The “One-Off” Training Trap Small Steady Support is Often What’s Really Needed
If you’re in a small nonprofit or a growing impact-driven company, you know this ritual. There’s a symptom. Maybe it’s a retention problem, maybe it’s increasingly unpredictable contribution from some members of the organization, maybe it’s uneasy dynamics among collaborators, or a general sense of “us vs. them” slowing everything down. So, you bring in a consultant. There might be a survey, maybe some interviews. A training, or a series of trainings is recommended, and delivered.
For a while, everyone is energized. People use the new lingo. There’s a palpable sense of progress. And sometimes it sticks. But sometimes people slip back into old patterns. This actually makes sense when you think about it: you’re trying to fix a deep, systemic, ongoing pattern with a single, isolated intervention. You’re trying to cure a chronic condition with a one-time prescription.
Meaningful culture change isn’t a project; it’s a practice.
Two organizations that Big Waves has worked with spoke with us recently about their experience of overcoming this problem. We decided to feature these stories in the Big Waves Journal this month.
One of the organizations is a small nonprofit (we’ll call them “Not For Profit” or NFP). When they contacted us, they were working on bringing their values of justice and equity to life in their daily work. The other organization we’re profiling in this article is a 50-person purpose-driven tech company (we’ll call them “Tech For Good” or TFG). They were trying to build leadership skills quickly in their rapidly growing startup.
Both had hired consultants repeatedly for one-off needs, and both had noticed over time that there was a sense of inefficiency, and a lack of durability of results.
Before we continue with their stories, let’s talk about the word “fractional.” This word started out describing part-time employment in key roles organizations weren’t ready to fill full time, like finance and human resources. Lately it has been becoming a buzzword used more broadly, to mean retaining high-level expertise for as-needed strategic partnership.
This was the relationship Big Waves formed with both organizations, and it’s what they are talking about in the following observations they shared.
The “Inside-Outsider”
Both organizations had complex histories, and this played a role in learning what was needed for culture support. As the TFG director said, “Workplace culture is just patterns across a whole organization that repeat over and over again. And it’s hard to explain our patterns to someone who doesn’t have any understanding of it in a heightened moment. It causes people to shut down.”
The Executive Director of NFP described the benefit of having an “inside-outsider.” While an outsider doesn’t know the personalities and history, and has no built-in trust, an insider can’t be a neutral, multipartial sounding board because they are, by definition, a party, and are inside of power dynamics. “As a kind of inside-outsider, you surfaced things that weren’t obvious to me, because of your outside perspective, but you were able to see these patterns because you were embedded.”
What This Looks Like in Practice
For both TFG and NFP, our role was fluid and adaptive. We were:
- A strategic thinking partner: helping leadership see the big picture and anticipate challenges.
- A coach & mediator: supporting individuals at all levels through difficult conversations.
- A facilitator: customizing trainings to build shared language around real, current problems.
- A research partner: conducting organizational analysis to guide decisions.
Here’s how this “Inside-Outsider” model played out.
Case Study 1: The Tech Company and the Leadership Bottleneck
At TFG, a fast-paced, purpose-driven company, the new managers were struggling. They were promoted because they were brilliant at the work of the company, but they hadn’t been taught how to lead. The senior leadership team was frustrated, complaining that their managers “couldn’t let go of control” and were “bottlenecks for the work.”
We talked to the new managers and discovered it wasn’t that they wouldn’t delegate; it was that they didn’t know how. They had zero experience upskilling their own people and didn’t trust their teams to work autonomously because they had never been taught how to teach.
So, we built a two-part solution:
- We designed customized, organization-specific trainings in upskilling, mentoring, delegation, and coaching.
- We started a bi-weekly leadership support group for all managers—a safe space to talk about their real challenges, learn from us, and (most importantly) learn from each other.
The result? “It was a massive success,” said their Director of People and Culture. “It became a normalized practice for managers… and many of them became incredible managers. Most people don’t become better managers through management training; you become better by dealing with challenges. They got support and were also able to learn from each other’s mistakes.”
The TFG director noted that her “own relationships and power dynamics” made it hard for her to be the one to provide this support. The team needed a neutral but trusted partner who “felt safer to talk about mistakes with.”
Case Study 2: The Nonprofit and the “Multi-Pronged” Culture Shift
At NFP, the goal was to live their values of equity and justice internally by moving to a more distributed leadership model.
This is complex, emotional work. It can’t be done in a workshop.
As their embedded partner, we deployed a “multi-pronged” approach. We offered confidential 1-on-1 coaching to anyone on the team, on topics from prioritization and self-confidence to navigating conflict.
The themes from these individual coaching sessions informed the design of our whole-team facilitated sessions. We spotted organizational patterns like a lack of clarity in decision-making at the individual level, anonymized it, and then brought it to the whole team as a shared skill-building opportunity.
As the Executive Director said: “This multi-pronged approach was really great for learning. There would be more intense emotional situations where it was possible to access confidential interpersonal mediation or one-on-one coaching, but then we were able to pull up and out and talk about the underlying issues as a whole team.”
The Secondary Benefit is the Budget
Cost saving wasn’t something our case studies’ leaders were pursuing in these fractional relationships with us, but of course it’s always welcome! But for many organizations, budget is the primary driver for going fractional. Hiring a full-time, senior-level culture or organizational development specialist is often not affordable. But relying on one-off projects means big fees for a single intervention, and then having to pay again when the results fade. Fractional partnerships replace this with a “pay-for-access” model that also leads to quicker access to support to deal with unexpected challenges that arise.
Getting to the Point: a Culture Worthy of Your Mission
For mission-driven organizations, the stakes are high. You’re not just trying to build a better business; you are trying to build a better world. The work of building a healthy, equitable, and effective culture is a continuous practice, not a project with an end date.
As TFG’s Director of People and Culture put it, “Most people don’t become better managers through management training; you become better by dealing with challenges.”
One-off interventions can be very effective, but when the learning needs to be from on the job challenges, fractional support is often a better way to go.
Regardless of whether you’re ready to think about any form of strategic support, you might be curious about the health of your culture. Our Culture Checkup is a lightweight, fixed-scope, and affordable diagnostic that gives you a clear, objective map of what’s going on. You’ll walk away with a clear-eyed view of your underlying cultural patterns and a prioritized list of “micro-adjustments” that will have the biggest impact. There’s no long-term commitment. It’s just a diagnosis. Be in touch.
What Did We Learn?
Starpoint is a lot like most of our clients, reporting that they find building a generative culture is a long-term, layered process. Updating policies and processes is essential, but without training and practice, it’s hard to bring those structural changes to life. And after training, people need time and support to grow into new skills and practices. We also found that external facilitation and the introduction of shared language helped people to talk about emotionally charged topics from more neutral ground, without getting pulled into the weeds. And finally, even when time is scarce, investing in conflict capacity builds resilience, care, and trust for the future.
Starpoint’s experience shows that learning to navigate conflict together isn’t just about avoiding harm, it’s about building the shared capacity to meet challenges with honesty, care, and courage. The Generative Conflict course helps teams build that capacity through structured learning, practice, and facilitation support tailored to their real context. Reach out if you would like to find out more.