Consulting · Case study
Northstar Leadership Sprint
Two-week strategy sprint with a nonprofit ED team — clarified a 3-year plan.
- Partner
- Northstar (national youth nonprofit)
- Location
- Pacific Northwest
- Duration
- Two-week sprint · 2025
- Reach
- 9-person executive team · 32-person organization
Outcomes
3-year
strategic plan adopted by board
90-day
execution plan with named owners
9
executive team members aligned
62%
drop in decisions escalated to ED (90 days post-sprint)
The challenge
Northstar had grown 40% in two years and the executive team was running on momentum. The board wanted a clearer three-year plan; the ED wanted decision-making frameworks so the team could move without funneling every choice to her desk.
What we built
- 1
Week one: interviewed every executive team member, the board chair, and three frontline staff. Mapped the actual decision flows versus the org chart.
- 2
Ran a two-day offsite to align on three-year priorities and the trade-offs each one required.
- 3
Built a decision-rights matrix the team adopted on day three of the sprint.
- 4
Delivered a 14-page strategy brief, a 90-day execution plan, and a coaching cadence for the ED through the first quarter of rollout.
What changed
The first interviews surfaced the real issue: the team wasn't unclear on strategy, they were unclear on who got to decide what. Once we mapped that, the strategy conversation became simpler.
The offsite traded the usual SWOT-and-vision-statement format for two days of structured trade-offs. By the end of day two, the team had agreed on what they were saying no to — which is the part most plans skip.
Ninety days after the sprint, the ED told us the most valuable artifact wasn't the strategy brief. It was the decision-rights matrix sitting on the wall of the conference room.
"We came in thinking we needed a plan. We left realizing we needed a way to make decisions without me being in every room."
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