CLIENT: Long-Established Institution
SERVICES: Executive Counsel, Positioning and Influence, Strategic Communications
The Challenge
A long-established institution knew its culture was one of its greatest strengths, but many of the values that defined that culture lived more in practice than on paper. During a period of growth and leadership change, its leaders wanted confidence that what stakeholders valued most could endure beyond any single person or moment.
The goal was not to redefine the institution's identity, but to understand where genuine consensus already existed and translate that understanding into something durable.
Locked On's Approach
Locked On Strategies designed a multi-month listening and research process involving more than 60 stakeholders. The work included individual interviews, in-person and virtual focus groups, and a review of mission, vision, historical, and institutional materials.
The process was intentionally broad. It gave stakeholders a meaningful opportunity to be heard, tested leadership assumptions against authentic feedback, and helped ensure that stakeholders were part of the process rather than simply presented with its conclusions. Locked On Strategies then separated isolated opinions from the themes that persisted across constituencies.
From Insight to Action
The research showed strong alignment around the institution's culture and values. Locked On Strategies translated those findings into recommendations that went beyond messaging, connecting values to governance, leadership selection, stakeholder onboarding, hiring, and ongoing communications.
What Leadership Received
Leadership received a research-backed framework that made an important but largely intangible institutional asset explicit enough to guide future decisions, creating a clearer path to protect what made the institution distinctive without reinventing it.
Some of Locked On Strategies' most consequential work happens behind the scenes. We are glad to share more about this engagement in conversation.
