How We Work

Brass Tacks is committed to leveraging proven practices, impactful tools, and practical research-based content as we partner with schools and organizations in enhancing their creative capacity to reframe and solve challenging problems in today’s dynamic educational landscape.

Processes & Tools

The processes and tools we use to partner with leadership teams in heightening overall wellness and success in schools and organizations are many. In order to fully tailor your experience with Brass Tacks to your unique needs, we leverage a proven framework with five phases of partnership as we walk alongside you in your journey.

5 Phases of Partnership with Brass Tacks

  • This is the initial phase, where we dive into real conversations about your most pressing jobs-to-be done, and uncover what is keeping you up at night. In this phase, we identify the critical issues that are standing in the way of your success. Awareness and acknowledgement arise as you begin to articulate the challenges that have prevented you from reaching your goals.

  • With collaborative reflection in follow-up to that phase, we conduct a Customized Needs Assessment. In this phase, we dig deeper to expose the root causes of your individual hurdles to success. This allows us to gain clarity on the precise needs of your school or district, and begin thinking about the proven strategies and tactics that could be employed to overcome them successfully and efficiently.

  • We put together a strategic plan and recommendations that are constructed for your unique circumstances and challenges as a result of our initial conversations and reflections. Every strategic plan we create is mindfully developed to meet the unique needs of each individual client, making Brass Tacks standout from the crowd of professional learning providers. This individualization supports greater success for our clients as they lead their organizations into the future.

  • Once we’ve gathered the information specific to your site, uncovered the key challenges, and designed a strategic plan uniquely suited to address your most critical issues, we are ready to take action. Application of the strategies and tactics designed to support you in addressing the issues head-on is the next step in the process, and we walk alongside you throughout that entire journey. We consistently work with you to reflect, analyze, and adjust the plan throughout this phase, ensuring you’ve got a partner through the transformation.

    See below for services offered.

  • As the implementation phase is completed, you will be equipped with a whole new array of leadership strategies and tools to address the common challenges you’ve now learned to tackle, should they ever arise again. These new skills are innately versatile and will easily transfer to better arm you in addressing the inevitable challenges of ongoing growth. In this last phase, we’ll continue to be available to you on an as-needed basis, offering ongoing support.

Partnership Services

  • Professional Development

    Offered in-person or virtually, we specifically tailor our PD to the unique needs of your school or district.

  • Coaching & Consulting

    With an emphasis on real-world application and impactful outcomes, we prepare you with the necessary tools and insights for success.

  • Improvement Projects

    Let us help you prioritize your improvement initiatives while strategically designing the most impactful path to improved performance.

  • Strategic & Business Planning

    Let us support you with proven systems and strategies that help you develop flexibility, foresight, and frameworks as you bring your growing campus into the future.

A Peek Behind the Curtain

The following processes are fluidly implemented throughout our partnerships.

  • As we work with you, we leverage improvement science to provide the tools necessary to start small, and learn from your efforts as you move forward.

  • The design thinking process allows us to support you through the five stages of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test in order to develop the most elegant solutions to the most challenging problems. Through this process, improvement science allows us to reflect and make adjustments together as needed for optimal outcomes.

  • Additionally, ongoing professional learning is critical to creating lasting improvements, and includes coaching, trainings, intentional change, and deliberate practice.

  • Moreover, we consistently leverage the process of environmental scanning to identify internal and external challenges that may inhibit efficient movement toward long-term goals.

  • We implement the processes of market analysis and market segmentation in order to stay on top of the latest in educational and organizational best practices and trends as we partner with you to move your school forward and plan for the future.

  • As lifelong learners ourselves, we prioritize best facilitative practices and positive psychology processes throughout our work with leadership teams.

The Mechanics of Transformation

The tools we use to optimize progress toward organizational goals are varied and comprehensive. We believe that these proven resources can work in combination to most efficiently and effectively uncover and address critical needs and facilitate transformation. The content that we use to accompany these tools are rooted in best practices found in the latest research, and are distilled down to actionable playbooks for success.

Brass Tacks leverages the following tools throughout our partnerships with leaders:

  • System maps, root cause analysis, and driver diagrams

  • System and individual diagnostics

  • Empathy and asset maps

  • Flash surveys

  • Financial models

  • Positioning statements and value propositions

  • Competitive analysis

  • Logic models

  • Adoption curves

  • Research-based interventions