Cultivate Strategy specializes in adaptive strategy, story-based engagement, and complex facilitation.
We guide nonprofit and local government clients who recognize the need to shift their workplace cultures to face complex, unpredictable circumstances.
Our Mission
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sustain what works
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nurture good patterns
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stimulate growth
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intervene with integrity
Services
Government
With over 25 years of experience in managing group dynamics, Cultivate Strategy is a CERT designation S/WBE
woman-owned small business in Minnesota, Cultivate Strategy that designs and leads onsite & virtual meetings.
Nonprofits
Inspired by complex systems in nature, we host conversations, workshops, and nontraditional assessments that uncover patterns in relational networks, behaviors, power structures, decision-making habits, and rules--both written and unwritten.
Storywork
You Can't Push Culture.
But you can shape relationships through networks and narratives. We listen not for opinions, but for stories, because they ground our observations in the relationships and culture unique to your system.
Methods
Cultivate inspiration and energy with dynamic training and leadership coaching. We offer courses in collaborative methods & adaptive leadership and coaching support for perceptive leaders who yearn for new leadership models in an uncertain world.
Move in the right direction without leaving anyone out. We specialize in collaborative planning that builds our clients' adaptive leadership capacity, leaving them with context-sensitive decisions that are clear, strategic, and even experimental, as needed.
Harness the power of your networks and the stories that shape them. We provide inclusive assessment and organizational development services tailored to your context. That means effective process design, creative event hosting, and meaningful communications.
Host conversations that are real and worth people's time. We model ways to create healthy, meaningful connection and generate actions that make a difference. Experience how productive meetings can be.
Stories
Facilitation
The Learning Collaborative meeting you led was incredibly helpful. It has helped us to reinforce the technical assistance we provide by reminding the group that our support is geared toward the directions [project sites] set themselves.
Sarah Salomon
Project Lead,
Foundation for Healthy
Generations
Training
This was our moment of clarity. ...It will help our organization move past the unspoken obstacles that have hindered our progress.
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We came into the meeting with heavy tensions and left with clear, executable action steps. Bravo!
Board Development Participants
Neighborhoods Organizing for Change
Coaching
Sherry knows the complexities of my community and the many layers of things I'm navigating. Our work focuses me; it's somehow both streamlining and expansive all at the same time.
And the journals are such a helpful supplement between our coaching calls …clearly adapted for my context.
Sarah Casey
Pastor, Tibbetts UMC
Consulting
Cultivate Strategy went well beyond the numbers, the metrics... They told a number of stories.
It just gave me such pride and confidence in the people we have working for us.
I think we got some great feedback on how to engage our staff in terms of what their needs are.
Jane Prince
Council Member, City of Saint Paul
Retreats
The theme of “belonging” was discussed in many different ways, and the carefully designed workshop format provided opportunities for all who were present to engage in serious reflection and sharing of opinions about that theme.
Tim Callahan
Provost, Bastyr University
