Bringing people closer—to one another, to purpose, and to their human side
In Toronto and wherever you need us
We’re Carlos and Richard
AKA the people who stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you
- Call us battle-scarred consultants, culture designers, strategists, workshop facilitators, leadership coaches…
- Honestly, we don’t believe in a strict label. Think of us as your partner, helping you make shift happen.
We believe:
It’s all about engaging hearts AND minds
To make shift happen, we need to spend time on the big, meaty, emotional issues. AND we need to pay attention to the numbers that drive measurable outcomes.
“People who make the plan don’t fight the plan” — Jason Little
Your team has all the answers. They just need some encouragement to pull them out. Team ownership is the only way to create a strategy that sticks.
Team culture is the strategy
You can’t rely on strategy alone to improve your organization. At the same time, you shouldn’t assume reshaping culture will compensate for a weak strategy. Culture and strategy are like David Bowie and Freddy Mercury on Under Pressure. Neither should sing backup.
Fun matters
Sometime in adulthood, we were discouraged from having fun while doing “serious” business. But having fun is a HUGE part of great work. We use play to break the ice, bring people closer, and inspire more creative thinking.
Richard Stoltenberg
Big-hearted gut feeler. Deep thinker. Obsessed with providing as much value as humanly possible.
- Loves a good karaoke moment and jamming with his band
- Proud dad of 2; huge Ted Lasso fan
- 20+ years in strategy development, transformation and change, organization development, people and talent strategy, process improvement, communications, and facilitation
Carlos F. Vio
- Loves the culinary arts and meaningful connections over fabulous, home-cooked food
- Papá to two young men, husband, outdoor enthusiast, and frustrated long-boarder
- 20+ years in transformation and change, organization development, team effectiveness, coaching, and facilitation
- So, here’s the sitch
Interactions at work have become soulless…
As a result, people are the loneliest they’ve ever been.
After decades in corporate careers, we found that business tends to take “the human” out of work.
- The result? Isolation. Lack of purpose. Poor performance.
Add in a global pandemic, and you get a nasty recipe for record-breaking loneliness and disconnection.
Even though many of us have returned to the office, we still feel disconnected. We’re part of a team, but we don’t feel like we belong.
- The loneliness is ruining us. And it’s killing profits.
Don’t panic
You’ve probably had moments at work that made the hairs on your arms stand up. Moments when you felt genuinely connected to the people beside you.
You know what it feels like to contribute to something meaningful.
- That’s what we’re going for.
The truth is, your organization can only achieve great things when your people understand each other. There’s gotta be transparency about hopes, fears, and struggles.
When you focus on connection and collaboration, your humans rally around the same purpose.
When they have purpose, they perform at their highest levels and feel like they’re contributing to something significant.
- That’s when shift happens.
The organizations that prioritize connection come out on top
We help your people cultivate
Connection to eachother | Connection to purpose | Connection to their human side
Because the best results don’t come from stale meetings or templated strategies.
They come from a sense of care between team members and a common purpose that binds them.
In a few workshops over the course of a few weeks, Carlos and Richard were able to engage the team in a very dynamic process to unlock the creativity of the team, which yielded a new employee experience vision and strategy for our organization. I highly recommend their work!
- HC Director
We still have our leaders talking about the retreat!
- JC
Culture Blueprint