Thrive at Work in 2025
Be centered, determined, creative, powerful and open to delight as we face a world of mayhem.
Recipe for a Fruitful Year
Thriving at work is an antidote to the turmoil and distress around us. Consider these intentions:
Focus
You have the power to choose how you focus your attention and time. Be disciplined to set boundaries and say ‘no’ to make progress on the priorities that matter most. Check out Essentialism by McKeown. What is essential for you in 2025?
Positive energy and determination
Employ a positive growth mindset even in the face of adversity. Easier said than done! What approach will help you stay grounded, creative and capable? Replace news with music and stories. Try meditation, devote more time in nature, explore journaling and practice gratitude. Take on new physical challenges. Be kind. Caring for yourself and others will transport you.
Reciprocal Feedback
Interpersonal feedback is key to better understanding ourselves and each other. People commonly avoid or sugar coat feedback even though most of us crave authentic perspective about how we are perceived. Make it a habit to give and request candid, specific feedback. Engage a coach to help interpret messages, address blind spots and inform constructive action.
Social Enterprise World Forum, Ethiopia, travel to Simien National Park
Celebrating 25 Years
I didn’t set out with a grand plan in 2000 when I started Kaplan Consulting. Truth be told, after years in a corporate job where I was relegated to the ‘Mommy Track,’ I craved work on my own terms.
I wrote a vision statement on a napkin. A friend in marketing persuaded me to ditch a cutesy name to center the brand on my experience.
My first client hired me to design a workplace program to protect victims of domestic violence. The project validated my commitment to pursue ‘do well-do good’ work and showed great promise. After six months, funding dried up and the director was fired. Ouch. Onto Plan B!
Navigating the arduous journey toward social impact is the heart and soul of our work. Our clients -- truly partners -- have bold visions to create healthier communities, thriving social purpose businesses and a regenerative environment. We’re guides - clarifying choices and building the scaffolding to accelerate change. Of course, organizations are complex and change is hard. We walk hand in hand to steer the process, surface doubts and resistance and work through deep learning.
When we reflect on the diversity of our clients spanning 25 years, we’re blown away by their curiosity, tenacity and triumphs.
What’s changed (or not) in 25 years?
In 2000 Brittany Spears and crop tops were the rage. Time Warner purchased AOL, the largest internet service provider. Today Taylor Swift and AI dominate. Though much has changed through the decades, we think these themes are enduring factors that differentiate human-centered organizations.
Ownership Matters
When employees have a stake in a company, they’re more engaged, more satisfied and more accountable. Employee ownership translates to resilience and superior results over the long haul. WL Gore, Publix Super Markets and King Arthur Baking Company built their success because they understand why and how to engage their people emotionally and professionally as shared owners. Greg Harmeyer helped lead the evolution to employee ownership at TiER1 the company he co-founded. They cultivated an ownership mindset and culture for 14 years so the legal step to become an employee owned ESOP was natural. Employees have a voice, access to transparent information, high levels of accountability and emotional investment in each other and their collective success. Check out Impact with Love: Building Business for a Better World by Harmeyer.
Systems are Complex
For ten years we’ve been collaborating with a remarkable global network who embrace the ‘Teal’ framework presented by Frederick Laloux in Reinventing Organizations. Teal recognizes that organizations, like nature, are complex systems that must evolve more rapidly than ever to endure. We coach leaders to confront the disconnect that their structures and culture are built for stability in a world that is increasingly unpredictable. We facilitate the uncomfortable process of dismantling dysfunctional bureaucracy. We work with teams to discover flow and propagate networks. The Pandemic leapfrogged decentralization; yet, remote work is not the panacea. People crave both interpersonal connection and flexibility. Plants blossom when all the conditions are ripe – sun, healthy soil, water and care. Teams innovate similarly when conditions support them to do their best work. Cross-pollination cascades change throughout the enterprise. Is your organization poised for nimble transformation in 2025?
Trust
People often ask us to identify common threads that accelerate transformation across the variety of our clients. Our response never wavers: groups succeed when they trust each other to do their best work toward a shared purpose. Trust is the essence. Amy Edmonson coined the concept Psychological Safety to distinguish teams with exceptional trust and Google validated psych safety as the most important driver for team performance, innovation, creativity, resilience, and learning. Instilling a culture of trust may feel elusive. It may also be the most important lever to build the cohesion it takes to truly progress.
Do you trust people to do the right thing? To meet their work commitments? To raise tough issues? How do you bolster trust as a leader?
How do you approach people who behave in untrustworthy ways? Do you seek to understand? Do you consider context? If an exit is required, do you handle that decision with dignity? When distrust permeates the culture, how do you pivot from cynicism to openness?
Learning and Adapting Together
When Peter Senge popularized learning organizations in 1990, I thought bureaucracy would crumble as leaders recognized the need to be responsive and adaptive. Traditional executives clung to bureaucracy in search of control. As they faced headwinds, failure often ensued. Think Tower Records, Pan Am, Kodak, Lehman Brothers, and Blockbusters. The lifespan of S&P 500 companies dropped in half. How can AI and other emergent technologies super-charge the value of human judgment, creativity, and collective transformation to enliven learning?
