The Times They Are A-Changin’ (we have some news!)
People are creatures of habit. Usually, we will choose to continue on a path that we know unless forced from it, regardless of whether it is the best one for us or not. We rarely actively try to change.
Usually, making a change is the most difficult when you know it needs to happen, or you know things could be better, but you don’t know where to start. The things that need to change seem monumental, or consequential, or incredibly complex, or beyond your capacity, or, or, or. That type of change often requires critical self-reflection and self-awareness that isn’t always that comfortable.
That’s the kind of change we like.
For us, the truth is that it’s actually (relatively) easy to like that kind of change. We’re consultants. As an organization, we get to choose to employ people who like to work on complex, weird, and difficult problems, and we also get to support them in challenging the status quo.
For our clients, it’s a lot more difficult.
The status quo is familiar, and it has likely served you just fine to this point. To upset that status quo could invite a whole host of unknown factors that might be worse than what you’ve got, and you could be woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with them. When you’re a part of a well-established organization, this sense of comfort and trust in familiar processes and patterns is even more difficult to break – you assume (or you are told) they have been vetted to some extent, and that there are still valid reasons relying on them. When a group has become entrenched with conventional thinking, pushing for something new takes guts.
From our experience though, it’s in this discomfort where real things happen. This is where all the project plans and strategic thinking result in actually making a difference to what you’re working on. Not to go all “no guts, no glory” on you, but there is truth in that – the problems we work on and the problems our clients and partners deal with are big. They deal with social inequities, underserved communities, vulnerable populations, climate change, and much more.
It takes guts to say you need things to be better than what you’re currently doing, and to ask for more than just imagining a better outcome. As for the glory – well, our conception of glory isn’t that the results will be grand, immediate, or flashy. It’s that they will matter in the real-world, not just on paper, and that they will push you a bit closer to finding solutions to those big problems.
We decided that this kind of change is our business, not only because this is what interests us, but because we know how difficult it is to do it alone. And we believe we can help those with the courage to ask for it.
We also know like-minded partners who can provide that kind of help are hard to find, so we decided to take our own advice and make some changes ourselves (finally, we get to our news).
We’ve decided to formalize a partnership that has already been working in practice for many years. Today, we’re excited to announce that Ajah and With Intent Strategies have merged and are now DARO.
We’ve worked closely with With Intent for years, most notably on the Giving Tuesday Data Commons. During this and other collaborations, we've come to realize that not only are they as interested in these kinds of difficult, complex problems as we are – they make us better at what we do.
Together we believe we’ll be an even better partner to those who want to disrupt the status quo: not just imagine a better outcome, but start making progress towards one.
So, no guts, no glory? Okay. Let’s go.