If you’ve come across our content like the Humanizing Work Show, our weekly newsletter, or in the library section of the site, you’ve probably seen a lot of our ideas. But you may be wondering, “What do clients actually hire Humanizing Work to do?”
What we do always comes back to three core themes: improving leadership, product management, and collaboration.
Some clients bring us in to deliver one of our proven training offerings in those three areas. Those are time-tested, deeply impactful sessions that lay the groundwork for thinking clearly about leadership, product, and collaboration in our fast-changing world.
Others need a more customized approach to address their problems, in their context, so we design a custom engagement to meet those needs. Many start with one and evolve into the other.
We see many of the same challenges at every organization we work with. After all, we’re all humans collaborating to solve complex, meaningful problems. But you’re experiencing your own unique combination of those challenges.
So in our initial calls, we take the time to understand your goals, challenges, and constraints before jumping in with any particular solution. Sometimes we can point you to a free resource or one of our self-guided products that will unlock what you need. Other times one of our proven training programs or a custom engagement are the right next step.
Whatever the outcome, we want it to feel like a real partnership, where you bring your expertise about your org, we bring our expertise about what works broadly, and we combine those to help you and your people think, deliver, and lead more effectively.
What we do
Some examples of recent client engagements include:
- Helping a combined hardware/software company form a healthy, highly effective cross-functional leadership team with a customized version of our Leadership Team Launch
- Training every Product Owner in a business unit to build shared understanding and practical skills (CSPO)
- Facilitating sessions to design and test org structures that maximize value flow through product, platform, and service teams
- Supporting a medical device company to balance agility and predictability in regulated product development using CAPED
- Working with a leadership team to clarify responsibilities across product roles like PM, PO, and BA—who owns what and how they collaborate
- Providing Leadership Circle 360 evaluations and coaching for directors and managers at a large public utility to level up leadership across the org
- Facilitating an executive offsite to align on long-term strategy and next steps
- Aligning Agile and Scrum practices across teams and levels of experience through our AFT workshop
- Equipping managers with the skills to lead empowered teams effectively with our Management Series
What it’s like to work with us
When you work with us, our goal isn’t just a short term fix for the current problem. It’s to make you better equipped for every problem that comes next.
By the end of an engagement, you’ll have clearer insight, a new set of skills, and a team that’s more energized and effective. You’ll make progress on what matters—and build the capability to do it again.
A recent client put it this way: ”When we brought you in, I thought we’d just get some new processes and things would get a little more efficient. What I got from the training was a whole new way to relate to the work and the people doing it. It’s completely changed how I see my job and how effective I am at doing it.”
What our clients say
“Our leadership team’s development work with Humanizing Work was purposeful and actionable. It gave our team a clearer understanding of how to lead our organization to thrive in complexity. The knowledge, experience, and models shared weren’t presented just for philosophical contemplation of leadership concepts or responsibilities. Rather, they helped us make sense of different aspects of our work as leaders and gave us a structured way to act upon it. Instead of expending energy and resources seeking alignment as a leadership team, we’re now effectively investing our time and efforts in working towards a shared purpose and vision..”
“I attended one of Peter’s public courses and wanted my team to get exposed to the concepts he taught. I wanted to innovate and bring the agile concepts from software to consumer packaged goods and I had a great sense early on that they could help me with that. So I brought Humanizing Work in to help train my team and speed up our innovation pipeline. I kept bringing them back because they helped us change how we lead, collaborate, and think about work. They have a tremendous range of expertise that helps them find just the thing you need next. What they taught us not only allowed us to achieve extraordinary results, but also changed how we are as people and leaders. Thank you Humanizing Work team, for your generosity in what you share and always being there to help and challenge me!”
“I feel like I got a week’s worth of work done in this last hour of coaching with you.”
"The biggest way that Richard and Peter supported this innovation was by helping us cultivate a mindset of iterative learning and adaptation… [They] helped us unlock the true power of cross-functional teams. We not only focus on change that affects what we work on; we also focus on change that affects how we work together."
"As someone who also coaches leaders at many levels, I was mightily impressed with how this program combined truly practical, immediately applicable skills with deep framework and theoretical underpinnings. The flow and coherence of the time spent together make learning easy.
"More than that: they are inclusive and always learning, including from those of us in the class. And they incorporated our real-world experiences in novel ways.
"And most importantly: they are genuine. In their desire to teach, and learn, and support our growth."
Want to talk?
If any of this sounds like the kind of help you need—or if you’re wrestling with a challenge and just want to talk through it with us—we’d love to hear about it. Our initial calls with new clients often feel much more like a free coaching session than a sales call.