our way of thinking about work and ourselves as workers needs a massive overhaul. Change is here to stay, and our best bet is to not just weather the change in front of us, but to enter the change leadership dojo and build the skills that enable us to approach work in more satisfying, meaningful ways. Outside Angle helps organizations do this in three ways:

1. Change Strategy & Implementation Support

   We help people navigate complex, long-term, resource-intensive change work. This looks like the development of a massive, public-private partnership, or the scaling of effective systems to serve thousands or millions more people, or undertaking a massive identity shift (e.g., merger, tax status shift, substantial financial strategy shift). This work takes a long time and we partner with one or more clients over several years to get the work done.

2. Team Alignment & Performance

   We help people build strong, effective systems that enable creativity, collaboration, and growth. This looks like strategic restructuring at the top of a large organization, transitional systems-building (e.g., maturing governance, establishing talent development, etc.) for organizations that are growing, coaching and facilitation for organizations with executives that are solving major culture challenges, or improving collaboration and shared accountability. This work takes a while, usually 18-24 months.

3. People-Centered Leader & Manager Development

   We provide individualized executive and manager support and development during particularly intense periods. This ranges from new-manager development to executive coaching and onboarding. We focus on providing our clients immediate lift, while providing simple tools and thought partnership. This looks like helping leaders build new skills, address weaknesses, establish onboarding plans, and develop succession strategies, as well as building a common language and fundamental skills among key managers. It is matched to the needs of the individual, but typically requires 6-12 months.

In addition to these three practice areas, our team has a passion for organizations that seek to do great things, even if they don’t yet have great resources. We especially love working with current and former professional athletes who want to establish social change endeavors, creative leaders looking to advocate for more effective criminal justice, and people with innovative approaches to improving access to nutritious food for all. We don’t have a lot of extra capacity for these passion projects, but we find ways to support 1-2 organizations (or people) in this space each quarter.

In short, our collaborations are focused on helping our partners get what they need, not just to solve today’s biggest challenge, but to build new ways of thinking and doing that help to establish workplaces where change is embraced and to equip leaders with the skills that enable everyone to bring change, work, and life into harmony.