Kim Stezala is Senior Partner at Design Group International, a group of consultants that help leaders, businesses and nonprofit organizations navigate transformative change. Primarily working in higher education and philanthropy, Kim uses the power of process consulting to help organizations design effective programs and innovate, evaluate and improve what they do. Recently named CEO of the Society for Process Consulting, she is also building standards, courses, and credentials for the field.
“So, process consulting was really created quite a while ago by Edgar Schein who's a professor out of MIT. Okay. And it takes basically a very humble and iterative approach to consulting where even though we might have expertise in a certain area, we work with clients to really pull out their expertise.”
“So, it really came from many of us who were doing process consulting, looking for place, if you will, looking for community and wanting to work together to put these standards and ethics in place to provide…”
“Well I happen to work with a lot of scholarship providers and the attending their national conference not only as a regular participant but as a speaker is really successful in terms of networking because I have a really niche market with some of the clients that I work with.”
“I would like to say I used to be better at it. I'm, I'm kind of circling back, I had a huge growth spurt in my business and kind of trying to keep up. Um, but in terms of staying in front of people, I really prefer the personal touch.”
“I would say, um, get out of your own pond or your own pool. Okay. And so sometimes I will go to events where I don't know a single person there. And the reason is to just understand how other industries work and operate.”
“For my particular type of work, it's definitely the traditional. Okay. Because it's so relationship-based. Probably 90% of my business comes through referral and…”
“I really thought about this, you know, and for me, I think I would tell my younger self to listen more. I was a kid who on the report card in school would always say talks too much in class…”
“Okay, you're probably going to laugh. My husband told me that this is crazy. I have a celebrity crush on Jackie Chan…”
“Well, um, two books. One is about building communities of practice by Emily Weber. I think she's a British author and I, I go back to it. I've read it before. It's so simple. It's like 70 pages, but it helps me learn and understand that because our business is structured as a community of practice…”
“I think the biggest thing, just listening over the last half hour is really that thing about getting out of your comfort zone.”
You can get in contact with Kim at:
Email: kims@designgroupintl.com