Collaborative Strategy Redesign: PHS Engages Staff with Ethelo Platform
After a major leadership shift, Vancouver’s Portland Hotel Society embraced a collaborative approach to strategic planning using Ethelo. The goal was to prioritize initiatives while addressing staff resistance to change. Ethelo’s seamless forum enabled over 90 staff members across multiple locations to vote and comment on proposals, blending their perspectives with operational constraints.
The process built confidence and support among staff while providing directors with clear insights into the most well-supported initiatives across five strategic areas. By streamlining engagement, Ethelo saved significant time, delivering immediate value and fostering a sense of shared purpose among the team. This participatory method ensured strategic decisions were grounded in both staff input and organizational priorities.
3600 scenarios
evaluated
88% support
for plan
Interim Executive Director
The Portland Hotel Society (PHS) is one of Vancouver’s largest advocates and service providers for disadvantaged populations in the downtown core. It is renowned for creating and overseeing Canada’s first Safe Injection Site, Insite, and pioneering many areas of health outreach for marginalized populations.
Despite its laudable achievements, financial irregularities forced PHS to bring in an entirely new management team and board of directors. Recognizing the significant organizational changes, the interim Executive Director initiated a highly participatory approach to strategic decision-making, aiming to engage both directors and staff in creating a shared vision for the organization’s future.
The former PHS management was dynamic and highly innovative, inspiring a passionate and dedicated staff. However, the newly hired executive team introduced a more stable but bureaucratic approach, creating a clash of cultures between leadership and approximately 400 staff members.
PHS needed a fresh start and a way to manage change that could build unity and buy-in, compensating for the challenges arising from the sudden management transition. The engagement of over 400 staff members was further complicated by their distribution across multiple locations and varied programs. In-person meetings risked fostering “group-think” and excluding less vocal employees, potentially hampering implementation success.
To address these issues, PHS turned to Ethelo, an open, interactive platform for strategy design.
The project called for staff and board input into five core areas requiring strategic attention.
A staff focus group generated initial ideas that were used to seed the Ethelo platform. These ideas were vetted by the executive team and distilled into 12 potential initiatives across five strategic areas. For example, in the “Advocacy” area, initiatives included:
Each initiative was uploaded to Ethelo for rating and commentary. To ensure inclusivity, the platform allowed staff to add additional suggestions. The executive team reviewed these new suggestions, approving actionable ones for general evaluation by all staff. One such approved suggestion was hiring an Aboriginal outreach worker.ç
While staff input identified potential initiatives, the executive team ensured ideas were actionable within organizational resources. Initiatives were evaluated based on:
This information guided staff in prioritizing initiatives.
Of the 435 PHS staff members invited, 88 participated in the strategic evaluation, providing an overall participation rate of 20%. Participants voted on an average of 73% of the initiatives and contributed 12 additional suggestions. Each initiative received an average of 6.7 comments, fostering a collaborative atmosphere.
The platform ensured inclusivity and avoided the pitfalls of traditional surveys. Interim Executive Director Eamonn O’Laocha commented:
“Using Ethelo allowed us to overcome the limitations of engaging the organization’s staff in a collaborative, manageable, and timely manner. This enabled us to identify a relevant and congruent strategic direction for the organization.”
Given limited resources, PHS needed feasible strategic scenarios. Management estimated the required effort level for each initiative, with Ethelo ensuring all plans adhered to a maximum of 30 effort units. This reduced 8,000 potential scenarios to 3,689, ranked by staff support. Ultimately, the optimal plan consisted of nine initiatives with 88% organizational support, all within the 30-unit effort budget.
Ethelo brought significant efficiency gains. Staff saved an estimated four hours compared to standard surveys due to the platform’s ease of use and integrated commentary. Management saved an additional 22 hours by streamlining analysis and initiative shortlisting. These efficiencies resulted in a 35% cost savings compared to other methods.
PHS quickly implemented one of Ethelo’s validated recommendations. O’Laocha emphasized:
“Taking the first step in strategy development was about connecting to the shared wisdom of the many capable and innovative people in the organization. Limitations in our ability to engage would have directly hampered our strategic possibilities.”
“Using Ethelo allowed us to overcome limitations in engaging the organization’s staff in a collaborative, manageable and timely manner. This allowed us to identify a relevant and congruent strategic direction for the organization.”
Eamon O’Laocha, PHS Interim Executive Director
