End of Year Letter from the CEO
Friends,
Believe it or not, I've never written a year-end letter like this before. I’d like you to believe that’s because I so honor the Kinetic West value of humility that I wouldn’t permit myself to be the center of attention, but in truth, it’s the fear of embarrassment that’s kept me from sharing my writing. It may also come as a surprise to many, given that I've been in consulting for nearly 15 years, but I am utterly uncomfortable with free writing. It freaks me out to look at a blank page. But one of our 2023 Kinetic West themes is about moving through the fear of failure, so I felt like I owed it to my team to do the thing we’ve all been talking about lately – take a chance and try something new.
To set the mood, I've put on the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas album.
2022 has been a truly incredible year. We have a lot to celebrate – great projects, new clients, and some amazing new teammates that we've brought onboard. We’ve tried new things and built new capabilities, and I'm feeling excited about 2023…the most excited that I’ve been about any year since I started Kinetic West nearly six years ago. So here it goes…
First and foremost, our clients made 2022 a special year.
We’ve completed 25 projects and formed 9 new client relationships.
We’ve been working towards supporting more public sector clients for several years now, and we’re starting to realize that goal. In 2022, for the first time, we were able to work with the City of Seattle Office of Economic Development, the Washington State Department of Commerce, King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and the University of Oregon.
In 2022, we did more work outside of Washington State. Washington will always be our home and a priority focus, but we were excited for the opportunity to learn from and share with others around the country. We know that problems (and solutions) are not limited by geographical boundaries and our futures will be interconnected. This year we've done meaningful work in Georgia, Kentucky, Texas, Montana, and Oregon.
We’re also growing our capabilities and taking on new types of projects.
I want to share just a few projects we were excited about this past year.
The WE CAN TEXAS Data Dashboard, created for Educate Texas to focus stakeholders on education and workforce alignment, was the first time that we've created a public-facing, automated data dashboard. We sought to integrate labor market data with education data and visualize the health of the workforce system in a way that resonates and drives decision-making. We're excited to do more work on data dashboards and workforce development metrics in 2023.
We conducted customer market research for our long-time partners Washington Roundtable. We surveyed 800 Washington young adults who decided not to pursue postsecondary education or stopped before completing a credential to learn about their attitudes, beliefs, and barriers. In addition to traditional survey analysis, we adopted market research techniques to develop profiles akin to private sector customer research. We think that this new approach will help our clients in the Higher Ed space better understand how to design programs and messages for students that are not being well-served by the postsecondary system today.
As I mentioned, we partnered with the City of Seattle Office of Economic Development to help the City create an inclusive vision for the future of the Seattle economy. We worked closely with an incredible team of consultants, City staff, and stakeholders from around the community. For me, what was special about this project was supporting the new Director – Markham McIntyre, who comes from industry – in his charge to build on community-led efforts. This project was all about understanding and channeling needs of OED’s stakeholders and Seattleites, and it was refreshing to center these perspectives rather than our own as researchers and consultants, or even OED’s perspective as the client.
One of our most impactful partnerships this year was with Washington Employers for Racial Equity (WERE). It was a real privilege to support their new Executive Director, Shirline Wilson, and collaborate with her, the WERE members, Challenge Seattle, and the Washington Roundtable to develop a series of five reports focused on challenges and practice changes needed to drive greater racial equity within WA’s employers. Spotlights included actions employers could take to support Black business owners including access to capital, equitable contracting processes, and actions employers could take to support the advancement of Black talent within their organizations.
We were also able to support the University of Oregon in launching the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health program. This was one of our first major projects in Oregon and an exciting introduction to the behavioral health space (which we believe will be increasingly important in the coming years). We're excited to support more work in our neighboring state.
Lastly, I'd be remiss not to mention our long-term partner Career Connect Washington. In addition to our ongoing work supporting the implementation of Career Connect Washington, we supported Washington’s Good Jobs Challenge Federal Department of Commerce grant application, which was successful in securing a $23.5 million grant. These resources will help expand career-connected learning opportunities for young people – particularly youth of color and low-income youth – all around Washington state.
Back at the firm: 2022 was a dynamic year for Kinetic West staff
We hired 5 new staff members – all of whom feel like they've been part of our team for years, even though some just joined in the last couple of months. We're excited to welcome Theresa, Merilee, Casey, Tsewone, and Francisco!
Kinetic West held its first off-site retreat. This gave us dedicated time to deepen our relationships, especially coming out of 2+ years of remote work, and to work together on a vision for Kinetic West going forward. There were some ideas raised at that retreat that you’ll see reflected in the work we do in 2023 and beyond, including a focus on further centering customer/community voice in our work and a focus on supporting our clients with their internal organizational culture. We also came up with an informal mascot, the Kinetic West coyotes, which you see reflected in our team picture below.
Looking ahead to 2023
There are two important themes that I will be thinking a lot about in the coming year. The first is moving past the fear of failure. I think that consulting can inspire a certain carefulness – some people might call it perfectionism – that can make it hard to try new things, to innovate, and to challenge clients when they need it. There's a belief that doing these things will result in delayed timelines, more revisions, and even unhappy teammates or clients. Over the years, consultants learn to mitigate risk by doing projects in predictable ways that feel comfortable to both them and their clients. Sometimes, this tendency can even be framed positively like not recreating the wheel, not starting from scratch, or socializing the deliverable. But ultimately, it’s this fear of failure that limits many of us in our view of what (and worse yet, who) great consulting looks like. This hurts our firm and our clients and robs us of the ability to create the solutions we need to meet the challenges of our ever-changing world. This year, I'm pushing myself and my team to better understand that fear of failure, recognize it in ourselves and our clients, and work together to push past it. We hope you'll see that reflected in our work together this coming year.
The second theme is about building trust. Consulting is a team sport. It’s intense, it’s emotional, it’s a challenge, and (whether we admit it or not) it’s often deeply personal. This is what makes our work so rewarding but it’s also what makes it hard. Without trust – in ourselves, our teammates, and our clients – this job can be overwhelming. With trust, nothing is more fulfilling.
Building trust is something I'll be prioritizing within the Kinetic West team and externally within our community. Though trust is personal, it is also something that can be studied, better understood, and improved upon. I’ve been reflecting on how trust can be hard-won and easily lost. We want to thank you, our clients, and partners, for trusting us, and we aspire to be worthy of that trust and to continue to build and reinforce that trust in 2023.
Happy holidays,
Marc