Redefining Partnership Part I: Leading with Values
Alight and Rising Solutions teamed up to redesign Alight’s global performance management process using human-centered design. In Part I of this series, the partners unpack what it means to be truly values-driven.
For those in the social impact space, values-driven partnership – a collaborative relationship based on shared values and a mutual commitment to achieving specific social, environmental, or community-oriented goals – is not a new concept. While such a partnership is often considered a critical and desired element of success, it is less commonly seen in practice.
In March 2023, Alight (formerly the American Refugee Committee) and Rising Solutions, teamed up to re-design Alight’s global performance management process called Amplify. Amplify was a project undertaken by Alight’s HR department known as the Office of the People (OOP), and it proved to be transformational, not only for the organizations involved but also for the individuals who worked together to bring it to life. Amplify serves as a powerful example of what can happen when organizations and individuals commit to collaborative partnership in a human-centered design process.
Identifying the Potential for a Values-driven Partnership
From the beginning Alight, an international humanitarian NGO, specified that they were looking for a human-centered design approach to the project. Alight’s mission is to partner with displaced persons along their journey through displacement, offering them dignity and sharing power so that people have agency. This is revolutionary in the humanitarian space and requires an incredible degree of humility. To effectively do this means a deep and meaningful commitment by leadership to step back and listen with empathy to the employees, and a similar commitment to building a culture where employees step back and listen with empathy to their customers - displaced persons.
The specific request for human-centered design signaled to Rising Solutions, a social innovation strategy firm, the desire and readiness for a collaborative partnership critical for truly successful innovation. In pursuing projects, Rising Solutions assesses values alignment, commitment to work, and readiness for innovation and change, and throughout the RFP process, Alight’s OOP team showed up with openness and a willingness to navigate discomfort - all core values that signaled a real and genuine effort to lean into trust and vulnerability, which lead to psychological safety, the underlying foundation of a meaningful and effective partnership.
Practicing Values Through Partnership
From the beginning, three values continually re-surfaced throughout the project which set the partnership apart from other engagements: 1) Power-sharing 2) Practicing Vulnerability and 3) Embracing Ambiguity. These three values may be no surprise to any seasoned designer but what was different about this project was the way that both teams embraced them with intention, seeing opportunities for growth rather than letting common challenges tear the fabric of the partnership, which so often happens in the face of unpredictability and adversity.
Power-sharing
The kick-off of any HCD process typically involves the development of a qualitative research phase (interviews, focus groups, observations, desk research, non-verbal games), followed by a brainstorming phase and then a prototyping and testing phase. Traditionally, the contractor would be expected to take ownership of designing and executing the process. However, as to be expected in a truly values-driven partnership, Alight played an equal role in developing and carrying out the process, sharing the responsibility and accountability for a successful project. This approach worked because there were clear roles: the Alight team were the experts on the organization - bringing knowledge and expertise around the organization’s mission, history, dynamics; The Rising Solutions team were experts on process, organizational culture, and change - bringing expertise in HCD and change management as well as an objective and neutral perspective which was important for building trust with employees.
To organizations, it can often feel like contractors work in a “black box” - that they have to wait to see what comes out the other side and they aren’t quite sure how the contractor got there. Rising Solutions built trust with Alight by bringing them deeply into the process, by “showing our work” and co-creating deliverables with Alight rather than just seeking feedback. This was more work for the Alight team, but it also created the space for meaningful conversations early and often, allowing us to uncover variables and challenges that could impact the outcome and success of the work. In the end, the upfront investment in co-creation supported a smoother transition to piloting and eventually to shifting full ownership and agency to the Alight team for implementation.
Practicing Vulnerability
Vulnerability happens when we’re willing to show up as our whole and true selves: being honest and transparent about feelings, thoughts, and experiences by offering personal stories, sharing that we don’t know the answer or feel unsure, and admitting mistakes. This emotional exposure can come with a degree of uncertainty, which can feel particularly challenging and uncomfortable in a work setting where we’re often trained - particularly through a performance process - that we must have all the answers, perform without mistakes and be unaffected by personal circumstances. Vulnerability is the foundation for a culture that prioritizes active listening and feedback as a gift, which in turn enhances personal and professional growth and also strengthens team cohesion and resilience.
Much has been made of practicing vulnerability in the workplace, but seeing this in action is more difficult to find. Practicing vulnerability showed up repeatedly over the course of this one-year project, with each partner modeling and leaning into this key value. During the discovery process, through interviews, focus groups and surveys across Alight’s many geographies, we heard a strong theme around HR as an “enforcer”, focused on compliance and the rules. Employees were deeply interested in and wanting to be a “partner” with HR, focused on employee growth. This was an opportunity for self-reflection for the Office of the People (OOP) team around the dissonance between the organization’s core values and the current state of the work on the ground. OOP leaned into this feedback, adopting it as one of the design principles for the work (“Office of the People as partner”) and leaning into how this process could be used to learn and shift behavior within the team itself.
Embracing Ambiguity
Although embracing ambiguity is key to a successful HCD process, human behavioral biases make this much more challenging to practice. Certainty provides predictability and control, reducing anxiety and making decision-making feel more efficient by conserving cognitive resources. Embracing ambiguity means accepting and navigating situations that are uncertain, complex, and lacking clear direction or definitive answers. Embracing ambiguity requires resilience and patience to cope with the stress and discomfort of the unknown, and a curiosity-driven approach to learning and growth.
The discovery stage of the HCD process is often a very uncomfortable place for people to live: we go in fully with the goal of listening and not designing solutions or making inferences until all the research has been completed and synthesized. People generally have a bias toward action, or a tendency to see bits of data and fall back on confirmation bias. Pausing to reflect is hard, because it can feel like inaction. In the case of Amplify, as a collective team we did two things to navigate the ambiguity and uncertainty in this phase: 1) Rising Solutions brought Alight into the discovery design and gathering of data to see how we were moving through it along the way; 2) Alight gave Rising Solutions the space to guide the work and synthesize, asking questions along the way and sharing their thoughts and perspectives but ultimately giving us their trust.
The reward for embracing ambiguity comes in being open to and able to integrate information and direction (or redirection) that might not have shown up otherwise - this allowed us to enhance problem-solving, pivot, and make different decisions that led us closer to our desired goals faster, with greater engagement and buy-in because it showed we were truly listening and responding. This ultimately will lead to greater success in implementation and adoption.
From Project to Culture Change
Alight is now in the process of implementing the first phase of a multi-phase implementation and has been working diligently to ensure clear and consistent communication across the organization. More than just the excitement around the promise of the pilots, something has shifted in the ethos of the organizational culture. Thanks to the constant modeling of power sharing, vulnerability and embracing ambiguity, there has been strong buy-in and support through all levels of the organization, and a willingness to try new things.
By sharing power with the employees throughout the HCD process, Alight was able to illuminate and then make space for employee-driven ideas, fostering creativity, inclusiveness and accountability from its global staff. Alight didn’t merely end up with a system that harmonized their actions to the organizational strategy, which was the original intent. Alight heard beyond the scope of the project to staff seeking growth paths such as setting development goals and wanting support systems such as peer and mentor networks.
Modeling the mindsets and behaviors of practicing vulnerability and embracing ambiguity throughout the HCD process led to an outcome of openness to change because the development of the approach was such a shared process with all staff. Indeed although the partnership ended after the initial pilot, and institutional rollout is still to come, there’s a readiness and proactive energy happening as enterprises are asking for the tools.
Alight continues to pilot the performance management solutions developed in Partnership with Rising Solutions. Part II, due to be released in 2025, will explore the outcome of values-driven partnership in generating successful solutions.