Celebrate Success
Making time and space to authentically celebrate success offsets burnout and cynicism. Celebrations imbue pride, loyalty and energy. Rituals are as unique as culture. At Atlassian, employees serenade people at the close of their first week, use hackathons to infuse innovation and tested a ‘Chief Vibes Officer’. Figuring out rituals that resonate isn’t easy in a workforce that includes five generations and untold diversity. Experiment and keep your ear to the ground to make sure rituals don’t fall flat. Honor collective success to honor synergy over ego.
“MJ was a guiding light as I redirected my professional path. She’s an amazing listener. She generously opens her network. And her encouragement supported me to be more patient and consider risks. I couldn’t have made this change without her.”
– Tom T., mid-career software engineer pivoting to creative work
We’re Here for You in 2025
This year will be chaotic and distressing – no doubt about it. We can be bold and powerful at work and in our communities. We hope you’ll reach out to reconnect, share your stories, breakthroughs as well as woes. As you dig deep to rise above the fray, allies are essential.
Coaching
What is the gap between who you are now and who you need to become?
We’re expanding our coaching practice! We’ll continue our passionate support for leaders facing hurdles at work. Recent trends regardless of sector include working through cross-generational tensions, AI adoption, and burnout.
We’re also coaching people of all ages to explore pivots that may redirect work or address broader personal issues. We mentor:
young people through adulting,
parents who are entering a new stage,
people figuring out how to monetize passions and
seasoned professionals looking to reboot or scale back
My own journey has had many twists and turns. Some paths were intentional and others opportunistic. The most dramatic pivot happened in 2013 when I spent the year in New Zealand exploring social purpose business as a Fulbright Ian Axford Fellow. This remarkable experience was a springboard to join Loomio, a SaaS platform for collaborative decision making. I first joined the cooperative as a worker-owner and then joined the Board. The startup journey is arduous, and my consulting and teaching is deeply informed by these lessons and the global network that became my ecosystem.
Consulting
How can we lead change that accelerates results and treats people with care and dignity? How can we help people thrive at work? How can we adapt in the face of untold uncertainties? These are the questions that leaders bring to us. Let’s discover and scale the answers together.
Facilitation
Being together in person is precious and we are masterful at supporting groups to discover breakthrough ideas, deepen connections and chart paths to success.
The debate about return-to-work and remote is a false dichotomy. We have the ingenuity and tech tools to design work that optimizes for each organization’s specific needs and principles. We curate experiences that ignite discovery. We design and facilitate gatherings so that they are game-changing for participants. We stay engaged to assure that the benefits permeate the whole enterprise.
MJ is smart, savvy and compassionate. She guided us to collaboratively build trust and successfully navigate a complex process.”
– Elizabeth D., Board Chair, Public Media
“The Kaplan team designed 2 days with the perfect mix of work and play. Their expert facilitation surfaced undiscussables that led to truly monumental shifts for our team.”
– Ed. S. Biotech Executive
Fixate on Food
More than 40% of unused food is sent to landfills and 8% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are from food waste. I re-energized a focus on food systems after taking the URI Extension course on Food Recovery. We visited farms and compost operations, toured the landfill and collected unharvested produce to distribute to people in need through Hope Harvest.
While food waste may not seem like the most urgent challenge, targeting this issue improves the environment, reduces hunger and has a cascading effect that develops community capability and resilience. I’ve joined the RI School Recycling Project as a pro bono strategic advisor just as RI secured a catalytic $18.7M grant.
In 2025, Kaplan Consulting will deepen our food system practice locally, nationally and globally.
Reach out if food is your passion and we can help you accelerate progress. →
We preserved and shared our abundant tomato harvest.
Honoring Our ‘We’
For 25 years, we’ve developed a savvy network of colleagues who join us to better serve you. We’ve worked with dozens of talented consultants from across the globe. Teaming is always a richer way to work. I have such enormous gratitude for the intelligence, openness, creativity and partnership we’ve benefitted from through the years. For those of you in our circle, heartfelt gratitude. 🙏
I cherish a 30+ year connection with the Institute for Conservation Leadership. We strengthen leadership, strategy and governance for groups working on the front lines of climate change and environmental resilience. We explore new thinking and practices with exceptional thinker-doers through Greaterthan and Community for Change. Other partners across the decades include Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, RISD’s Center for Complexity, Foundation North’s Center for Social Impact, Leadership RI and more. Teaching has been another immense reward. I spent several years teaching adaptive strategy and social enterprise at Brown University and I continue to teach a class on the future of work as part of the Master’s Program of Arts and Creative Leadership at MCAD.
How do you measure your life?
I’ve assigned the article How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clay Christensen for every course I’ve taught. Christensen writes, “Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.”
Becoming a grandmother is a new role that’s in the mix for my life. Our 3rd grandchild arrived in November! Such mystery and joy to watch little ones discover themselves, their loved ones and the world around them. If you need a pick-me-up this year, reach out to a toddler, get on the floor and roll around, sing and dance. Rekindle joy!
The Children’s Museum with grandkids.
