The Value of Collaboration

“The methodology and the tools used by the GS team certainly made our work truly engaging and collaborative."

Danielle Duran Baron, Board Member of FIRN

Whenever we discuss our values internally, one in particular always rises to the surface: collaboration.

Collaboration will always be a vital part of the Giant Shoulders mindset. As leaders, we know we can not accomplish anything meaningful without our teams, and to build strong teams we need to acknowledge our blindspots and then invite people with different skill sets, insights, and perspectives to be part of the process.

We live this out in our client workshops, where we gather key stakeholders and leaders to explore ideas and make decisions together. For every project, we work with our clients to identify strategists, designers, and branding experts in our diverse network who will provide the right expertise and important perspective. No matter what the project is we start from building consciences and a common knowledge base through collaboration.

This was highlighted in our recent experience working with FIRN (Foreign-born Information and Referral Network), a 40 year-old nonprofit serving immigrants in Maryland. They were looking for help with changing their name. We hold many similar values, especially the power of collaboration. Because their leaders value inclusivity and the voices of their stakeholders, we were able to practice that through our collaborative workshop model.

Together, we walked their team through a robust “namestorming” process, digging into their values to find a memorable, creative name that represents the organization’s history and future. The diverse workshop members covered each other’s blindspots, especially when it came to cultural contexts. For example, several names sounded great in English but meant something completely different in other languages, a vital consideration for an immigration non-profit. In the end, we helped them arrive at a new name that captures the heart and history of the organization, and we look forward to the future unveiling of their new identity.

It’s true that involving more people increases the complexity of a project and the amount of time it takes, but in this case, the results were well worth the effort. The input from individuals across the team led to a much higher quality name, and, because everyone had a voice in the process, the new name will have much greater buy in from the team and key stakeholders. At Giant Shoulders, we take pride not only in the work we produce, but also in the relationships we help foster through every branding process.